Joe Biden is set to become the 46th president of the United States, capping a tumultuous and tension-filled campaign during a historic pandemic against President Donald Trump. ABC News characterized Joe Biden as the apparent winner of his home state of Pennsylvania, putting him over the 270 vote threshold needed to capture the presidency.
The hard-fought battle against the president was set against the backdrop of racial unrest and the coronavirus pandemic and bitter divisions among the electorate.
Trump had falsely declared on election night, when he held a lead in several key states, that he won the contest and alleged without evidence, after the count started to swing the other way, that the election was being stolen from him and that fraud had been committed.
Painting the election as a "battle for the soul of the nation," Biden won on a message of unity over division, compassion over anger, and reality over what he called Trump's "wishful thinking" as the coronavirus pandemic cast a heavy shadow over the campaign.
"What he wants to demonstrate is that all these people are somehow engaged in a massive fraud," Moran said. "And to do that you need real evidence. This is not a reality TV show. This is an American election. You need evidence to back up those kinds of charges."
In his remarks, the president alleged widespread voter fraud without evidence and cast doubt on the votes that were still being counted.
Moran also discussed ballots that are still being counted, noting that most of the vote numbers we see now are votes that were cast on or before Election Day.
"We're talking about a reality that's in the past, that the counters are uncovering, like dirt off a fossil," he said. "The fossil is already there. They're scraping the dirt off it."
Nov 05, 2020, 7:13 PM EST
Trump again says he wins 'easily' with 'legal votes' counted
Trump Thursday evening falsely declared victory again, claiming, "If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us."
Trump has 214 electoral votes while Biden has 253. Biden's count includes Wisconsin, where ABC News is characterizing him as the apparent winner because the vote is very close and has not yet been certified.
Trump baselessly made claims of "historic election interference from big media, big money, and big tech."
President Donald Trump speaks in the Brady Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, Nov. 5, 2020.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
The president also slammed mail-in voting, calling it "a corrupt system."
"It's really destroyed our system," Trump said. "They want to find out how many votes they need and then they seem to be able to find them. They wait and wait and then they find them and you see that on election night."
More Democrats have voted by mail. Many mail-in ballots are still being counted so they are added to totals after election night.
"It's amazing how those mail-in ballots are so one-sided," Trump said.
"They are trying to steal an election. They are trying to rig an election and we can't let that happen," Trump added.
President Donald Trump speaks in the Brady Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, Nov. 5, 2020.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
His repeated claims of widespread voter fraud are unsubstantiated, experts have said.
Trump baselessly blamed "the corrupt Democrat machine." He called out Detroit and Philadelphia, calling them "two of the most corrupt political places anywhere in our country," and said they "cannot be responsible for engineering the outcome of a presidential race, a very important presidential race."
"We think we will win the election very easily," Trump said. "We think there's going to be a lot of litigation because we have so much evidence, so much proof and it's going to end up perhaps at the highest court in the land."
Trump spoke for 17 minutes and did not take any questions.
Nov 05, 2020, 6:14 PM EST
Trump's lead in Georgia slips under 10,000 votes
Trump's lead is narrowing in Georgia. The president is now ahead by only 9,426 votes as more results are reported from Fulton County, home to most of Atlanta.
An election supervisor answer questions from an election worker as vote counting in the general election continues at State Farm Arena on Nov. 5, 2020, in Atlanta.
Brynn Anderson/AP
Trump now has 49.5% or 2,439,925 votes, while Biden has 49.3% or 2,430,499 votes.
Still not reported are roughly 17,000 ballots from Chatham County, which is home to the Democratic-leaning city of Savannah.
-ABC News' Quinn Scanlan
Nov 05, 2020, 6:01 PM EST
Vote count ongoing in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, providing an election update Thursday evening, told reporters they're coming in the "homestretch" but that ballot counting will continue into the evening.
"Hundreds of thousands of ballots have been counted so far today, and we're in very good shape, but there's still some to count," she said. "Stay tuned."
A person holds a sign referring to the number of electoral votes needed to win the presidency while demonstrating outside the Pennsylvania Convention Center where votes are being counted, Nov. 5, 2020, in Philadelphia, following Tuesday's election.
Rebecca Blackwell/AP
Boockvar said the majority of in-person votes have been counted but they're still in the process of counting mail-in and absentee ballots, as Pennsylvania is among the handful of states that did not begin processing absentee ballots until Election Day morning. She expected an "overwhelming majority" will be counted by Friday.
"But then there's still going to be provisional ballots, the military and overseas ballots and so forth. So the closer the race is, the longer it takes," she said, adding "it's not quite clear yet who the winner is."
