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WASHINGTON — President-elect Joe Biden, having won with the more votes than any other candidate in U.S. history, implored President Donald Trump’s supporters on Saturday to give him a chance and all Americans to let go of the rancor that has scarred the nation’s civic life.

“Let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end, here and now,” he told a cheering throng in his hometown of Wilmington, Del., Saturday night, 10 hours after clinching the presidency with a win in Pennsylvania. “Let’s give each other a chance.”

The former vice president collected 75.2 million votes and counting, topping Trump by more than 4 million.

But the president refused to acknowledge defeat, complicating both the transition and Biden’s task of calming tensions in a nation in the throes of a pandemic, economic uncertainty and extreme partisan passions.

Biden is the oldest person ever elected commander in chief. He will turn 78 on Nov. 20. Sen. Kamala Harris of California, 56, will be the first woman and the first woman of color to serve as vice president, the post Biden held for eight years under Barack Obama.

“The people of this nation have spoken, delivered us a clear victory, a convincing victory, a victory for the people,” Biden said, citing his record vote tally and wide victory margin to implicitly refute any doubts about the outcome. “I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide but unify.”

Flag-waving supporters gathered at the Chase Center in Wilmington on a balmy Saturday night for his acceptance speech and fireworks, four full days after polls closed. Biden jogged onto the stage, energetically greeting Harris with a double fist bump. Both wore masks except when delivering their remarks.

“You delivered a clear message. You chose hope, unity, decency, science and, yes, truth,” Harris said. “You chose Joe Biden as the next president of the United States of America. Joe is a healer. A uniter. A tested and steady hand” and he will be “a president for all Americans.”

She thanked election workers, many still plowing through stacks of absentee ballots. “You have protected the integrity of our democracy,” she said.

Harris, wearing white as a a tribute to suffragists, lauded Biden for having the “audacity” to pick a woman as vice president, borrowing a word from the title of a book by Obama, the nation’s first Black president. She paid homage to generations who fought to expand political rights, especially Black women, who are “often overlooked but so often prove they are the backbone of our democracy. … I stand on their shoulders.”

Although Biden vowed to turn a page from the vitriol of the last four years, that may hinge on how his adversaries behave and how Trump handles the transition.

He remains president for 74 more days, until the inauguration on Jan. 20.

Biden promised during the campaign to reverse Trump’s decisions to pull the United States out of the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accord. Those are among a flurry of actions he’s expected to take in his first days and weeks.

He, too, thanked election workers who risked their health to make the gears of democracy work during a COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed more than 237,000 American lives.

Trump refuses to concede

Defeat makes Trump the first one-term president since George H.W. Bush, who lost in 1992 to Bill Clinton.

Trump was golfing at his club in Sterling, Va., near the nation’s capital, on Saturday morning when The Associated Press called the Keystone State and the election for Biden.

The Democrat had been on the cusp of victory for two days pending results from Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

“This election is far from over,” Trump insisted in a statement a half hour later, promoting his unfounded allegation of cheating and fraud. “We all know why Joe Biden is rushing to falsely pose as the winner, and why his media allies are trying so hard to help him: they don’t want the truth to be exposed.”

In late afternoon, Trump issued an all-caps tweet insisting that “I WON THE ELECTION” and claiming falsely that millions of voters had been sent mail-in ballots they hadn’t requested.

There is no political or legal obligation for a defeated candidate to concede. But that has always been the norm, conferring legitimacy to the winner and emotional release to the loser’s supporters.

Withholding a concession won’t stop the winner from taking office. One Biden aide quipped that the Secret Service is trained to evict trespassers from the White House.

A large and jubilant crowd gathered outside the White House to celebrate Trump’s defeat, at times singing “Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People — a standard at his rallies. They packed the Black Lives Matter protest site where federal Park Police in June used tear gas to clear the crowd before Trump walked to a church and posed holding a Bible.

Celebrations also broke out across the country, from Philadelphia to San Antonio to Los Angeles.

Victory for Trump would require an implausible reversal of fortune, through recounts in Wisconsin and Georgia and court orders to invalidate tens of thousands of ballots in Pennsylvania and other states.

By nightfall, Biden’s electoral count stood at 290, well past the 270 needed to clinch, after Pennsylvania and then Nevada fell his way Saturday. He also led in Georgia and was likely to end up with the same 306 electoral votes that Trump collected four years ago, assuming Biden hangs on in Arizona, which the AP had called for Biden but which Trump’s team insisted was still too close to call.

Trump considered his 2016 win a landslide, though he lost the popular vote by 3 million.

Biden invoked his own 4 million vote margin of victory to claim a mandate on climate change, economic policy, immigration, the pandemic and other contentious issues.

“Americans have called on us to marshal the forces of decency … fairness … science and … hope in the great battles of our time,” he said, among them battles to root out racial injustice and “restore decency, defend democracy and give everybody in this country a fair shot. Our work begins with getting COVID under control.

“We cannot repair the economy, restore our vitality or relish life’s most precious moments — hugging a grandchild, birthdays, weddings, graduations, all the moments that matter most to us — until we get this virus under control.”

GOP response mixed

Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and some other GOP luminaries offered congratulatory messages and vows to work with the 46th president.

Texas Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn did not.

Instead, both warned that Republicans must work to protect the two Georgia Senate seats at stake in unusual runoff elections in January, because if Democrats win and wrest control of the Senate, Biden will push a radical agenda unchecked.

Biden will be only the nation’s second Roman Catholic president. The first was John F. Kennedy.

Hillary Clinton, the former first lady, senator and secretary of state, was the first woman nominated for president by a major party. Harris did what she couldn’t: shattered the glass ceiling to become the first woman elected to nationwide office.

Two others had tried before Clinton, both as nominees for vice president: Geraldine Ferraro, a New York congresswoman who ran with Democrat Walter Mondale in 1984, and Sarah Palin, who was Alaska governor in 2008 when Sen. John McCain lost to Obama.