US election: Philadelphia parties as Joe Biden wins the White House

People celebrate outside the Philadelphia Convention Center after Joe Biden is declared winner

Credit: Chris McGrath/Getty Images North America

A smaller crowd of Trump supporters, separated from the main crowd by a police barricade, waved "Stop the Steal" placards and blared Metallica. It was meant to drown out the celebrations from across the street, but it didn’t work. Mr Biden’s supporters danced on.

Philadelphia has been already celebrating for days, so confident were people that Mr Biden’s home state of Pennsylvania would pull through for him. Bars and restaurants have had their big screens tuned to CNN for what many here have started to call "the map show".

Cars honked their horns as they passed the crowd, while passengers hung out of windows whooping and throwing peace signs.

Donald Trump had been saying for weeks that "bad things happen in Philadelphia", claiming without evidence that the city had been counting "illegitimate" absentee ballots that were slowly eating into his lead in the all-important swing state.

And it was a return of just a few thousand ballots in Philadelphia that pushed Mr Biden past the 30,000 threshold and the 0.5 per cent lead he needed for a win.

In another corner of the city, the Trump campaign was holding a press conference about unsubstantiated election fraud allegations at a landscaping company just as the news networks called the race for Mr Biden. And that is how it ended for the president’s campaign – in the car park of an obscure gardening firm in the industrial outskirts.

Mr Trump’s fans stood where they were, not sure where to go next. Some gathered around a phone playing Fox News, refusing to believe what had happened. "It’s just not right, it’s not fair," they muttered over and over again in a haze. A gathering wearing Make America Great Again (MAGA) hats waved their flags and sang a solemn rendition of God Bless America.

Disconsolate supporters of Donald Trump after Mr Biden was declared the winner

Credit: Mark Makela/Reuters

"You OK over there, or y’all a little sad?," screamed a Biden backer from the window of a car. "You’re fired! You’re fired," others shouted gleefully through a megaphone, repeating Mr Trump’s Apprentice catchphrase.

"This is a rough part we are dealing with now but we will fight it and we will come through," said Trump supporter Pamela Golden as she took off her red MAGA hat. "We prepared for a long, protracted legal battle, you’ll see. This isn’t over, not by a long shot."

A man in a Biden mask wearing nothing but a string vest and boxer shorts – who minutes earlier been shouting that the president elect was a paedophile – suddenly looked a little embarrassed.

Undeterred by the news that had just broken, Rudy Giuliani, Mr Trump’s lawyer who has become a key figure in Mr Trump’s re-election campaign, brought poll watchers before the press, claiming they were too far away from the election workers to monitor the count.

The Trump campaign’s various legal claims will be playing out in the courts for weeks, if not months. Most election experts believe they will lead to naught for the president.

In any case, Philly didn’t care much. It was party time.