Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., 77, was elected Saturday as the 46th president of the United States, defeating President Donald Trump in an election that played out against the backdrop of a pandemic, its economic fallout and a national reckoning on racism. He becomes the oldest president-elect and brings with him a history-making vice-president-elect in Kamala Harris, the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to serve in the nation’s second-highest office.
The projected results would mean that Kamala Harris, Biden’s running mate, would become the country’s first-ever female vice president as well as the first Black vice president.
His victory, though, did not come with the usual trappings. He did not bring along a clear Democratic Senate majority, and several Democratic House candidates lost, raising the prospect of a closely divided government likely to test his promise of bipartisanship. State legislatures also did not flip even as Biden was winning the popular vote by about 5 percentage points.
