Media call election for Biden

With tens of thousands of outstanding mail-in ballots waiting to be counted, Joe Biden held a victory rally in Wilmington, Del., on Saturday night. After news outlets declared him the winner of Pennsylvania, Nevada, and the Electoral College vote, he claimed the title of president-elect in a speech in which he referenced Ecclesiastes 3 and proclaimed a national “time to heal.”

Is it really over? Biden led the presidential race in Pennsylvania by 37,355 votes on Saturday night. Mailed ballots have overwhelmingly favored the former vice president in the state, so most major news outlets assumed Biden’s lead would widen as the count finished, giving him the state’s 20 Electoral College votes and enough to cross the 270-vote threshold to win the presidency. As of Saturday, Biden’s margin in Pennsylvania hovered at .55 percent—just above the .5 percent that would trigger an automatic recount under state law. He also pulled ahead in Nevada by 27,530 votes. Recounts, lawsuits, or both loom in Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—and North Carolina still has not announced its official results. “The simple fact is this election is far from over,” Trump said in a statement on Saturday.

Dig deeper: Read Harvest Prude’s report in The Stew about how Biden underperformed with Latino voters.