Joe Biden has received the most votes of any presidential candidate in history - here's the full list

Former US Vice President Joe Biden has now received more votes to become the country’s next President than any other candidate in history, with some votes still to be counted.

Despite a number of polls suggesting that the Democractic challenger would win by a landslide, many of the early signs on election night looked good for current President, Donald Trump.

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But Mr Biden is now showing a significant lead in both the popular vote and the electoral college.

Has the winner been decided?

Though the election has not been officially decided yet, the likelihood of Donald Trump retaining the presidency is now considered to be very low, after Mr Biden took the lead in key battlegrounds Wisconsin and Michigan.

Mr Trump won Florida, which has one of the highest electoral vote counts of any state, and seemed to be ahead of his rival based on polling-day voting.

However, as in a number of states early and mail-in ballots cannot be counted until election day is over, and early voters tend to be Democrats, the results have improved for Mr Biden.

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Speaking early on the morning of 4 November, Mr Biden said, “We knew because of the unprecedented early vote, the mail-in vote, that it’s going to take a while, we’re going to have to be patient until the hard work of counting votes is finished.”

He added, “And it ain’t over till every vote is counted, every ballot is counted.”

How many votes did Joe Biden get?

As of 2:30pm ET on 4 November, Joe Biden had 69,949,918 votes with a number of states still to process some ballots, which saw him surpass the current record.

This is higher than Mr Biden’s former running mate, Barack Obama, whose election victories in 2008 and 2012 saw him pick up the highest and second highest total votes in American history, respectively.

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As of the most recent vote counts, Mr Biden has smashed previous records, with 71,962,752 votes.

President Trump’s current total of 68,360,149 puts him ahead of Hilary Clinton’s popular vote total from the 2016 election, when she amassed more votes but lost to Mr Trump in the electoral college.

Of course, one of the main factors in voter numbers is population size, and as the US population has increased over time, this has meant that overall the number of people voting has increased.

Also, many groups of people, including women and black people, would not have been able to vote for much of American history, meaning the number of potential voters was much lower.

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For context, this means that the more than 60,000 votes gained by rapper Kanye West this year (amounting to less than 0.05 per cent of the overall vote) is only around 40,000 votes off the total gained by Thomas Jefferson when he became president in 1804.

Turnout is also a major factor, with predictions for the 2020 turnout ranging from 65 to 70 per cent. It is likely to be the highest rate of turnout since 1908, and possibly even since the 19th century.

Here are the highest total votes received by presidential candidates in US history

Joe Biden, 2020 - 69,949,918 (subject to change)

Barack Obama, 2008 - 69,498,516 (winner)

Barack Obama, 2012 - 69,915,795 (winner)

Donald Trump, 2020 - 68,360,149 (subject to change)

Hilary Clinton, 2016 - 65,853,514

Donald Trump, 2016 - 62,984,828 (winner)

George W Bush, 2004 - 62,040,610 (winner)

Mitt Romney, 2012 - 60,933,504

John McCain, 2008 - 59,948,323

John Kerry, 2004 - 59,028,444

Ronald Reagan, 1984 - 54,455,472 (winner)

Al Gore, 2000 - 50,999,897