Biden wins US presidency

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. Kamala Harris, pictured with Biden, will be the first American female vice president.

Democrat Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump to become the 46th president of the United States on Saturday, positioning himself to lead a nation gripped by a historic pandemic and a confluence of economic and social turmoil.

His victory came after more than three days of uncertainty as election officials sorted through a surge of mail-in votes that delayed the processing of some ballots. Biden crossed 270 Electoral College votes with a win in Pennsylvania.

Trump refused to concede, threatening further legal action on ballot counting.

Biden, 77, staked his candidacy less on any distinctive political ideology than on galvanizing a broad coalition of voters around the notion that Trump posed an existential threat to American democracy. The strategy proved effective, resulting in pivotal victories in Michigan and Wisconsin as well as Pennsylvania, onetime Democratic bastions that had flipped to Trump in 2016.

Biden, in a statement, said he was humbled by the victory and it was time for the battered nation to set aside its differences.

"It's time for America to unite. And to heal," he said.

"With the campaign over, it's time to put the anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation," Biden said. "There's nothing we can't do if we do it together."

Biden was on track to win the national popular vote by more than 4 million, a margin that could grow as ballots continue to be counted.

Trump was not giving up. Departing from longstanding democratic tradition and signaling a potentially turbulent transfer of power, he issued a combative statement while he was on his Virginia golf course. It said his campaign would take unspecified legal actions and he would "not rest until the American People have the honest vote count they deserve and that Democracy demands."

Trump has pointed to delays in processing the vote in some states to allege with no evidence that there was voter fraud and to argue that his rival was trying to seize power — an extraordinary charge by a sitting president trying to sow doubt about a bedrock democratic process.

Kamala Harris also made history as the first Black woman to become vice president, an achievement that comes as the U.S. faces a reckoning on racial justice. The California senator, who is also the first person of South Asian descent elected to the vice presidency, will become the highest-ranking woman ever to serve in government, four years after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton.

Trump is the first incumbent president to lose reelection since Republican George H.W. Bush in 1992.

Early Saturday he left the White House for his Virginia golf club dressed in golf shoes, a windbreaker and a white hat as the results gradually expanded Biden's lead in Pennsylvania.

Trump repeated his unsupported allegations of election fraud and illegal voting on Twitter. One of his tweets, quickly flagged as potentially misleading by Twitter, claimed: "I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!"

In Wilmington, Delaware, near a stage that has stood empty since it was erected to celebrate a potential victory on Election Night, people cheered and pumped their fists as the news that the presidential race had been called for the state's former senator arrived on their cell phones.

On the nearby water, two men in a kayak yelled to a couple paddling by in the opposite direction, "Joe won! They called it!" as people on the shore whooped and hollered. Harris, in workout gear, was shown on video speaking to Biden on the phone, exuberantly telling the president-elect "We did it!" Biden was expected to take the stage for a drive-in rally after dark.

Across the country, there were parties and prayer. In New York City, spontaneous block parties broke out. People ran out of their buildings, banging on pots. They danced and high-fived with strangers amid honking horns.

People streamed into Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House, waving signs and taking cellphone pictures. In Lansing, Michigan, Trump supporters and Black Lives Matter demonstrators filled the Capitol steps. The lyrics to "Amazing Grace" began to echo through the crowd, and Trump supporters laid their hands on a counter protester, and prayed.

Americans showed deep interest in the presidential race. A record 103 million voted early this year, opting to avoid waiting in long lines at polling locations during a pandemic. With counting continuing in some states, Biden had already received more than 74 million votes, more than any presidential candidate before him.

Trump's refusal to concede has no legal implications. But it could add to the incoming administration's challenge of bringing the country together after a bitter election.