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.
Astronaut Mark Kelly is projected to win his Arizona Senate race against incumbent Republican Martha McSally.
Kelly will fill the seat once held by the late Sen. John McCain.
This was Kelly's first run for political office. He is married to former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords who became a champion for gun control after she survived an assassination attempt in 2011.
As Biden takes the lead in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign issued a defiant statement making it clear that the president is not ready to concede.
"This election is not over," Matt Morgan, the Trump 2020 campaign general counsel, said in a statement Friday.
Morgan blasted what he called the "false projection of Joe Biden as the winner," which he said was "based on results in four states that are far from final."
Morgan also claimed that "Georgia is headed for a recount," alleging -- without evidence -- that "we will find ballots improperly harvested."
Meanwhile, Morgan claimed there were "many irregularities in Pennsylvania," but only provided one example of volunteer legal observers not "having meaningful access to vote counting locations."
Morgan also said "there appear to be thousands of individuals who improperly cast mail ballots" in Nevada -- a baseless claim for which the Trump campaign has provided no evidence.
"Biden is relying on these states for his phony claim on the White House," Morgan said, "but once the election is final, President Trump will be re-elected."
-ABC News' Will Steakin
Biden has pulled ahead in Pennsylvania, overtaking Trump's lead.
As of 8:50 a.m. ET Friday, Biden has 3,295,304 votes in the Keystone State -- 49.4% -- while Trump has 3,289,717 -- 49.3% -- with 95% of the expected vote reporting. That's a difference of 5,587 votes.
There are roughly 135,000 ballots left to be counted, according to the latest data from the Pennsylvania Department of State. State law mandates an automatic recount if the final margin is .5% or less of total votes cast.
Trump flipped the blue state red on his path to the White House in 2016. He won Pennsylvania's 20 Electoral College votes, defeating Hillary Clinton there by 44,292 ballots.
Before that year, Pennsylvania had voted for Democratic presidential candidates in six consecutive elections.
-ABC News' Adam Kelsey
Mail inspectors in Pennsylvania turned up more than 1,700 ballots at postal facilities across the state on Thursday, according to U.S. Postal Service data filed in court overnight.
The vast majority of those mail-in ballots were discovered in Democratic strongholds, nearly 1,400 of which are in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Mail inspectors found an additional 266 ballots in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley region.
Those votes, along with any additional ballots received before Friday afternoon, will be sequestered pending a Republican-led effort to have thrown them out.
Meanwhile, mail inspectors found more than 500 ballots in North Carolina following sweeps there.
These twice-daily sweeps were ordered Thursday morning by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., as part of a lawsuit brought by the NAACP against the U.S. Postal Service and its embattled leader, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, claiming that a series of cost-cutting measures imposed at the mail agency over the summer threatened to disenfranchise people of color.
-ABC News' Lucien Bruggeman
