WASHINGTON — Demo­c­rat Joe Biden defeat­ed Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to become the 46th pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States on Sat­ur­day and offered him­self to the nation as a leader who “seeks not to divide, but to uni­fy” a coun­try gripped by a his­toric pan­dem­ic and a con­flu­ence of eco­nom­ic and social turmoil.

“I sought this office to restore the soul of Amer­i­ca,” Biden said in a prime-time vic­to­ry speech not far from his Delaware home, “and to make Amer­i­ca respect­ed around the world again and to unite us here at home.”

Biden crossed the win­ning thresh­old of 270 Elec­toral Col­lege votes with a win in Penn­syl­va­nia. His vic­to­ry came after more than three days of uncer­tain­ty as elec­tion offi­cials sort­ed through a surge of mail-in votes that delayed processing.

Trump refused to con­cede, threat­en­ing fur­ther legal action on bal­lot count­ing. But Biden used his accep­tance speech as an olive branch to those who did not vote for him, telling Trump vot­ers that he under­stood their dis­ap­point­ment but adding, “Let’s give each oth­er a chance.”

“It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric, to low­er the tem­per­a­ture, to see each oth­er again, to lis­ten to each oth­er again, to make progress, we must stop treat­ing our oppo­nents as our ene­my,” he said. “We are not ene­mies. We are Americans.”

Biden, 77, staked his can­di­da­cy less on any dis­tinc­tive polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy than on gal­va­niz­ing a broad coali­tion of vot­ers around the notion that Trump posed an exis­ten­tial threat to Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. The strat­e­gy, as well as an appeal to Amer­i­cans fatigued by Trump’s dis­rup­tions and want­i­ng a return to a more tra­di­tion­al pres­i­den­cy, proved effec­tive and result­ed in piv­otal vic­to­ries in Michi­gan and Wis­con­sin as well as Penn­syl­va­nia, one­time Demo­c­ra­t­ic bas­tions that had flipped to Trump in 2016.

Biden’s vic­to­ry was a repu­di­a­tion of Trump’s divi­sive lead­er­ship and the pres­i­dent-elect now inher­its a deeply polar­ized nation grap­pling with foun­da­tion­al ques­tions of racial jus­tice and eco­nom­ic fair­ness while in the grips of a virus that has killed more than 236,000 Amer­i­cans and reshaped the norms of every­day life.

Kamala Har­ris made his­to­ry as the first Black woman to become vice pres­i­dent, an achieve­ment that comes as the U.S. faces a reck­on­ing on racial jus­tice. The Cal­i­for­nia sen­a­tor, who is also the first per­son of South Asian descent elect­ed to the vice pres­i­den­cy, will become the high­est-rank­ing woman ever to serve in gov­ern­ment, four years after Trump defeat­ed Hillary Clinton.

Har­ris intro­duced Biden at their evening vic­to­ry cel­e­bra­tion as “a pres­i­dent for all Amer­i­cans” who would look to bridge a nation riv­en with par­ti­san­ship and she nod­ded to the his­toric nature of her ascen­sion to the vice presidency.

“Dream with ambi­tion, lead with con­vic­tion and see your­selves in a way that oth­ers may not sim­ply because they’ve nev­er seen it before,” Har­ris told Amer­i­cans. “You chose hope and uni­ty, decen­cy, sci­ence and, yes, truth … you ush­ered in a new day for America.”

After he spoke, the cars at the dri­ve-in ral­ly — a pan­dem­ic cam­paign inven­tion — began to honk their horns and a fire­works dis­play lit up the night sky. Biden was on track to win the nation­al pop­u­lar vote by more than 4 mil­lion, a mar­gin that could grow as bal­lots con­tin­ue to be counted.

Nonethe­less, Trump was not giv­ing up.

Depart­ing from long­stand­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic tra­di­tion and sig­nal­ing a poten­tial­ly tur­bu­lent trans­fer of pow­er, he issued a com­bat­ive state­ment say­ing his cam­paign would take unspec­i­fied legal actions. And he fol­lowed up with a bom­bas­tic, all-caps tweet in which he false­ly declared, “I WON THE ELECTION, GOT 71,000,000 LEGAL VOTES.” Twit­ter imme­di­ate­ly flagged it as misleading.

