Joe Biden has won the 2020 presidential election, the Associated Press projected Saturday, sending President Trump to a bitter defeat four years after he shocked the world by winning the White House with a victory over Hillary Clinton.
Biden crossed the 270-vote threshold in the Electoral College on Saturday after the AP called Pennsylvania for him. He was also able to capture Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona, states that Trump carried in 2016.
Other states remain too close to call, and the Trump campaign has filed multiple lawsuits to contest the legitimacy of certain ballots. The fate of those challenges was obscured after Biden was projected to have won the Electoral College.
His running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., became the first Black woman and first Asian American elected vice president in U.S. history.
“I am honored and humbled by the trust the American people have placed in me and in Vice President-elect Harris,” Biden said in a statement. “In the face of unprecedented obstacles, a record number of Americans voted. Proving once again, that democracy beats deep in the heart of America.
“With the campaign over, it’s time to put the anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation,” the president-elect continued. “It’s time for America to unite. And to heal.”
He added: “We are the United States of America. And there’s nothing we can’t do, if we do it together.”
Biden and Harris were scheduled to address the nation from Wilmington, Del., at 8 p.m. ET Saturday.
Spontaneous celebrations broke out in cities across the country, including New York, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, as residents took to the streets for impromptu dance parties. Hundreds of anti-Trump demonstrators also gathered in front of the White House, although the president is currently golfing in Virginia.
Pro-Trump rallies also sprung up. In Lansing, Mich., dozens of Trump supporters gathered outside the State Capitol Building, chanting “four more years” about an hour after the race was called.
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