‘These are tears of joy’: Americans honk horns, dance in the streets as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris claim victory in a deeply divided nation

Joe Biden won key several battleground states like Michigan and Wisconsin.
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In New York, car horns and shouts of joy permeated the air as news spread that Democratic nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden had won the presidency Saturday morning and Kamala Harris would be his vice president, becoming the nation’s first woman of color in that role. The same cacophony erupted in Washington, D.C.’s Chinatown, just a few blocks from the White House.
In the traditionally liberal stronghold of Boulder, Colorado, Marisole Bolanos, 38, listened as a wave of cheers spread among the crowd at a farmers market, powered by smartphone alerts. Passing cars honked their horns and people whooped in celebration in this county where Biden took more than 77% of the vote. 
These are tears of joy, she said, taking a break from ringing up corn tortillas.  
Bolanos said shes been frustrated at how Trump scapegoated immigrants like herself. She came to the United States as a four-year-old but has been a U.S. citizen since college.  
I feel like the last four years have given us a lot of division among each other. I hope we can all come together in respect for each other, to respect our differences but be a more respectful United States, she said. All that promoting hate and blaming things on immigrants? Ugh. Its a direct attack on who we are. 
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In Washington, D.C., Jerry Hauser, 52, a non-profit organizer, rushed out to a street corner to celebrate with his family with noisemakers and percussion instruments. He said he hopes the next four years would bring, “an end to the madness if nothing else.”
“I think it will bring progress on all the issues I care about – climate change immigration, civil rights, healthcare, but I think more than anything, end the madness,” he said. 
Of Harris’ historic victory, he added, “It’s a huge day for our country, it’s an amazing thing. It shows who we really are as a people and that we’re better than we’ve been these last four years.”
In Chicago, drivers honked their car horns while others celebrated in the street. But not everyone was thrilled by the news. 
South Side Chicago resident Lane Kreisl, 39, came out of the gym high on adrenaline and convinced the election was a fraud despite no evidence to support this theory. Kreisel, who served one tour in Afghanistan and a double tour in Iraq and works in construction, said he considers himself an independent and didnt vote in 2016 because he didnt have a dog in the fight. He voted absentee in the past from Iraq, and for Trump this year.
With the inconsistency of all the votes that came in late, I feel like this is a media ploy, he said. My biggest thing with Trump is, he says stuff that maybe is not the most graceful, but hes been attacked for four years and I go off of facts. If it is Biden and Harris, I hope they get treated with more respect than this president did.
After anxious days filled with uncertainty, legal wrangling, street protests and unfounded claims of voter fraud from the White House, Biden was unofficially declared the nation’s next president as the counting of the votes in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Alaska drew to a close.
The exceedingly close nature of the Electoral College fight  with some state races coming down to fewer than 50,000 votes  highlighted the deeply divided nature of the nation after four years of Republican and Democrat leaders exchanging accusations of corruption and wrongdoing and less than a year after President Donald Trump was impeached by the Democrat-led U.S. House of Representatives for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
As the vote-counting unfolded, Americans on both sides of the political divide took to the streets. In Michigan and Arizona, Trump supporters converged on vote counting centers this week with signs and chants that demanded the process be stopped. In Washington, D.C., Biden supporters staged days of largely peaceful protests in front of the White House, dancing and setting off fireworks at nearby Black Lives Matter Plaza. 
When the tension of the week finally was released with news of Biden’s win, some took to song.
Sitting outside a crepe shop in San Francisco, Carol Fleming burst into tears when she heard the news Saturday morning.
The clouds have lifted, she said. Weve been living with this subterranean anxiety that has infected the whole world.
The 83-year-old smiled as cars drove by honking their horns, people leaning out windows yelling Biden!
Im just so moved, we can have some normalcy again, she said. She then began singing a rendition of the song “New York, New York.” Start spreading the news. she sang.
Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden hugs his wife Jill Biden after his speech during the fourth day of the Democratic National Convention, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2020, at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Del.
 (Photo: Andrew Harnik, AP)
The United States and its citizens were uniquely tested this election season.
A new civil rights movement sprung up in the wake of George Floyds death at the hands of Minneapolis police earlier this year. A pandemic that flared in March gathered steam in the fall to render voting even more challenging, with COVID-19 now infecting 100,000 Americans a day as winter nears. And the resulting recession seemed to further galvanize voters.
Those physical and financial pressures conspired to drive voting to record levels, with some 100 million casting votes early and largely by mail to avoid contagion and have their voices heard.
Many worried about a repeat of the traumatic 2000 election when Republican President George W. Bush narrowly won the Electoral College against Democratic Vice President Al Gore after the Supreme Court controversially ruled in his favor over a contentious vote count in Florida. That count dragged on into December and Gore went on to win the popular vote.
Going into Election Day, myriad polls had Biden comfortably ahead of Trump in a number of states, prompting Democrats to hope for not only a landslide presidential win but also a takeover of the Senate. But as with 2016, when Trump upset all predictions of an easy win for Democrat Hillary Clinton, the polls proved wobbly at best.
Falsely declaring victory while votes are still being counted, President Donald Trump threatened to ask the Supreme Court to halt the counting of legally cast absentee ballots, which he described as a “fraud.”
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In the end, Biden wound up claiming Rust Belt states that Clinton lost four years ago. Trump took Florida, Texas and Ohio, but he struggled in states such as Arizona, where Latino voters seemingly rejected the president’s tough stance on immigration and border security. Votes also eluded Trump in Georgia, thanks to massive get-out-the-vote mobilization efforts in Black communities, including Atlanta.
