Learn English with News | The US Election and How Joe Biden Won!

Aw yeah! So after a nail-biting close election  we finally know that Joe Biden has been elected  

the next President of the United States.  Now, election day or polling day is the day  

on which elections are held. Now while we  usually know the results by Tuesday night,  

you might have been asking yourself,  like so many people out there,  

why did it take so long this year? Actually, on  Wednesday, Joe Biden himself had this to say:  

So after the popularity of the recent lesson that  we made with the Biden-Trump debate, we thought  

that we'd throw together this lesson to help  you to understand the American electoral system,  

which will help you to understand exactly  why the elections took so long this year.  

And of course you'll also be learning a lot of  political vocabulary that you'll find extremely  

practical if you've been watching the news,  because it's brought up all the time. And finally  

we'll learn with some clips from Joe Biden's  victory speech, after becoming President-elect.  

All right, so now let's learn all of the most  difficult vocabulary and expressions from that  

clip, but really quickly before we do, I want  to let you know that if you're new here every  

single week we make great lessons like this one to  help you understand fast speaking natives. Without  

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So rigged means to dishonestly  arrange the results of an election  

or a competition. Another word we can  use that means the same thing is fixed.  

Now, Trump thought or at least  tried to make people believe  

that the votes were not counted correctly. So he  thought that the whole thing was rigged. Polls  

are the process of voting in an election, and this  is also the name of the place where we go to vote.  

To sue someone it means to take legal action  against that person. Now you might have heard  

some talk that Trump wants to sue the people in  charge of counting the votes in different states.  

So a different way that we could say this is that  Trump is wanting to take these people to court.  

Now this is probably the number one thing you  need to understand about american elections.  

So the electoral college is a unique and also very  controversial method for indirectly selecting who  

will be the President of the United States. So the  United States we don't actually vote directly for  

the President. The electoral college are eeducated  individuals who vote in your place and each state  

has a designated number of electoral votes, based  on the population of that state. So whoever wins  

the popular vote in a certain state, the electoral  college should vote for that individual. Now this  

is controversial because it means that you don't  actually need to win the popular vote. In the  

United States, in order to be elected President,  and that also makes certain states that often go  

one way or another way really crucial in order to  win, and we'll talk more about that in a little  

bit. Now, if you follow the 2016 elections then  you might remember that Hillary Clinton won the  

popular vote, but she actually lost in the  electoral college. Which means that although  

the majority of citizens voted for her, she did  not become the President of United States. Now,  

if you followed the elections you might have seen  the number 270. You need 270 votes to win. Now  

this is because there are 538 electoral college  seats. Now 270 would be the majority of that,  

so if you get that majority or more then you win.  Biden won both the popular vote and the electoral  

college vote in these elections. Now the pandemic  also played a huge role in this year's elections.  

Let's hear what Biden had to say about that. Do you want to be able to understand the English  

that natives use in real life? Then I highly  recommend you join our FREE 3-Part Masterclass.  

Now in this Masterclass you will learn the 3  Principles that you need to master in order to  

be able to understand natives no matter how  fast we speak. And those are vocabulary and  

cultural contexts, which you're learning a lot  about in this lesson, and third pronunciation.  

So you can join for FREE by clicking up  here or down the description below.  

Now, Biden says he doesn't see blue states or red  states, he just sees the United States. This is a  

nice play on words here, but let's take a look at  what this actually means. So, blue states and red  

states refer to states that are more democratic or  more republican. So blue states are the ones that  

are more liberal they're the ones, that vote more  for the Democratic party, which is Joe Biden's  

party. Now, red states on the other hand are more  conservative, they're more represented by the  

Republican party, which is Donald Trump's party.  Now in some states it's really predictable whether  

a state will vote red or vote blue, but there's  some states that are much more unpredictable.  

We call these swing states. Now this is because  from election to election they swing in one  

direction or in the other. Now, in one election  process these states might find themselves more on  

the democratic side and another one they might  vote more for the Republican candidate. Now,  

as we mentioned earlier, many times elections are  decided by how these swing states vote. And that  

is why they're also often called "battleground  states". So Presidential Candidates fight for  

votes there, and usually their campaigning in  these states is much more aggressive. Now, this  

comes from the word battleground, which of course  is a place where an actual battle is fought.  

Now if you've been following the news then there's  probably some states that maybe you can't even  

place on the map but that you've been hearing  a lot about in these elections. For example,  

Nevada, Arizona and Pennsylvania.  These are all swing states and they  

really were crucial in determining the  results of this year's elections.  

Now, Joe Biden mentions people from all sorts  of different political backgrounds. For example,  

here he mentions people who are more Progressive,  Moderate or Conservative. So people who are more  

Progressive tend to be much more liberal  in their political views. So for example,  

they would support a woman's right to choose  whether or not she wants to get an abortion.  

Conservatives, on the other hand, want to keep  things exactly how they already are now. We tend  

to say that Liberal people or Progressives tend  to lean left, and Conservatives lean right. So  

we can think of this as a political spectrum. Now  the further left you go, the more Liberal someone  

would be. And the further right you go, the more  Conservative someone would be. Now people from the  

Democratic party lean more to the left, and people  from the Republican party lean more to the right.