Joe Biden has won the race to become the next US president, defeating Donald Trump following a cliff-hanger vote count after Tuesday’s election.
Joe Biden was projected to win the presidency on Friday after absentee ballots in Pennsylvania gave him enough votes to beat President Donald Trump in the battleground state. With Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes, Biden now has a total of 273 electoral votes.
The election has seen the highest turnout since 1900. Mr Biden has won more than 73 million votes so far, the most ever for a US presidential candidate. Mr Trump has drawn almost 70 million, the second-highest tally in history.
The Trump campaign has indicated their candidate does not plan to concede.
The result makes Mr Trump the first one-term president since the 1990s.
It came after a stunning and mixed Tuesday election across the country. Polls overstated the standing of the Democratic nominee and former Vice President in key states, leaving Biden to slog to victory over the Republican president by flipping the midwestern states of Michigan and Wisconsin after a bitter campaign dominated by the coronavirus and its effects on Americans and the economy.
Trump spent Thursday at the White House, working the phones and sowing doubt about the outcome of the race in an evening news conference. His campaign filed flurries of lawsuits as counting continued in Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada. Judges in Georgia and Michigan promptly dismissed two lawsuits on Thursday.
The election was fought as coronavirus cases and deaths continued to rise across the United States, with President Trump arguing a Biden presidency would result in lockdowns and economic gloom. Joe Biden accused the president of failing to impose sufficient measures to control the spread of Covid-19.
Joe Biden is now set to return to the White House, where he served for eight years as President Barack Obama’s deputy. At the age of 78, he will be the oldest president in American history, a record previously held by the man he has now defeated, Donald Trump, who is 74.
“I ask everyone to stay calm,” he said. “The process is working.”
Biden was projected to win Pennsylvania and the presidency by Decision Desk HQ at 8:50 a.m. Friday. He has won at least 273 Electoral College votes, more than the 270 required to win. He could add more as states finish counting, but Trump has no path to victory in them.
Biden will turn 78 in two weeks, making him the oldest elected president. He has placed himself in the center of the Democratic Party from the 1970s through today, even as a recent progressive movement sweeps his party. Biden will take over the response to the coronavirus, which has killed 233,000 Americans as cases continue to rise across the country and caused a deep recession with no end in sight.
He faces an uncertain environment in Washington. Republicans overperformed in Senate elections on Tuesday, including a signature nine-point victory by Susan Collins of Maine in a key race after trailing in polls all year. Unless Democrats oust two incumbents in two blockbuster Georgia runoffs scheduled for Jan. 5, Republicans will keep control of the Senate.
They would then be able to block more aggressive pieces of Biden’s agenda, including a public-option health care plan like one extracted from the Affordable Care Act to mollify moderate Democrats during the Obama administration before it passed in 2010. Republicans could also hamper Biden by refusing to seat Cabinet picks they see as too liberal.
Kamala Harris is to be Biden’s vice president: The odds on her being the first woman president of the USA have shot up expediential.
Kamala Harris has become vice-president-elect of the US, the first time in history that a woman, and a woman of colour, has been elected to such a position in the White House.
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