Vice President Joe Biden has been chosen by the American people to lead the country out of the economic and mortal despairs caused by a raging pandemic amid searing division in the country.

His win, declared on Saturday Nov. 7, finally manifested itself after a long week of uncertainty as millions of mail-in ballots were slowly counted. With battle ground states such as Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia reporting 95% or higher votes counted, Biden’s win appears clearer.

Pollsters across the country had projected a blue wave in favor of the Vice President, who has led by double digits in several battleground states. The results, however, told a much different story, as battleground states and Republican strongholds in the South and Midwest were dark red by election day.

President Trump led among in-person voters in these states, but over the next four days millions of mail-in votes were processed and accounted for, showing a blue shift in key states. It was a still tight election, the final electoral score had Joe Biden at 306 to Trump’s 232.

Joe Biden beat President Barrack Obama’s record for most votes in a presidential election. 2020 reported a record turnout, with Hispanic/Latinos showing the largest growth among racial or ethnic groups, especially in the South-Western states, such as California with an 11% increase since 2000.

In fact, all major ethnic and racial groups (except for whites) largely leaned Democratic, pulling President-elect Joe Biden to victory in states like Georgia, where voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams helped register hundreds of thousands of Georgia voters, earning Biden his deep South victory.

Major media outlets including the Associated Press, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News called the win on Saturday, and celebration instantly took place outside the White House’s preemptive barricade and on streets throughout the United States.

President Trump, however, was not in the White House, but on the green at Trump National Golf Club in Virginia. He returned to Washington D.C. later that afternoon amid crowds of Biden voters.

A viral video of Sen. Kamala Harris calling to congratulate Joe Biden spread on social media, and Joe Biden later went to visit his son, Beau Biden, at his burial site in Delaware.

At his nighttime victory speech, Biden described the need “to rebuild the soul of America, to rebuild the backbone of this nation, the middle class and to make America respected around the world again.”

Biden’s win was just the first battle and only a beginning, however, for the real test of unifying a nation and overcoming extreme circumstances.