Joe Biden Wins Presidential Race With 279 Electoral Votes
PITTSBURGH (KDKA/AP) -- Joe Biden will be the 46th president of the United States.
Biden's birth state of Pennsylvania has put him over the top of the 270 needed electoral votes.
In fact, Allegheny County may have been the tipping point with some final vote totals coming in on late Saturday morning.
CBS News reports that he has 279 electoral votes, ensuring a win for his campaign.
Biden's victory has come 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. Workers have been sorting though thousands of those at a warehouse in Allegheny County. That work has been going on all across the nation since Election Day earlier this week.
President Donald Trump refused to concede Saturday afternoon, 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 now in Pennsylvania, all 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."
America, I'm honored that you have chosen me to lead our great country.
The work ahead of us will be hard, but I promise you this: I will be a President for all Americans — whether you voted for me or not.
I will keep the faith that you have placed in me. pic.twitter.com/moA9qhmjn8
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) November 7, 2020
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.
Kamala Harris is also making 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.
We did it, @JoeBiden. pic.twitter.com/oCgeylsjB4
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) November 7, 2020
Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and raised in Delaware where he still lives today with his wife Dr. Jill Biden.
Both sides, Democrat and Republican, campaigned extensively in Pennsylvania. Both Biden and Trump making stop after stop across the state during the campaign season.
For live results of all election races in Pennsylvania, visit KDKA's 2020 General Election results page.
(TM and © Copyright 2020 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)