Joe Biden has been elected the 46th US president, signalling a return to political norms in America after four years of raucous populism and administrative turmoil under Donald Trump.
Thousands of Americans took to the streets, cheering, banging pots and pans and honking car horns to celebrate the outcome after four anxious days of waiting for votes to be counted. Trump was at his golf course in Virginia when the result was announced and refused to concede.
Biden claimed the victory in the state where he was born, Pennsylvania, whose 20 electoral college votes put him over the threshold of 270. He had more than 74m votes in total, higher than any other presidential candidate in history.
The former senator and vice-president said he was “honored and humbled” by the people’s verdict. “With the campaign over, it’s time to put the anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation,” he said in a statement. “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.”
Biden was due to address the nation from Wilmington, Delaware, on Saturday evening.
From Atlanta to New York, from Philadelphia to Washington, there were spontaneous explosions of joy. A crowd gathered on Black Lives Matter Plaza outside the White House, cheering and holding balloons depicting Trump’s face and hair. One person brandished a sign that, quoting Trump on his reality TV show The Apprentice, proclaimed: “You’re fired!”
In Times Square, New York, people danced, whooped and punched the air at the realisation Trump would be consigned to the history books as an impeached one-term president.
Source: Elections - theguardian.com
