Breaking News: Biden has won US election!
- Joe Biden passes 270 electoral votes, becoming the president-elect.
- Kamala Harris, elected V.P.
- Twitter flags tweets from President Trump.
- Biden maintains his lead in Arizona as more votes are counted.
The state’s 20 electoral votes vaulted Joe Biden past the 270-vote threshold needed to take the White House. Kamala Harris is the first woman elected vice president as former president Trump has vowed to file legal challenges.
Joseph R. Biden Jr. was elected president of the United States, defeating President Trump after campaigning on a promise to restore civility and stability to American politics and to expand the government’s role.
Mr. Biden, 77, who will become the 46th president and the oldest man ever sworn into the office, secured 273 votes from the Electoral College. The result also provided a history-making moment for, Senator Kamala Harris of California, who became the first woman, and first woman of color, on a winning presidential ticket.
Kamala Harris, a senator from California and former presidential candidate, made history when she was elected vice president of the United States. She will be the first woman, the first Black woman, the first Indian-American woman and the first daughter of immigrants to be sworn in as vice president. Ms. Harris has faced both racist and sexist attacks from conservatives — including President Trump — who have refused to pronounce her name correctly.
With his third run for the White House — after unsuccessful bids in 1988 and 2008, and after spending eight years as President Barack Obama’s vice president — Mr. Biden in Delaware was swept into office this year with the support of a diverse coalition of younger voters, older voters, Black Americans, and white college-educated voters, particularly women.
Mr. Biden’s triumph concluded an extraordinary election despite being held amid a pandemic that has upended life across the United States. More than 100 million Americans voted before Election Day as states sought to make voting safer,.
Mr. Biden also won the popular vote by nearly three percentage points, and, with more than 74 million votes, broke the vote record set by Mr. Obama in 2012. Mr. Trump received more than 70 million votes — far more than the 63 million he received in 2016 when he beat Hillary Clinton while losing the popular vote. Mr. Trump was the first incumbent president to lose a bid for re-election since George H.W. Bush lost to Bill Clinton in 1992.
Mr. Biden lost a number of important battleground states where he had invested time and resources, most notably Florida, amid signs of challenges with a number of Latino constituencies.
The Trump campaign and Republican lawyers have already begun a wide-ranging legal assault to challenge Democratic votes and victories in key swing states, part of a long-telegraphed effort to call the validity of the election into question.
Mr. Trump, had regularly questioned the legitimacy of the election as polls showed him trailing, and it was not immediately clear how he would respond to the news of Mr. Biden’s victory.