"biden"

Biden defeated incumbent Republican US President Donald Trump in the closely-fought presidential election, according to the American media.

Biden, 77, and Harris, 56, would be sworn in as the president and vice president of the United States on January 20, 2021.

Harris vowed to fight to "root out systematic racism" but, like Biden, made a broad appeal to unity, saying that Americans "have elected a president who represents the best in us."

Promising "not to divide but unify," Biden reached out directly to Trump supporters, declaring "they're not our enemies, they're Americans."

The November 3 election saw a record voter turnout of 66.9 per cent, which is the highest turnout rate since 1900. The 1900 election had recorded 73.7 per cent voter turnout.

According to Trump, Democrats were using "illegal votes" to "steal the election from us." "If you count the legal votes, I easily win," he claimed.

On November 4, the US formally withdrew from the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change, a decision originally announced three years ago.

Biden surpassed the popular vote record of 69,498,516 set by Obama in 2008.

US media organisations called Michigan for Biden where he had a lead of some 120,000 votes.

"We did win this election," Trump said in an extraordinary speech from the ceremonial East Room of the White House.

When last reports came in Biden had received 237 electoral college votes as against 213 of incumbent President Donald Trump of the Republican Party.

With a record more than 100 million Americans having voted ahead of Election Day due to the Covid-19 pandemic, definitive final results could easily take hours or even days to be tabulated.

Trump predicted that a red wave would re-elect him to the White House, while his Democratic challenger Biden is confident of a “big win”

With a huge expansion in mail-in voting to safeguard against the Covid-19 pandemic, nearly 100 million people have already cast ballots.

The president has also told people around him that he is frustrated with Wray over the FBI director's public statements on issues like voting fraud, Russian election interference and antifa.

Underscoring the high stakes -- and the disruptive impact of the coronavirus pandemic -- a record 92 million early votes have already been cast.

Biden blasted the president, calling his administration's response to the pandemic "an insult to every single person suffering from Covid-19 and every family who's lost a loved one."

The coronavirus dominated the opening minutes of the Trump-Biden face-off with President Trump terming the contagion a “worldwide problem”.

Trump, scrambling to make up lost ground, is on a furious multi-state barnstorming tour.

Trump likes to say that his packed rallies are evidence of strength not reflected in "fake" election polls.