Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will make history as the next president and vice president of the United States. They are set to take office on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021. // Photo courtesy of Anthony Roberts.

The contentious 2020 presidential election between former Vice President Joe Biden and incumbent President Donald Trump finally came to a conclusion four days after Election Day, with key states Nevada, Pennsylvania and Georgia determining the results.

The Associated Press called the race on Saturday, Nov. 7, projecting that Democratic candidate Biden had won the presidential race with 290 electoral votes. In New York City and across the country, people took to the streets to celebrate the election results.

“My first reaction was to call my mom,” said sophomore biochemistry major Will Germaine. “We shared a happy moment because we knew that true change was now tangible.”

Germaine is looking forward to Biden’s plans to establish a COVID-19 taskforce and hopes to see the new administration take action on student loans and education, as well as work against what Germaine sees as damage that Trump has inflicted during his four-year term.

In some cases, a positive outlook crossed party lines.

“I’ve never really been a big Trump fan, so I always take the opportunity to see the bright side of everything that happened even though I’m [a] Republican,” said Maxwell Clegg, a sophomore public policy and public service and economics double major. Clegg, who is the vice president of the Hofstra College Republicans, said he expects a moderate Biden administration that will seek to restore decency and kindness across the United States.

The 2020 election, in many ways, was an unprecedented one. It broke the record for the most expensive election in U.S. history, costing roughly $14 billion, which is double the total cost of the 2016 election. Biden not only won the popular vote with over 77 million votes and counting, but he also broke the record for the most votes ever cast for a presidential candidate in U.S. history, surpassing former President Barack Obama’s previous record of 69,498,516 votes. Biden also flipped more than one traditionally red state this year, including Arizona, which has not voted blue since 1996, and Georgia, which has not voted blue since 1992.

Trump denied the outcome of the election, claiming that widespread voter fraud occurred in several swing states without citing any concrete evidence. While some members of the Republican Party, such as Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, have denounced Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud, others have stayed silent on the issue or even enabled his claims.

“Mitt Romney has it right … You kind of just have to accept [the results],” Clegg said, adding that he does not support some other Republicans’ refusal to accept the results of the election. “I’m actually not too excited about what I’ve seen out of people like Ted Cruz and other Trump fanatics.”

Clegg said that while Trump has the right to try to contest the election results in court, he personally does not support the idea that the election results were fraudulent.

“It has been called. It’s been called for a while, and he kind of just has to accept that fact,” Clegg said. “That’s just disingenuous and [Trump] shouldn’t be throwing out the norms of our republic like that.”

Some students believe electing Biden is a good first step toward undoing much of the Trump administration’s controversial work. However, some of those same students argue that Trump’s actions may leave a long-term impact on both the United States and the rest of the world.

“It’s going to take time, and it’s going to take everything in the political power of the government to try and undo a lot of what Trump has done, that has not only just create[d] more of a division within the U.S. alone but has caused so much tension between [our] allies and even some of our rival countries,” Germaine said. “The America that Trump has created in the past four years won’t just go away [on] Inauguration Day.“