Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden crosses the 270 votes necessary to win the electoral election.
After a long, brutal campaign race and a long, brutal vote count, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. is projected to have won the 2020 election after crossing the threshold of 270 electoral votes that are needed to win the presidency.
The state of Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes were projected Saturday to go Biden, bringing the country's 47th vice president's estimated total to 273 electoral votes and into the victor's spot. CBS News projects that Biden, 77, is poised to become the nation's next president.
"America, I’m honored that you have chosen me to lead our great country," Biden said in a statement. "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."
His statement was shared on Twitter along with a video showing Americans from all walks of life as Ray Charles' rendition of "America the Beautiful" played.
His running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, shared the video as well and wrote: "This election is about so much more than @JoeBiden or me. It’s about the soul of America and our willingness to fight for it. We have a lot of work ahead of us. Let’s get started."
Harris will be the first female, first Black and first South Asian Vice President-Elect in United States history.
Trump also released a statement after the election was called in Biden's favor, baselessly accusing his opponent and the media of conspiring to frame him as the winner and vowing on Monday to "start prosecuting" their "case in court to ensure election laws are fully upheld and the rightful winner is seated."
Election Day came and went on Nov. 3 with no clear winner. Then came four days of counting, with President Donald Trump falsely asserting widespread voter fraud robbed him of votes. Biden, on the other hand, called for calm and patience as a deeply divided nation awaited word as poll workers laboriously counted an avalanche of ballots mailed in by Americans fearing contraction of the deadly coronavirus.
The president filed lawsuit after lawsuit in battleground states including Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Nevada, trying to stop counting of mailed ballots, which were not going his way.
But election officials, and their bleary-eyed poll workers, vowed to count on.
Biden's campaign of unifying America, and his choice of running mate Kamala Harris, a former California attorney general and the first woman of color to become vice president, were seen by Democrats as the necessary salve to a nation bruised by a pandemic and widespread protests against racism and police brutality.
Biden, who served in the White House under President Barack Obama, was a Democratic senator representing Delaware from 1973 to 2009. He also chaired the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
His life was marred by tragedy. First with the death of his young wife and 1-year-old daughter in a 1972 car accident. Sons Beau and Hunter were injured, but recovered. Then in 2015, Beau Biden, an Iraq war veteran and former attorney general of Delaware, died of brain cancer.
It was a loss that nearly robbed him of the will to live, Joe Biden has said.
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