Joe Biden will become the 46th president of the United States, CNN projects, after a victory in the state where he was born put him over the 270 electoral votes needed to win.
With Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes, Biden now has a total of 273 electoral votes.
The Associated Press presently reports 290 electoral college votes for Biden and 214 for Trump.
Before becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, Biden served as vice president under former President Barack Obama. He is also Delaware’s longest-serving senator.
Throughout his campaign, Biden has argued that the “soul of the nation” is at stake, and has promised that he would seek to heal a country fractured by Trump’s presidency.
It’s “crunch time” in Pennsylvania, CNN’s John King says.
Joe Biden leads by more than 28,000 in the Keystone State, with 3,336,887 votes to President Trump’s 3,308,054.
“When you’re going that deep into the decimal points, that tells you you have a very close race. … It was a heavyweight fight four years ago — Donald Trump won it by 44,000 votes — it is a heavyweight fight this time as Joe Biden moves in,” King said.
As ballot numbers from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are expected to be released today, “the question is can Joe Biden build up a little more to that lead to get to the point where the math tells you it is virtually impossible or impossible for the President to catch up,” King explained.
Biden currently holds about 81% of the vote in Philadelphia. “This is where a Democrat has to have the big building block in the city of Philadelphia. But it’s not just there. It’s the suburbs around Philadelphia,” King said.
King noted that the numbers show that Biden did not flip a substantial amount of Trump voters in the state, including near his birthplace of Scranton.
“So you’re not blowing it out, it’s not a game-changing election, but you move the dial a little bit in a close state, that’s what makes the difference,” he said.
(CNN)
