The 2020 election, which occurred on November 3rd, was one of the most monumental elections in our recent history. Not only was it extremely polarizing, but many key issues were on the ballot like healthcare, climate change, and the handling of COVID-19.

Heading into the election Joe Biden was heavily leading in all major polls, averaging +8 percentage points in the general election polls. The introduction of mail-in voting to many states that never had it in previous elections made for an election that would be extremely chaotic. Although predicted by many major news outlets and political scientists, people were shocked to see President Donald Trump take a visibly big lead in many swing states, and even win Florida, on Election Night.

Many, including me, went to bed thinking that President Trump would be re-elected. However, overnight many mail-in votes started being tabulated in all states, President Trump saw his leads in many swing states–like Pennsylvania and Michigan–deteriorate rapidly as these mail-in votes were counted. Counting all these votes to decide key states, like Nevada and Arizona, took very long and we didn’t end up seeing an election call for Joe Biden (by AP) until November 7th, 4 days after election day. Joe Biden emerged as the victor after most other major news outlets made the call that he won the election and would be president-elect.

The COVID-19 pandemic made this election very problematic as mail-in voting was in effect all over the country where it hadn’t been in the past. This caused lots of confusion over the election results in the ensuing days. President Trump still believes that there was lots of fraud in this election and has brought lots of cases to state courts.

The true winner won’t be decided until December 14th when state electors cast their votes. However, it’s very unlikely we see any surprises on December 14th as most electors are mandated to vote the way their state voted, “faithless” electors are very rare and Joe Biden’s lead is big enough that there’s not much room for error.