By and large, rural counties buttressed Trump while urban centers supported Biden. Iowa went solidly for Trump, 53% to 45%, for example, but a glance at the states voting pattern map shows a sea of red counties interrupted by just a few pockets of powerful blue around the hubs of Des Moines and Cedar Rapids.
Similarly, Trump won Texas 52% to 46%, a state Democrats hoped might tip their way. That win came courtesy of that massive states rural enclaves, while Bidens solid showing was the result of wins around the big cities of Dallas, Houston and Austin, as well as some counties along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Americans remained torn about the election results. 
In Oregon, Malcolm Menefe, a 28-year-old Portland resident, said Saturday that he did not vote in the 2020 election because, as a Black man, he feels both candidates weren’t doing enough for his community. 
Menefe said while he sees Trump is an outright racist, he does not have a favorable view of Biden because he put millions of African Americans in jail by supporting the war on drugs, which disproportionately targeted Black men.
If theres a silver lining to the Trump presidency, he said, its that racial issues were put on the front page, finally. His actions were called out more. But he worries that a Biden presidency will be more of the same, just maybe more under the radar.
Black voters overwhelmingly picked Biden, securing his White House victory.
Sonna Singleton Gregory, a county commissioner in her fourth term in Clayton County, Georgia, said “we are ecstatic to see Joe Biden win.” 
Clayton is a predominantly black suburb in south Atlanta, where much of the Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson International sits. It was Clayton voters who erased Trump’s initial lead in Georgia with overwhelming support for Biden. It also is a county represented, in part, by civil rights era hero Congressman John Lewis, who often sparred with the president and died in July. 
 “We let our voices be heard. This is a big win for Clayton County,” she said. 
In Florida, Rocio Velazquez, a 40-year-old immigrant from Guatemala, spent the entire week terrified that Trump would somehow pull out a win, a constant sense of dread that made her sick since Election Day.
Once she saw the news that Biden had won Saturday morning, the relief finally set in. Velazquez, a legal immigrant in the process of becoming a U.S. citizenship, said a Biden presidency will hopefully end – or at least tamp down – the divisiveness that Trump sowed.
“I love that he’s talking about representing all people, including those who didn’t vote for him,” said Velazquez, who works for a non-profit that advocates for children’s education and health care. “This gives me hope for a more compassionate country, a more inclusive country.”
Her only regret? That the COVID-19 pandemic makes it impossible to celebrate properly.
“I wish we were in a position where we could have a party,” she said.
Renee Wilson dances with fellow gatherers in support of counting every vote Thursday, Nov. 5, 2020 in Philadelphia, Pa.
 (Photo: Joe Lamberti, Courier Post-USA TODAY NETWORK)
Also fueling the nation’s high emotions was the drawn-out nature of this election.
Unlike many contests past that were decided on Election Day, this year’s drama dragged on for days as a few swing states counted a record number of mail-in ballots.
Election night brought hope to Trump’s re-election campaign, as tallies largely reflected in-person voting, which skewed more toward Republican voters. But it was always clear that votes mailed in weeks ago to avoid polling stations would both lean Democratic and take days to count, in part because some election officials, such as those in Pennsylvania, were not allowed to review the ballots until Election Day.
As that process unfolded, Trump began to see his lead dwindle ever so slowly in states such as Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania and immediately called for the count to stop. His unproven claims of election fraud were condemnedby politicians on both sides of the aisleeven before the president surfaced Thursday to give a speech outside the White House laced with unfounded charges of corruption and malfeasance.
“If you count the legal votes I easily win,” Trump told reporters.
Detroit Elections employees gather around looking at election results on their phone as they count absentee ballots at TCF center in Detroit, on Nov. 4, 2020.
 (Photo: Kimberly P. Mitchell, Detroit Free Press)
Critics decried the president’s speech as an attack on democracy and urged the White House to accept the legal count.
“This is getting insane,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., and an Air Force veteran who had repeatedly criticized the president for his attacks on the election process.
The big three networks ABC, NBC and CBS took the unusual step of breaking away from Trump’s 17-minute talk, cutting to anchors who explained why the president’s claims of election fraud were unfounded. Fox News and CNN stayed with the press conference.
As of Saturday, Biden appeared to have won the election by 5 million popular votes. More crucially, he won the Electoral College, surpassing the necessary 270 votes by taking Nevada and Pennsylvania, getting him to 273. 
Despite the voting results, President Donald Trump tweeted Saturday, “I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!” The president’s team continued to dispute the results, saying he would not concede. 
But Biden supporters moved forward with their celebrations all the same. 
In Oak Park, Illinois, resident and PR professional Chevonne Nash, 38, was putting her 3-month-old son down for a nap when she got the news of Biden’s win on her phone. She wanted to jump up and yell in excitement but didnt want to wake her son.
I walked out of the room, and I was likeoh my god! she said. I dont think I was ready for the call to be made for some reason, even though its been days. Im surprised. Im excited. Its starting to hit me. Its starting to sink in.
Nash, who voted for Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, said she hoped the new administration would restore dignity to the office and focus on improving access to health care and the quality of public education.
I dont think this presidency will be perfect, but I do think it will be a huge shift in how the office of the presidency will be handled. It will be taken seriously. Both Biden and Harris have impeccable experience. She will be an asset to the office, and I think that he is fair, she said.
Contributing: Trevor Hughes in Boulder, Elizabeth Weise in San Francisco, Claire Thornton in Washington, D.C., Alan Gomez in Miami, Grace Hauck in Chicago, Lindsay Schnell in Portland, Ore. 
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