Biden solidifies U.S. victory over Trump, 306-232 electoral votes

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REHOBOTH BEACH, Del./WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Joe Biden solidified his victory over President Donald Trump on Friday after the state of Georgia went his way, leaving Trump little hope of reversing the outcome through legal challenges and recounts.

Edison Research, which made the call, also projected that North Carolina, the only other battleground state with an outstanding vote count, would go to Trump, finalizing the electoral vote tally at 306 for Biden to 232 for Trump.

The numbers gave Biden, a Democrat, a resounding defeat over Trump in the Electoral College, equal to the 306 votes Trump, a Republican, won to defeat Hillary Clinton, a 2016 victory that Trump called a “landslide.”

While Trump had yet to concede, Biden officials reiterated they were moving ahead with transition efforts regardless.

Although the national popular vote does not determine the election outcome, Biden was ahead by more than 5.3 million votes, or 3.4 percentage points. His share of the popular vote, at 50.8%, was slightly higher than Ronald Reagan’s share of the vote in 1980 when he defeated Jimmy Carter.

Trump, a Republican, has claimed without evidence that he was cheated by widespread election fraud and has refused to concede. State election officials report no serious irregularities, and several of his legal challenges have failed in court.

To win a second term, Trump would need to overturn Biden’s lead in at least three states, but he has so far failed to produce evidence that he could do so in any of them. States face a Dec. 8 “safe harbor” deadline to certify their elections and choose electors for the Electoral College, which will officially select the new president on Dec. 14.

A Michigan state court rejected on Friday a request by Trump to block the certification of votes in Detroit, which went heavily in favor of Biden. [L1N2HZ23E] And lawyers for Trump’s campaign dropped a lawsuit in Arizona after the final vote count rendered it moot.

Federal election security officials have found no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, “or was in any way compromised,” two security groups said in a statement released on Thursday by the lead U.S. cybersecurity agency.

Trump was set on Friday afternoon to make his first public remarks since Biden was projected as the election’s winner on Nov. 7. The White House said he would address the nation on the efforts by the government and drugmakers to develop effective treatments for the coronavirus pandemic.

TRANSITION TALK

Biden officials said on Friday they would press forward with the transition, identifying legislative priorities, reviewing federal agency policies and preparing to fill thousands of jobs in the new administration.

“We’re charging ahead with the transition,” Jen Psaki, a senior adviser to Biden’s transition team, said on a conference call on Friday, while stressing that Biden still needs “real-time information” from the Trump administration to deal with the resurgent pandemic and national security threats.

Psaki urged Trump’s White House to allow Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to receive daily intelligence briefings on potential threats around the world.

“With every day that passes on, it becomes more concerning that our national security team and the president-elect and the vice president-elect don’t have access to those threat assessments, intelligence briefings, real-time information about our engagements around the world,” Psaki said. “Because, you know, you don’t know what you don’t know.”

Biden will be briefed by his own group of national-security experts next week, she said. He met with transition advisers again on Friday at his Delaware beach house where he is mapping out his approach to the pandemic and prepares to name his top appointees, including Cabinet members.

Trump’s refusal to accept defeat has stalled the official transition. The federal agency that releases funding to an incoming president-elect, the General Services Administration, has yet to recognize Biden’s victory, denying him access to federal office space and resources.

Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera, a Trump confidant, said he had spoken to the president by phone on Friday and that Trump had given him the impression that he would follow the U.S. Constitution and surrender his office after every vote was counted.

“He told me he’s a realist. He told me he would do the right thing,” Rivera said in an interview with Fox. “I got no impression that he was plotting the overthrow of the elected government. He just wants a fair fight.”

(Reporting by Simon Lewis in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware and Steve Holland in Washington. Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, Susan Heavey and Trevor Hunnicutt.; Writing by James Oliphant; Editing by Frances Kerry, Alistair Bell and Howard Goller)