Trump has point­ed to delays in pro­cess­ing the vote in some states to allege with no evi­dence that there was fraud and to argue that his rival was try­ing to seize pow­er — an extra­or­di­nary charge by a sit­ting pres­i­dent try­ing to sow doubt about a bedrock demo­c­ra­t­ic process.

Trump is the first incum­bent pres­i­dent to lose reelec­tion since Repub­li­can George H.W. Bush in 1992.

He was golf­ing at his Vir­ginia coun­try club when he lost the race. He stayed out for hours, stop­ping to con­grat­u­late a bride as he left, and his motor­cade returned to the White House to a cacoph­o­ny of shouts, taunts and unfriend­ly hand gestures.

In Wilm­ing­ton, Delaware, near the stage that, until Sat­ur­day night, had stood emp­ty since it was erect­ed to cel­e­brate on Elec­tion Night, peo­ple cheered and pumped their fists as the news that the pres­i­den­tial race had been called for the state’s for­mer sen­a­tor arrived on their cellphones.

On the near­by water, two men in a kayak yelled to a cou­ple pad­dling by in the oppo­site direc­tion, “Joe won! They called it!” as peo­ple on the shore whooped and hollered. Har­ris, in work­out gear, was shown on video speak­ing to Biden on the phone, exu­ber­ant­ly telling the pres­i­dent-elect “We did it!”

Across the coun­try, there were par­ties and prayer. In New York City, spon­ta­neous block par­ties broke out. Peo­ple ran out of their build­ings, bang­ing on pots. They danced and high-fived with strangers amid honk­ing horns. Among the loud­est cheers were those for pass­ing U.S. Postal Ser­vice trucks.

Peo­ple streamed into Black Lives Mat­ter Plaza near the White House, near where Trump had ordered the clear­ing of pro­test­ers in June, wav­ing signs and tak­ing cell­phone pic­tures. In Lans­ing, Michi­gan, Trump sup­port­ers and Black Lives Mat­ter demon­stra­tors filled the Capi­tol steps. The lyrics to “Amaz­ing Grace” began to echo through the crowd, and Trump sup­port­ers laid their hands on a counter pro­test­er, and prayed.

Amer­i­cans showed deep inter­est in the pres­i­den­tial race. A record 103 mil­lion vot­ed ear­ly this year, opt­ing to avoid wait­ing in long lines at polling loca­tions dur­ing a pan­dem­ic. With count­ing con­tin­u­ing in some states, Biden had already received more than 75 mil­lion votes, more than any pres­i­den­tial can­di­date before him.

Trump’s refusal to con­cede has no legal impli­ca­tions. But it could add to the incom­ing administration’s chal­lenge of bring­ing the coun­try togeth­er after a bit­ter election.

Through­out the cam­paign, Trump repeat­ed­ly refused to com­mit to a peace­ful trans­fer of pow­er, argu­ing with­out evi­dence that the elec­tion could be marred by fraud. The nation has a long his­to­ry of pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates peace­ful­ly accept­ing the out­come of elec­tions, dat­ing back to 1800, when John Adams con­ced­ed to his rival Thomas Jefferson.

It was Biden’s native Penn­syl­va­nia that put him over the top, the state he invoked through­out the cam­paign to con­nect with work­ing class vot­ers. He also won Neva­da on Sat­ur­day push­ing his total to 290 Elec­toral Col­lege votes.

Biden received con­grat­u­la­tions from dozens of world lead­ers, and his for­mer boss, Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma, salut­ed him in a state­ment, declar­ing the nation was “for­tu­nate that Joe’s got what it takes to be Pres­i­dent and already car­ries him­self that way.”

Repub­li­cans on Capi­tol Hill were giv­ing Trump and his cam­paign space to con­sid­er all their legal options. It was a pre­car­i­ous bal­ance for Trump’s allies as they try to be sup­port­ive of the pres­i­dent — and avoid risk­ing fur­ther fall­out — but face the real­i­ty of the vote count.

On Sat­ur­day, Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell had not yet made any pub­lic state­ments — either con­grat­u­lat­ing Biden or join­ing Trump’s com­plaints. But retir­ing GOP Sen. Lamar Alexan­der of Ten­nessee, who is close to McConnell, said, “After count­ing every valid vote and allow­ing courts to resolve dis­putes, it is impor­tant to respect and prompt­ly accept the result.”

More than 237,000 Amer­i­cans have died dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, near­ly 10 mil­lion have been infect­ed and mil­lions of jobs have been lost. The final days of the cam­paign played out against a surge in con­firmed cas­es in near­ly every state, includ­ing bat­tle­grounds such as Wis­con­sin that swung to Biden.

