Democrat Joe Biden captured the U.S. presidency on Saturday, The Associated Press and several major television networks said, as voters narrowly rebuffed Republican incumbent Donald Trump’s tumultuous leadership and embraced Biden’s promise to fight the coronavirus pandemic and fix the economy in a divided nation.
When the former vice president enters the White House on January 20, the oldest person to assume the office at age 78, he likely will face a difficult task governing in a deeply polarized Washington, underscored by a record nationwide voter turnout in a fight to the finish.
His projected victory came after four days of nail-biting suspense over the outcome of Tuesday’s election, with the counting of votes in a handful of battleground states ongoing thanks to a flood of mail-in ballots.
Biden said on Friday he expected to win the race but stopped short of giving a victory speech. A Trump adviser acknowledged on Friday that the race had tilted against Trump, but said the president was not ready to admit defeat.
Biden won Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes to put him over the 270 Electoral College votes needed to secure the presidency, according to The AP and television networks.
To secure the win, Biden faced unprecedented challenges. These included Republican-led efforts to limit mail-in voting at a time when a record number of people were due to vote by mail because of the pandemic, which has killed more than 235,000 people in the United States.
Biden, who has spent half a century in public life as a U.S. senator and then vice president under Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama, will inherit a nation in turmoil over the coronavirus pandemic and the related economic slowdown as well as disruptive protests against racism and police brutality.
Biden has said his first priority will be developing a plan to contain and recover from the pandemic, promising to improve access to testing and, unlike Trump, to heed the advice of leading public health officials and scientists. He also has pledged to restore a sense of normalcy to the White House.
