His victory was cemented after Pennsylvania was called for two-term former vice president under Barack Obama.
Democratic nominee Joe Biden has clinched enough states to win the 270 electoral votes needed to become president, The Associated Press declared on Saturday, a day after Decision Desk HQ also called the race for Biden. His victory was cemented after Pennsylvania was called for the two-term former vice president under Barack Obama.
Various news outlets report that Biden is also ahead of President Donald Trump in Georgia and Arizona, two states that voted in Trump’s favor in 2016. (Georgia’s secretary of state says the state is headed to a recount.) With several states still counting ballots, Biden leads Trump by about 4 million votes nationwide as of Saturday morning.
Trump has refused to concede. Shortly after Decision Desk HQ called the election in Biden’s favor Friday morning, Matt Morgan, the Trump 2020 campaign general counsel, released a statement claiming the election is “not over.”
“The false projection of Joe Biden as the winner is based on results in four states that are far from final,” Morgan said in a statement, referring to Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
Trump’s campaign filed legal challenges to contest the election results in three battleground states. Judges in two of those cases — in Michigan and Georgia — tossed out the lawsuits because the campaign failed to provide evidence that laws were broken. A federal judge also denied the campaign’s request to stop counting votes in Philadelphia, but ordered election officials to expand the number of people allowed in the room. The president’s campaign seeks to intervene in another pending Pennsylvania case stemming from mail-in ballots received after Election Day but before Friday’s deadline.
The Nevada Republican Party also asked the Department of Justice to investigate its baseless allegation that thousands of nonresidents cast ballots in the state. A DOJ official is reviewing the claim, USA Today reports.
Biden, meanwhile, projected confidence throughout the week. On Twitter, he said he and his campaign “continue to feel very good” and urged his supporters to stay calm. Friday night as his margins expanded in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Nevada, he and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, spoke to supporters in Wilmington, Del. Biden stopped short of declaring victory but said: “We’re going to win this race.”
A Biden win would be historic: Not only did Biden break the record for the most number of votes cast for any presidential candidate, but if Democrats take the White House, Harris would be the first woman and first person of color to become vice president.
Decision Desk and The Associated Press called the election for Trump days after Trump prematurely — and falsely — declared victory in the election. On Thursday night, as polls showed the gap in vote totals narrowing in Georgia and Pennsylvania, the president spoke in the White House briefing room, saying “it’s amazing how those mail-in ballots are so one-sided” in favor of Democrats. (His statement came after the president spent months discouraging Republican voters from voting by mail, with the exception of Florida, and baselessly sowing doubt about the validity of those votes. Trump won Florida in both 2016 and 2020.)
Trump, who won Texas on Tuesday by roughly 6 points after winning by 9 in 2016, also railed against pre-election polls, saying they amounted to voter suppression — without explanation or proof.
And he doubled down on calls to end vote counting in states where the vote count at the time showed him in the lead while encouraging election officials to continue where he trailed Biden.
After speaking Thursday, Trump left the briefing room without taking questions. His claims followed a similar speech early Wednesday morning. In that speech, held inside the historic East Room of the White House, Trump falsely claimed victory in states in which millions of ballots had not yet been counted. He proceeded to allege without any evidence that Democrats are stealing the election by continuing to count votes already cast and threatened to ask the Supreme Court to intervene.
Shawn Mulcahy and Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff contributed reporting.
“Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump for the presidency” was first published at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/11/07/joe-biden-donald-trump/ by The Texas Tribune. The Texas Tribune is proud to celebrate 10 years of exceptional journalism for an exceptional state.