The pan­dem­ic will soon be Biden’s to tame, and he cam­paigned pledg­ing a big gov­ern­ment response, akin to what Franklin D. Roo­sevelt over­saw with the New Deal dur­ing the Depres­sion of the 1930s. He announced that, as his tran­si­tion kicks into high gear, he would on Mon­day appoint his own coro­n­avirus task force.

But Sen­ate Repub­li­cans fought back sev­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lengers and looked to retain a frag­ile major­i­ty that could serve as a check on some of Biden’s ambitions.

The 2020 cam­paign was a ref­er­en­dum on Trump’s han­dling of the pan­dem­ic, which has shut­tered schools across the nation, dis­rupt­ed busi­ness­es and raised ques­tions about the fea­si­bil­i­ty of fam­i­ly gath­er­ings head­ing into the holidays.

The fast spread of the coro­n­avirus trans­formed polit­i­cal ral­lies from stan­dard cam­paign fare to gath­er­ings that were poten­tial pub­lic health emer­gen­cies. It also con­tributed to an unprece­dent­ed shift to vot­ing ear­ly and by mail and prompt­ed Biden to dra­mat­i­cal­ly scale back his trav­el and events to com­ply with restric­tions. The pres­i­dent defied calls for cau­tion and ulti­mate­ly con­tract­ed the dis­ease himself.

Trump was sad­dled through­out the year by neg­a­tive assess­ments from the pub­lic of his han­dling of the pan­dem­ic. There was anoth­er COVID-19 out­break in the White House this week, which sick­ened his chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Biden also drew a sharp con­trast to Trump through a sum­mer of unrest over the police killings of Black Amer­i­cans includ­ing Bre­on­na Tay­lor in Ken­tucky and George Floyd in Min­neapo­lis. Their deaths sparked the largest racial protest move­ment since the civ­il rights era. Biden respond­ed by acknowl­edg­ing the racism that per­vades Amer­i­can life, while Trump empha­sized his sup­port of police and piv­ot­ed to a “law and order” mes­sage that res­onat­ed with his large­ly white base.

The third pres­i­dent to be impeached, though acquit­ted in the Sen­ate, Trump will leave office hav­ing left an indeli­ble imprint in a tenure defined by the shat­ter­ing of White House norms and a day-to-day whirl­wind of turnover, par­ti­san divide and Twit­ter blasts.

Trump’s team has filed a smat­ter­ing of law­suits in bat­tle­ground states, some of which were imme­di­ate­ly rebuffed by judges. His per­son­al lawyer, Rudy Giu­liani, was hold­ing a news con­fer­ence in Philadel­phia threat­en­ing more legal action when the race was called.

Biden, born in Scran­ton, Penn­syl­va­nia, and raised in Delaware, was one of the youngest can­di­dates ever elect­ed to the Sen­ate. Before he took office, his wife and daugh­ter were killed, and his two sons bad­ly injured in a 1972 car crash.

Com­mut­ing every night on a train from Wash­ing­ton back to Wilm­ing­ton, Biden fash­ioned an every­man polit­i­cal per­sona to go along with pow­er­ful Sen­ate posi­tions, includ­ing chair­man of the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry and For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tees. Some aspects of his record drew crit­i­cal scruti­ny from fel­low Democ­rats, includ­ing his sup­port for the 1994 crime bill, his vote for the 2003 Iraq War and his man­age­ment of the Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court hearings.

Biden’s 1988 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign was done in by pla­gia­rism alle­ga­tions, and his next bid in 2008 end­ed qui­et­ly. But lat­er that year, he was tapped to be Barack Obama’s run­ning mate and he became an influ­en­tial vice pres­i­dent, steer­ing the administration’s out­reach to both Capi­tol Hill and Iraq.

While his rep­u­ta­tion was bur­nished by his time in office and his deep friend­ship with Oba­ma, Biden stood aside for Clin­ton and opt­ed not to run in 2016 after his adult son Beau died of brain can­cer the year before.

Trump’s tenure pushed Biden to make one more run as he declared that “the very soul of the nation is at stake.”

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Asso­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Will Weis­sert in Wilm­ing­ton, Delaware and Jill Colvin and Lisa Mas­caro in Wash­ing­ton con­tributed to this report.