After a nail-biting election, Joe Biden is the new president. Figures show that Latino voters in key states helped him secure the office.
The former vice president is now the 46th president of the United States. With more than 74 million votes—more than any candidate in US history—and 273 electoral college votes, Biden sealed the deal four days after Election Day.
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The Democrats remain in control of the House despite losing five congressional seats. Democrats won 48 Senate seats in 13 states with some elections that have yet to be called. As of now, the Republicans and Democrats remain tied in the Senate.
Biden clenched his victory winning key battleground states Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. And the Latino voter turnout was massive in many of those key states.
It’s projected that more than 14 million Latino voters cast their ballot in the 2020 presidential election, according to research by UCLA Latino Policy & Politics.
An estimated 70% of Latinos voted for Biden, according to the American Election Eve Poll, and the defining shift between Latinos occurred in Florida. Trump got the majority of Cuban votes (55%), while Puerto Rican, South American, and other Latinos voted for Biden.
In an interview with Pod Save America on Oct. 24, Biden gave a more in-depth look at his agenda before he actually took the White House.
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“Get control of the virus. Get control of coronavirus. Without that, nothing else is going to work very well, number one,” Biden said. “Number two: Invest in the community, in real infrastructure. [Trump has] been promising to invest in infrastructure in ’17, ’18, ’19, ’20. He hasn’t done a single, solitary thing. So we’re going to invest in generating economic growth in the United States by making it and buying it. Buy it in America, made in America.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi retained her top spot in the House and echoed Biden, telling reporters in the days before the election that infrastructure and health care would be top items to tackle first.
“We have plenty of work to do in a Joe Biden administration,” Pelosi said. “We’re going to build the infrastructure of America in a green way. We’re going to make sure health care is available to all Americans, lower the cost of prescription drugs.”
Pelosi also said Democrats would be focused on reducing “the role of big, dark, special-interest money that prevents us from having policies that the American people need.”
RELATED: ‘Long Time Coming’: Latino Voters Celebrate Flipping Arizona Blue
Democrats have their work cut out for them. There are 10 weeks until they actually take control of the White House. And in the meantime, more than 235,300 Americans have died of COVID-19, as the pandemic rages out of control in the waning days of the Trump administration. Democrats will be faced with the twin challenge of stopping the spread of the virus, addressing the economy, and possibly issuing a second stimulus relief as they take over the reins of the federal government, in addition to completing work on a vaccine and starting distribution as quickly as possible.
This is a developing story.
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