Joe Biden Projected Winner Over Donald Trump In Presidential Race

Updated at 12:14 a.m. Eastern Time

WASHINGTON, DC — Americans took to the streets Saturday after Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House in the most consequential presidential election in a generation, according to projections from The Associated Press and other news organizations.

Even as Biden-Harris team was projected the unofficial winner, President Donald Trump continued to contest the counting of mail-in ballots, swelled to record numbers by the coronavirus pandemic, that put them in the lead.

Their win marks a historic moment in the United States. At 77, Biden will be the oldest American to serve as president, but represents a leap into the future: The 56-year-old Harris will become the first woman vice president, but also first Black woman, and the first person of Indian descent, on a major party's presidential ticket.

Their election is a salve for a nation deeply wounded by the rancor and divisiveness, and a repudiation of Trump's aggressive form of populism ushered in a confrontational, antagonistic and aggressive style of politics. In his first term, he has challenged cherished traditions of democracy, bending Washington to his will and changing how the United States is viewed by its friends and foes around the world.

Americans spilled into the streets, banging pots and pans, honking their car horns and dancing in a communal sigh of relief. Young women and girls danced, heartened by the election of a woman — and a woman of color — to the vice-presidency. Their spontaneity matched that shown in other moments of growth for the country, such as the he U.S. Supreme Court's legalization of same-sex marriage and the election of the nation's first Black president.

They were met with an equal reaction from Trump's supporters, who angrily took to the streets and protested the legitimacy of the election that will make Biden the 46th U.S. president. No violence has been reported in the "Stop the Steal" rallies organized around Trunp's baseless claim the election was rigged by the massive mail-in balloting to accommodate Americans skittish about voting in a pandemic.

Biden was expected to take a tone of reconciliation in his first nationwide address as president-elect. He has said he will be a president for all Americans, not just those who voted for him.

Now President-elect Biden said in a statement at midday Saturday that he is "honored and humbled by the trust the American people have placed" in the ticket.

"We did it; we did it, Joe," Harris said in a mirthful and jubilant phone call to Biden that she tweeted in a video. "You're going to be the next president of the United States."

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Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel said it's premature to name Biden the winner.

"The media doesn’t decide who wins elections, voters do," she tweeted. "In multiple states the margins are razor thin with counting ongoing, several of which are headed for recounts."

Biden, however, was confident his election wouldn't slip away as more counts came in.

"In the face of unprecedented obstacles, a record number of Americans voted. Proving once again, that democracy beats deep in the heart of America," Biden, who at 77 succeeded in his fourth campaign for the White House, said in his statement. "With the campaign over, it's time to put anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation.

"It's time for America to unite. And to heal. We are the United States of America. And there's nothing we can't do, if we do it together."

As new unofficial vote totals came in Saturday, news organizations diverged at how many electoral vote totals to show Biden had as of midday. The Associated Press showed Biden with 290 electoral votes, having called all but two of the remaining states for Biden — Georgia and North Carolina. The New York Times put Biden's electoral vote total at midday at 279, holding back on calling Arizona for Biden. And CNN showed Biden's total at 273, also holding back on calling Nevada for Biden.

Trump continued to press his false claims the only way he could he lose the election was if it was rigged — a claim he also made in 2016 before he upset Democrat Hillary Clinton — even as celebrations erupted across the country.

Trump has not made any public statements since the projections, and spent much of Saturday golfing at his private club in Virginia.

Early results had created a so-called “red mirage” on the Electoral College map that favored Republican President Donald Trump’s re-election. But Biden was able to close the gap as election officials counted millions of mail-in ballots from Americans skittish about voting in person in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Pennsylvania's vote tally flipped to favor Biden on Friday morning as numerous mail-in votes were counted in the historically Democratic-leaning Philadelphia area. Pennsylvania began counting mail-in ballots after those cast on Election Day were tallied. The Election Day vote favored Trump.

