| Total votes | 247 | 232 |
| Pledged votes | 306 | 232 |
| Faithless electors | 0 | 0 |
The 538 members of the Electoral College are meeting today to cast ballots for president based on the election results in their states, formalizing Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.
This year, Mr Biden won states with 306 electoral votes, and President Trump won 232. Despite Mr Trump’s refusal to concede defeat, every state has certified its election results and appointed electors pledged to the candidate who carried its votes.
That has not stopped Mr Trump and his allies from relentlessly seeking to reverse the popular will, including by twisting the arms of state lawmakers and through scores of legal challenges claiming election fraud, none of which have succeeded.
Who electors voted for
Mr Trump and his supporters demanded that legislatures in states narrowly won by Mr. Biden name alternate electors for the president. No state knuckled under to the pressure.
Since the last time the Electoral College met four years ago when seven individuals ignored the popular vote and cast ballots for a different candidate, the Supreme Court has made it easier for states to rein in “faithless electors.” In a ruling this year, states were given the power to remove rogue electors who don’t support their state’s vote winner.
The next important date on the calendar leading to the inauguration of the new president is Jan. 6, when Congress meets in joint session to formally accept the Electoral College results. As in recent presidential elections, it is likely that challenges will be made to some states’ electoral votes, but they are all but certain to fail.
The electors are meeting today in their respective states and the District of Columbia; almost all of the roll calls take place at state capitols. The first states started at 10 a.m. Eastern time, and most states vote in the afternoon. California, the crucial state for Mr. Biden to achieve 270 Electoral College votes, meets at 5 p.m. Eastern.
In an extraordinary year of anti-democratic agitation and disinformation spread by an incumbent president, at least one delegation, Michigan’s, received police escorts on the way into the Capitol.
Despite the sound and the fury, the voting there and elsewhere was routine and anticlimactic.