Biden declines to declare victory but says 'we believe we will be the winners'
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WILMINGTON, Del. — With the election still too close to call, former Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday declined to declare victory but said “we believe we will be the winners.”
“My fellow Americans, yesterday once again proved democracy is the heartbeat of this nation,” said Biden, who currently has an advantage in the Electoral College but is still short of the 270 votes there to win the presidency.
“I’m not here to declare that we’ve won, but I am here to report, when the count is finished, we believe we will be the winners.”
Biden also made an appeal to unity, saying that to “make progress we have to stop treating our opponents as enemies. We are not enemies. What brings us together as Americans is so much stronger than anything that can tear us apart. So let me be clear: I am campaigning as a Democrat, but I will govern as an American president.”
“My friends, I’m confident we’ll emerge victorious, but this will not be my victory alone or our victory alone.”
Biden’s speech was a far cry from President Trump’s election night speech, in which he prematurely declared victory and called for “all voting to stop.”
Biden, meanwhile, insisted that “every vote must be counted. No one’s going to take our democracy away from us, not now, not ever.”
Ballot counting in key swing states may drag on to the end of the week. The Biden campaign, however, believes its path to 270 electoral votes is inevitable given that mail-in ballots that are still being counted appear to lean overwhelmingly Democratic.
As of Wednesday morning, 1.4 million votes had yet to be counted in Pennsylvania, a state where both campaigns made last-minute pushes ahead of Election Day.
“Joe Biden is on track to win this election, and he will be the next president of the United States,” said campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon during a live-streamed briefing Wednesday morning.
Despite the Associated Press calling Wisconsin for Biden on Wednesday afternoon, the Trump campaign vowed that it would be demanding a recount based on “irregularities in several Wisconsin counties.” At the time the campaign issued that statement, Biden held a slim lead.
“We are going to win Wisconsin, recount or no recount,” Dillon said.
The Biden campaign also sees potential wins in Georgia and North Carolina, two nail-biters, though Dillon believes that the latter leans more toward Trump. Georgia remains a toss-up.
Tuesday was nothing like the Biden blowout expected by pollsters and many Democrats. Despite record-setting late-in-the-game fundraising hauls, Democrats did not appear to win back the Senate and saw their House majority shrink.
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