Biden also overtook Trump in Georgia, breaking through Trump's hold on the South, and trailed the president by a thin margin in North Carolina on Saturday. Both states remained too close to call Saturday.

Even as Biden was projected the winner, the Trump campaign filed a flurry of lawsuits in battleground states in bids to stop further counting of mail-in ballots received after Election Day, though doing so would be contrary to laws in some states.

A defiant Trump, who hadn't been seen in public since early Wednesday morning when he prematurely claimed victory and falsely claimed election fraud, repeated those claims at a White House news conference Thursday evening and said he would be bringing "tremendous litigation" in states where legally cast votes are still being counted.

He again offered no evidence to support his claims of election fraud. The president has been making baseless allegations of vote fraud for months after states made accommodations for more mail-in voting amid the coronavirus pandemic.

"If you count the legal votes, I easily win," Trump said, raising concerns about the validity of absentee ballots allowed under state election laws, falsely claiming "they make people corrupt."

"We want an honest election," he said. "We want an honest count."

Flanked by his family in his premature victory lap Wednesday morning, Trump told Americans he planned to go to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop it.

It was an exaggeration. Before the Supreme Court could intervene, the lawsuits would have to wend through state courts. Courts in Georgia and Michigan tossed the Trump campaign’s lawsuits. The fate of other lawsuits, including one asking for a recount in Wisconsin, where Biden’s lead is only about 20,000 votes, isn't clear.

Millions of Americans stood in long lines on Election Day waiting to cast their ballots in a presidential election that will shape how the nation deals with a surging coronavirus pandemic, a struggling economy and persistent racial injustice.

About 102 million people voted early, putting the 2020 presidential election on pace to break century-old turnout record. Estimates are that 66.3 percent of registered voters cast ballots. The highest turnout in recent decades was in 1960, when 63.8 percent of registered voters cast ballots in the race between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

The pandemic that so altered voting patterns loomed large over the race, which for many voters turned on their judgment of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak. More than 234,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the United States, far more than in any other country, and more than 9.5 million people have tested positive for coronavirus.

Infection rates are surging, with daily confirmed cases up across all states, and nearly half of them setting records in the past week. On Wednesday, the United States recorded more than 100,000 new coronavirus cases in a single day, more than on any other day since the pandemic began, The New York Times reported.

Biden defined the race as a battle for America's soul, combining his trademark folksy demeanor with policy recommendations harking back to his eight years as Obama's vice president and embracing those purported by more progressive rivals in the Democratic primary.

Biden's previous three runs for the presidency were abject failures. He last ran in 2008 when Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination and served as Obama's vice president for eight years.

He stayed out of the 2016 race after the death of his son Beau, but has told reporters he knew he had to enter the 2020 race after Trump said there were "fine people on both sides" of a deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

Biden’s sister and longtime political confidante, Valerie Biden Owens, told The Associated Press last year that Trump's comments were a hard "blow" to Biden after serving as the No. 2 to America's first Black president.

“It really started percolating, and the essence of this was Charlottesville,” Biden Owens said. “I can tell you that was a major motivating moment for my brother, and the entire family.”

“The big ‘yes’ started with this,” Ted Kaufman, Biden’s longtime Senate chief of staff, told The AP's Thomas Beaumont.

When Biden announced his candidacy, he blasted Trump's "moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it” and declared the election a “battle for the soul of this nation.”

Even with the Biden win, the results in down-ticket races are worrisome for Democrats, who went into Election Day expecting a “blue wave” that would give them majorities in both chambers of Congress and demonstrate an unmistakable renouncement of Trump and the Republican Party he bent to his will.

Republicans held on to key seats Democrats had hoped to flip in the Senate, and the Democratic majority seems to have narrowed in the House of Representatives. Runoff elections in a pair of Georgia Senate races could leave the chamber with a 50-50 split.

The closeness of the presidential election also suggests America remains divided, and Democrats may have trouble enacting progressive priorities.