WASHINGTON — Demo­c­rat Joe Biden defeat­ed Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to become the 46th pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States on Sat­ur­day, posi­tion­ing him­self to lead a nation gripped by his­toric pan­dem­ic and a con­flu­ence of eco­nom­ic and social turmoil.

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

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 proved effec­tive, result­ing in piv­otal vic­to­ries in Michi­gan and Wis­con­sin as well as Penn­syl­va­nia, one­time Demo­c­ra­t­ic bas­tions that had flipped to Trump in 2016.

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.

Trump seized on delays in pro­cess­ing the vote in some states to false­ly allege vot­er fraud and 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.

As the vote count played out, Biden tried to ease ten­sions and project an image of pres­i­den­tial lead­er­ship, hit­ting notes of uni­ty that were seem­ing­ly aimed at cool­ing the tem­per­a­ture of a heat­ed, divid­ed nation.

“We have to remem­ber the pur­pose of our pol­i­tics isn’t total unre­lent­ing, unend­ing war­fare,” Biden said Fri­day night in Delaware. “No, the pur­pose of our pol­i­tics, the work of our nation, isn’t to fan the flames of con­flict, but to solve prob­lems, to guar­an­tee jus­tice, to give every­body a fair shot.”

Kamala Har­ris also 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.

Trump is the first incum­bent pres­i­dent to lose reelec­tion since Repub­li­can George H.W. Bush in 1992. It was unclear whether Trump would pub­licly concede.

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 74 mil­lion votes, more than any pres­i­den­tial can­di­date before him.

More than 236,000 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 the back­drop of 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. But Sen­ate Repub­li­cans fought back sev­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lengers and looked to retain a frag­ile major­i­ty that could serve as a check on such Biden ambition.

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. Trump defied calls for cau­tion and ulti­mate­ly con­tract­ed the dis­ease him­self. He was sad­dled through­out the year by neg­a­tive assess­ments from the pub­lic of his han­dling of the pandemic.

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 president’s most ardent back­ers nev­er wavered and may remain loy­al to him and his sup­port­ers in Con­gress after Trump has depart­ed the White House.

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 the ever-present threat via his Twit­ter account.

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.”

Weis­sert report­ed from Wilm­ing­ton, Delaware. Asso­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Colleen Long, Bri­an Slodysko and Alexan­dra Jaffe con­tributed to this report.