Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was elected the 46th president of the United States on Saturday after defeating and making Donald J. Trump a one-term president of the United States.
The president-elect after his victory promised to restore political normalcy and a spirit of national unity to confront raging health and economic crises.
Mr Biden’s victory also provided a history-making moment for his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris of California, who will become the first woman to serve as vice president of the United States.
Harris, also a former California attorney general will make history as the first Black woman to enter the White House in either of the two top jobs. At 56, she is seen as a leading contender to succeed Biden and try to become the first female US president.
With his triumph, Mr. Biden, who turns 78 later this month, fulfilled his decades-long ambition in his third bid for the White House, becoming the oldest person elected president.
A pillar of Washington who was first elected amid the Watergate scandal, and who prefers political consensus over combat, Mr. Biden will lead a nation and a Democratic Party that have become far more ideological since his arrival in the capital in 1973.
Mr Biden secured his win by recapturing the Midwestern states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — traditional Democratic territory that Trump had flipped in 2016 with his powerful appeal to white, working class voters.
With Pennsylvania in the bag, Mr Biden has now accumulated 273 out of 538 Electoral College votes, clearing the bar of 270, thereby making it impossible for Trump to get a second term even if he were to win the remaining undeclared states.
Mr Biden was also ahead in Arizona, Nevada and in a near dead heat in Georgia — a southern state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton in 1992 and is now headed for a recount.
