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Democrat Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump to become the 46th president of the United States.
Biden’s victory came after more than three days of uncertainty as election officials settled a flurry of mail-in ballots that delayed the processing of some ballots. Biden surpassed 270 electoral college votes with a victory in Pennsylvania.
The 77-year-old Biden bet his candidacy less on a distinctive political ideology than on pushing a broad coalition of voters around the idea 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, once Democratic strongholds that turned to Trump in 2016.
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 took advantage of the delays in voting processing in some states to falsely allege voter fraud and argue that his rival was trying to seize power, an extraordinary position for a sitting president trying to cast doubt on a fundamental democratic process.
As the vote count unfolded, Biden tried to ease tensions and project an image of presidential leadership, giving notes of unity that apparently aimed to cool the temperature of a heated and divided nation.
“We have to remember that the purpose of our policy is not a total, relentless, endless war,” Biden said Friday night in Delaware. “No, the purpose of our policy, the job of our nation, is not to fan the flames of conflict, but to solve problems, ensure justice, give everyone a fair chance.”
Previously: A senior election official has dismissed new allegations of election fraud from US President Donald Trump as rival Joe Biden approaches victory.
Trump released a series of unsubstantiated claims on Twitter Saturday morning, claiming “bad things” happened and referring to votes that were “illegally received.”
But Federal Election Commission Commissioner Ellen Weintraub said there is no evidence of electoral fraud.
Speaking on CNN after Trump’s series of tweets, which were flagged by Twitter as containing information about the election that may be “misleading,” Ms. Weintraub said: “State and local officials, and poll workers all over the country, they really stepped forward.
“And there have been very few complaints about how these elections have played out.
“Very few substantiated complaints, let me put it that way. There is no evidence of any kind of electoral fraud ”.
“There is no evidence that illegal votes were cast.
“In fact, and you don’t have to take my word for it because people across the country, non-partisan election experts, have come out and praised this election and how it was conducted.
“If you want to see the state of Pennsylvania, where the president seems to be concentrating, Senator (Pat) Toomey has come out and said that he has seen no evidence of fraud there.
“The Republican leader of the state senate there has also said he has seen no evidence of fraud.”
She added: “There has really been no evidence of fraud. None of the complaints have attached evidence of fraud.
“Really, we should be very proud of ourselves.”
His comments came after Trump wrote on Twitter that tens of thousands of votes were “illegally received” after 8pn on Tuesday “totally and easily changing the results in Pennsylvania and some other thin states.”
He said hundreds of thousands of votes were “illegally not allowed to be OBSERVED,” adding: “This would ALSO change the outcome of elections in numerous states, including Pennsylvania, which everyone thought was easily won on Election Night. , only to see a massive advantage disappear, without anyone being able to OBSERVE, for long intervals of time, what happened …
“…. Bad things happened during those hours in which LEGAL TRANSPARENCY was not allowed in a cruel and brutal way. The tractors blocked the doors and the windows were covered with thick cardboard so that the observers could not see inside the counting rooms. BAD THINGS HAPPENED INSIDE. THEY MADE BIG CHANGES! “
Trump said there will be a “big press conference” in Philadelphia on Saturday afternoon UK time.
Meanwhile, Biden has not officially declared victory, but said he is confident he will finally win the race for the White House.
The Democratic nominee took the lead in the key battlefield states of Pennsylvania and Georgia on Friday, and forecasters placed him just one state from victory as officials continue to count votes.
Speaking in Wilmington, Delaware, shortly before 11 pm local time Friday, the former vice president said that while he did not have a final statement, “the numbers tell us a clear and compelling story.”
Biden said, “We’re going to win this race, just look at what has happened since yesterday.”
He added: “We have obtained more than 74 million votes, that is more than any presidential ballot has obtained in the history of the United States of America.
“And our vote total continues to grow. We are beating Donald Trump by more than four million votes and that is a margin that also continues to grow. “
Biden ended his speech with a call for calm along with a veiled response to Trump’s legal challenges, which the president has launched to improve his chances of re-election amid unsubstantiated allegations of fraud.
The winner must collect 270 votes from the electoral college of the winning states.
The victory in Pennsylvania would hand over the presidency to Biden with his 20 votes, but Georgia, with 16 electoral votes, is a more complicated scenario.
Not everyone agrees that Biden has won beyond all likelihood in Arizona, and without that Georgia would leave him one vote from the overall victory.
He has won victories in the states of Wisconsin and Michigan, but Nevada and North Carolina also remain too close to call after Tuesday’s election.
The Trump campaign requested a recount in Wisconsin and filed lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia.
But judges in Michigan and Georgia dismissed the actions launched by the Trump campaign.
Additional legal action was also expected in Nevada, the campaign said.
The Associated Press news agency, which PA relies on to call states, has projected that Biden will win Arizona and its 11 votes in the electoral college.
That seems likely, since it has a strong lead with more than 90% of the votes counted, but the Trump campaign disagrees and other news organizations are not so sure.
The appearance of Biden returning from behind is artificial.
Many of the pending ballots are postal votes and absentee ballots that are added to the count later than their in-person counterparts.
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