Joe Biden wins the presidential election in the United States
The Democratic candidate Joe Biden won the presidential elections in the United States by surpassing the barrier of 270 electoral votes, according to BBC projections.
Biden will be the country's president in January pending the outcome of the legal challenges to the count presented by the Donald Trump campaign in several states.
Biden managed to impose himself on President Trump in the state of Pennsylvania, obtaining at the moment 273 electoral votes, out of a total of 538. Trump remains at 214.
The Trump campaign has already said that it will not acknowledge its defeat and Biden's victory.
Trump is the first president since the 1990s not to repeat a term.
Last Tuesday's elections saw the highest turnout in a US presidential election since 1900.
Biden has so far garnered more than 73 million votes, a historic record. Trump totals nearly 70 million, the second-best number in history.
Several states in which there is no clear projection have yet to be defined: Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia.
"I am honored by the trust the American people have placed in me and Vice President-elect (Kamala) Harris," Biden said in a statement.
Harris will be the first woman to be vice president.
"With the campaign now over, it is time to put the anger and the harshest rhetoric behind us and come together as a country," asked Biden, 77.
"It is time for the United States to come together and heal its wounds."
World leaders such as the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, or the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, have already congratulated Biden on his victory.
And scenes of celebration were seen in various cities in the United States.
"The election is not over"
President Trump had declared himself the winner of the election early Tuesday when the count had not finished. Since then, he has denounced irregularities in a count that little by little took away the initial advantage he had in key states.
He has not yet presented any evidence of fraud, but his campaign has initiated legal litigation in several states.
"The election is far from over," Trump said in a statement. "I won the election by a long shot!" He expressed on twitter.
"We all know why Joe Biden is rushing to declare himself the winner and why his allies in the media are trying to help him: they do not want the truth to be known," continues in the statement published after the projection of his rival's victory.
In the middle of the pandemic
The elections in the US have been held amid a rebound in the coronavirus crisis, with infections and deaths on the rise. Trump insists that Biden would force new quarantines, which would lead to a new economic halt.
Biden accused the president of failing to impose enough measures to control the pandemic in the hardest-hit country with more than 230,000 deaths.
Biden now returns to the White House, where he served for eight years as Vice President of Barack Obama (2009-2017).
"A historic and decisive triumph," said the former president of his friend's victory.
On January 20, 2021, Biden will be inaugurated president, when he is already 78 years old, which will make him the oldest president in history, surpassing the record that Trump had, who arrived at the White House with 70.
What happens now?
The normal thing is that the losing candidate concedes defeat, but Trump is not going to do it, as he has already made clear.
"The false projection that Joe Biden is the winner is based on results in four states that are far from final," the president's campaign said in a statement about the results in Pennsylvania, the state that gave Biden the final victory.
A recount will be done in Georgia, where the margins are very tight, and Trump wants the same in Wisconsin. He has already promised to take the case to the Supreme Court for an alleged fraud of which there is no evidence.
State courts are the first instance of the legal battle. The judges can accept the requests and order a recount. Above them are the Supreme Courts of each state.
Meanwhile, the last votes in various states continue to be counted. Results are never official until final certification that occurs in each state weeks after the election.
The 538 electors who officially define the winner meet in the capital of each state on December 14.
Voters generally reflect the popular vote decision, but in some states this is not a formal requirement.
The new president is sworn in on January 20, 2021 after a transition period.
After that ceremony on the steps of Congress, the new president addresses the White House and begins his four-year term.
An outcome according to the campaign
Analysis by Anthony Zurcher, BBC US correspondent.
Joe Biden's projected victory after four days of counting is the outcome of an extraordinary campaign carried out during a devastating pandemic, in the midst of great social unrest and against one of the least conventional presidents in history.
In his third bid for the presidency, Biden dodged political hurdles and achieved a victory that may be narrow in the Electoral College but in which he is expected to garner four million more votes than his rival.
With his projected victory, Biden is the oldest man to be elected to the White House. And he is accompanied by the first female vice president whose multi-ethnic heritage is also a milestone.
Biden can begin to pose the difficult task of transition. He will have less than three months to form a cabinet, determine his priorities, and prepare to govern a country that faces numerous crises and is deeply divided.
Biden has dreamed of reaching the White House as president for his 50 years in the country's political life. With the award come challenges.
On the third ...
Biden made two attempts to be president before now.
In 1988 he withdrew from the race after admitting to having plagiarized a speech.
In 2008 he tried again but withdrew before the triumph of Barack Obama, which made him his running mate.
His eight years as vice president allowed him to boast of much of the popular Obama legacy, including the extended health care system known as Obamacare.
The six-time senator from Delaware won his seat in Congress for the first time in 1972.
He was a staunch defender of the 1994 crime law that many on the left say led to harsh sentences and mass incarceration.
Most Americans know that Biden's life has been marked by personal tragedies.
In 1972 he lost his first wife, Neilia, and his daughter Naomi in a traffic accident.
He was sworn in for his first Senate term from the hospital room where his other two sons, Beau and Hunter, were recovering from the same accident.
In 2015, Beau died of cancer at age 46, and Biden said that was instrumental in his decision not to run for president in 2016.
