The president-elect emphasized how he would handle the pandemic response.
Joe Biden is set to become the 46th president of the United States, capping a tumultuous and tension-filled campaign during a historic pandemic against President Donald Trump. ABC News characterized Joe Biden as the apparent winner of his home state of Pennsylvania, putting him over the 270 vote threshold needed to capture the presidency.
The hard-fought battle against the president was set against the backdrop of racial unrest and the coronavirus pandemic and bitter divisions among the electorate.
Trump had falsely declared on election night, when he held a lead in several key states, that he won the contest and alleged without evidence, after the count started to swing the other way, that the election was being stolen from him and that fraud had been committed.
Painting the election as a "battle for the soul of the nation," Biden won on a message of unity over division, compassion over anger, and reality over what he called Trump's "wishful thinking" as the coronavirus pandemic cast a heavy shadow over the campaign.
The 2020 election has shattered voting records with votes totaling 147 million and counting, surpassing the 138 million who voted in 2016.
ABC News projects Biden will win Hawaii's four electoral votes, bringing his standing in the Electoral College to 225. Trump's count stands at 213.
A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.
The election that changed how Americans vote also changed the speed with which some of their votes are counted, leaving the country hanging for an official outcome even as Biden improved on Hillary Clinton’s performance nationally in a range of voting groups.
An unprecedented 64% of voters cast their ballots early, including 34% by mail -- with those votes still being counted in several key states. Winners weren’t projected by the wee hours in states including Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Nevertheless, the national exit poll supported some broad conclusions. One was the still-growing share of racial and ethnic minorities in the electorate -- 35%, up from 30% in 2016 and from 10% when the first exit poll was produced in 1976. The diversity train rolled on.
Trump improved in some gauges. Less than half of voters -- 44% -- said he has the temperament to serve effectively as president, but that figure was up from 35% four years ago. And while 53% saw him unfavorably, that figure was down from 59% in 2016.
At the same time, the exit poll found Biden winning independents -- often swing voters in national elections -- by 14 percentage points, 54-40%. Trump won them by 6 points in 2016. Biden won moderates by 31 points in exit poll results, 64-33%. Hillary Clinton won them by 13 points.
Biden also won first-time voters by 34 points, compared to Clinton's 20 points. Voters who have served in the military backed Trump by 7 points, down from his 24-point margin in this group in 2016. Biden was +3 points in the suburbs versus Trump’s +4 four years ago. The gender gap narrowed considerably, but largely because Trump won men by 1 point compared with 11 points four years ago.
Trump’s approval rating -- 47-51% approve-disapprove -- was underwater, but mildly so. The only two presidents with negative approval ratings at the time of their second election both lost -- Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush -- but they had much lower approval than Trump.
Trump and Biden fought essentially to a standstill on who is better able to handle the economy, while Biden led -- 51-43%-- as better to handle the coronavirus pandemic. And voters by about the same margin -- 51-42% -- sided with Biden on stopping the spread of the virus as a priority, rather than with Trump on rebuilding the economy as a priority.
That’s even though 55% said the pandemic had caused them financial hardship; those who said so supported Biden by 30 points.
The public was divided evenly on whether the U.S. response to the pandemic has gone well or badly, with big state-to-state differences. At the same time, twice as many said it has gone very badly -- 34% -- as very well -- 17%.
In a much larger disconnect for Trump, voters by 67-30% saw wearing a face mask as a public health responsibility rather than a personal choice, with sharp vote differences between the two groups.
Among other results from the national exit poll, 66% of voters called global warming a serious problem; 57% expressed a favorable opinion of the Black Lives Matter movement; 52% said the Supreme Court should uphold Obamacare, compared with 43% who said it should be overturned; and 51% said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, a low in exit polls back to 1992.
Lastly, two results were heartening, perhaps, across partisan lines: 93% said their state makes it somewhat or very easy to vote, and 87% were somewhat or very confident that their vote would be counted fairly. Eventually.
-ABC News' Allison De Jong, Christine Filer, Gary Langer, Patrick Moynihan, Sofi Sinozich and Steven Sparks
Biden's campaign manager, Jen O'Malley Dillon, said Trump's call to shut down vote counting was "outrageous, unprecedented, and incorrect."
"It was outrageous because it is a naked effort to take away the democratic rights of American citizens," Dillon said in a statement early Wednesday morning.
"It was unprecedented because never before in our history has a president of the United States sought to strip Americans of their voice in a national election," she continued. "Having encouraged Republican efforts in multiple states to prevent the legal counting of these ballots before Election Day, now Donald Trump is saying these ballots can’t be counted after Election Day either."
"And it was incorrect because it will not happen," she added. "The counting will not stop. It will continue until every duly cast vote is counted. Because that is what our laws -- the laws that protect every Americans' constitutional right to vote -- require."
ABC News projects Republican Sen. Steve Daines will win reelection in Montana against the Democratic challenger, Gov. Steve Bullock.
Bullock, a red state Democratic governor, was reportedly recruited by national Democrats in Washington, including former President Barack Obama, to run for the Senate seat after his failed presidential bid.
It was the sixth most expensive Senate race in a cycle of ultra-expensive races, coming in at $172,578,715 spent, as Democrats pursued a path to their hopeful Senate majority through Montana.
-ABC News' Meg Cunningham
