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Joe Biden was elected 46th President of the United States
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How does the election work?
The US legislature, Congress, has two houses. The lower house, the House of Representatives, has 435 voting seats, each representing a district of roughly similar size. There are elections to each of these seats every two years.
The upper house, the Senate, has 100 members, who serve for a six-year term. One-third of the seats stand for election every two-year cycle. Each state has two senators, regardless of its population; this means that Wyoming, with a population of less than 600,000, has the same weight as California, with almost 40 million.
Most laws must be passed by both chambers to become law, but the Senate has other important functions, including approving high-level presidential appointments, for example to the Supreme Court.
In most states, the candidate with the most votes on election day wins the seat. However, Georgia and Louisiana require that the winning candidate receives 50% of the votes cast; if no one does, they organize a second ballot between the first two candidates.
How are the results reported?
The election results on this page are reported by The Associated Press (AP). AP “calls” the winner into a state when it determines that the following candidate has no path to victory. This can happen before 100% of the votes in a state have been counted.
Estimates of the total vote in each state are also provided by AP. The numbers are updated throughout election night, as more data on voter turnout becomes available.
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