Former Vice President Joe Biden will be the 46th President of the United States, according to the Associated Press on Saturday. Biden claimed Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral college votes, leaving him with 273 –– more than the 270 needed to win the presidency, according to Decision Desk. 

Biden has garnered more votes in his favor than in any presidential election in history, breaking records with more than 74 million votes.

In an address Friday night, Biden preached patience to his supporters.

“My fellow Americans, we don’t have a final declaration of victory yet, but the numbers tell a clear and convincing story: We are going to win this race,” Biden said.

Though Election Day was Tuesday, votes in key states including Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia took days longer to be counted. 2020 saw record turnout and a massive increase in the number of absentee ballots cast in 2016, with more than 100 million Americans casting ballots before Nov. 3.

The Associated Press declared that Biden won Michigan’s 16 electoral votes Wednesday night, flipping the state Trump won in 2016. Biden won 2,795,714 votes in Michigan, amounting to 50.5 percent of the vote, beating Trump by about two and a half points.

Through the tight race, the Trump campaign and supporters attempted to cast doubt on election results by spreading misinformation on Twitter and protesting ballot tabulation. Trump’s campaign filed a lawsuit against the Michigan Court of Claims earlier on Wednesday to halt ballot counting in the state, which was dismissed Thursday night.

Trump provided no evidence to support his allegations about threats to election integrity, and in a speech Thursday night, he lied repeatedly about the vote-counting process in Michigan.

Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lavora Barnes defended the security of the state’s voting system in a statement Wednesday after President Donald Trump repeatedly cast doubt on the safety and reliability of mail-in ballots. 

“Yesterday Michigan held an election with record turnout levels,” the statement read. “It takes a considerable amount of time and volunteer hours to count every single vote. … The voters have cast their ballots and they are being meticulously counted and when that process is over, all Michiganders together will find out the results.”

Biden’s campaign has stressed unity through hard times and criticized Trump’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Biden held rallies in Michigan with former President Barack Obama and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer days before the election, blaming Trump for America’s world-topping COVID-19 death rate. 

“Imagine where we would be if we had a president who had worn a mask, instead of mocked it,” Biden said last weekend. “I can tell you this, we wouldn’t have 5 million confirmed cases of COVID in this nation, we wouldn’t have 230,000 deaths … He knew and he hid it from the people, he knew it was so much worse than the flu, he lied to the people. He knew it wasn’t going to disappear.”

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., will be the first woman of color to occupy the vice presidency as a Black and South Asian woman.

Daily Staff Reporter Julia Rubin can be reached at julrubin@umich.edu.

Correction: This story previously said Kamala Harris was the first person of color to become U.S. vice president, which is incorrect. Charles Curtis, vice president to Herbert Hoover, was the first POC vice president as a member of Kaw Nation.

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