Biden wins Georgia, Trump takes North Carolina

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. narrowly defeated President Trump in Georgia, and Mr. Trump won North Carolina, as the two final states were called on Friday, a week and a half after Election Day. The Trump campaign lost a legal challenge to the election results in Michigan and withdrew one in Arizona.

Biden now has 306 electoral votes and Mr. Trump has 232. Biden became president-elect when he won Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes on Saturday, passing the required 270-vote threshold.

The victory for Biden in Georgia — a once reliably Republican state whose politics have shifted to the left — means that he flipped five states Trump won in 2016. The others were Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Mr. Trump did not flip any state that Hillary Clinton won in 2016.

Biden won 25 states and the District of Columbia, home to a combined 57 per cent of the country’s population. Trump won the other 25 states. With more than 78 million votes nationwide, Biden also beat Trump in the popular vote by more than 5.3 million votes.

Meanwhile, President Trump took no questions as he addressed the nation yesterday for the first time since President-elect Joe Biden was declared the winner on Saturday, offering an update on vaccine progress. 

In his first public remarks in eight days, the president seemed inadvertent to acknowledge that his White House tenure could be coming to an end.

“This administration will not be going to a lockdown — hopefully…whatever happens in the future — who knows which administration will be — I guess time will tell. But I can tell you this administration will not go to a lockdown,” he said.