Back in June I predicted Joe Biden would win the 2020 presidential election under the contrarian headline “Why Joe Biden will not win the US Election”. My point was President Trump would lose it. However, for a second, I will bask in the glory of calling the outcome correctly so far out.

At the time I berated myself for thinking that the future was my specialist subject and I was correct. As the months went by and the CovEcon-19 leviathan killed people and employment I convinced myself we were in for a “blue wave” election with a Biden landslide.

I was wrong. President Trump actually secured an increase in his popular vote. He was only beaten by a record turnout which favoured Biden by 4m votes or just over 2% of the electorate. It pains me to say it but it is a real achievement for Trump to secure that much of the vote in a democracy.

Much will be made of this incredibly close and highly contested election. It will be called in evidence of the partisan divide. Illustrating how far apart Americans are. And it is true there is an enormous amount of reconciliation to be achieved by a Biden presidency, which will not be easy as some of the issues are not susceptible to a compromise solution.

However, the true winner here was democracy. Whether they supported Biden or Trump the American people, in unprecedented numbers, chose to do so by voting. Yes, there have been dark noises off, not least from the incumbent, but at the end of the day 70m+ Trump supporters thought the way to provide that support was through the ballot box.

It is early days and trumped up legal challenges, poisonous tweets and attempts at transition sabotage may well raise the temperature but 146m Americans have thrown their weight behind a system which provides for a peaceful transfer of power. Neither candidate may have secured a landslide but democracy did.