U.S. election results: Joe Biden elected 46th president of the United States

Joe Biden has been elected the 46th president of the United States, according to U.S. news outlets, prevailing after days of vote-counting in a fierce battle for the White House.

His running mate, Kamala Harris, will make history as the first woman, first Black and first South Asian U.S. vice-president.

Mr. Biden clinched 290 electoral college votes midday Saturday after securing Pennsylvania and Nevada following four days of ballot-counting. Mr. Biden also led the vote counts in two more swing states: Georgia and Arizona. The Democratic nominee also led the Republican incumbent in the popular vote by 51 per cent to 48 per cent.

In a statement, Mr. Biden said his victory showed that “democracy beats deep in the heart of America,” and called for the country to unite.

“It’s time to put the anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation,” he said. “It’s time for America to unite. And to heal.”

The unprecedented election unfolded amid a pandemic, the largest anti-racism protests since the civil-rights movement and a damaged economy. Mr. Biden, a 77-year-old career politician who served as vice-president under Barack Obama, now must make good on promises of sweeping change to address the country’s problems.

But with the Democratic majority reduced in the House of Representatives and control of the Senate still uncertain, Mr. Biden may face an uphill battle in Washington to push through his agenda.

The election result hung in the balance for several days as states processed mail-in ballots. President Trump jumped out to a lead in several swing states during early counting, in which election day votes were tabulated first. As more postal ballots were counted, Mr. Biden steadily overtook Mr. Trump. Republicans had encouraged supporters to vote in person on election day, while Democrats encouraged supporters to use mail-in ballots.

To win, Mr. Biden tried to assemble a broad voting coalition that leaned heavily on motivating Black voters and winning over suburban women. For his running mate, he chose Ms. Harris, a California senator with an Indian-born mother and Jamaican-born father. Ms. Harris spent much of her adolescence in Montreal, when her mother worked as a cancer researcher at McGill University.

The Democrats’ strategy hinged on retaking the “blue wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, Rust Belt states that had been reliably Democratic before going narrowly for Mr. Trump in 2016. Mr. Biden also looked to make inroads in once reliably red Republican bastions such as Georgia and Arizona, where demographic changes have favoured the Democrats.

Mr. Biden attacked Mr. Trump’s handling of COVID-19, which has killed more people in the U.S. than in any other country, and accused the President of racism for his response to protests against police brutality. The Democrat also campaigned on plans to battle climate change, expand access to health care with a voluntary government-run insurance program and jettison Mr. Trump’s isolationist foreign policy in favour of rebuilding relationships with allies such as Canada.

But the Democrats failed to achieve the landslide repudiation of Mr. Trump that they had been hoping for. Instead, the President actually won more votes than he had in 2016 and fought Mr. Biden to a near-draw in several key swing states. Mr. Biden won by significantly boosting his own voter turnout; the more than 73 million votes for him are the most any presidential candidate has ever received.

In the coming weeks, Mr. Biden will also have to deal with the President’s attempts to undermine the legitimacy of the vote and challenge various aspects of it in court. Mr. Biden will not replace Mr. Trump in the White House until January 20, 2020.

As Mr. Biden closed in on his victory, Mr. Trump made sweeping accusations of voter fraud and his campaign launched a wide-ranging legal battle.

On Twitter Friday and at a White House briefing the previous evening, Mr. Trump alleged a wide-ranging conspiracy to “steal” and “rig” the election. He said he wanted the Supreme Court to rule that many ballots cast for Mr. Biden were “ILLEGAL VOTES.”

But the President and his legal team did not provide evidence of such a conspiracy. No states have reported serious problems with either voting or counting. Two of the four late-counting swing states, Georgia and Arizona, are run by Republican governors aligned with Mr. Trump. In both Philadelphia and Detroit, two cities in which Mr. Trump specifically alleged unspecified problems with the vote-counting, Republican election monitors are in the hall where ballots are tallied. The halls are also monitored with cameras and the footage streamed online.

Mail-in voting, while expanded enormously during the pandemic, was previously already in widespread use in several states, including Republican-dominated Utah. None of them reported serious fraud.

Supporters of both sides gathered outside vote-counting locations in the swing states. In Detroit and Phoenix, crowds of Trump supporters tried to burst into the counting halls. In Philadelphia, police arrested a man and searched a Hummer after receiving a tip about a plot to attack the convention centre where the count was happening, the local ABC affiliate reported.

In the past few days, the President’s campaign filed or threatened a multitude of lawsuits. It asked for counting to stop in Pennsylvania and Georgia, and challenged the validity of some votes cast in Nevada, Georgia and Michigan.

In at least two cases, in Georgia and Michigan, courts dismissed the cases Thursday. Mr. Trump also wants a recount in Wisconsin, which went to Mr. Biden by 20,000 votes. He is further expected to challenge the practice in Pennsylvania and Nevada of counting mail-in votes that arrive at elections offices after voting day.

Some of the results could turn on decisions by the Supreme Court, on which conservatives hold a 6-3 majority. Mr. Trump rushed through the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett the week before the election.