In the electoral college, Biden looks to be on his way to earning 306 electoral votes. That’s about 57% of all the electoral votes available and will be good enough for a 74 electoral vote margin over the sitting President.
All of Biden’s advantages are considerably larger than that right now. In other words, Trump would need multiple recounts to see movement in votes than simply hasn’t happened in the last 20 years.
The bottom line is Biden won this election and it’s not particularly close.
Most challengers to incumbent presidents don’t win, let alone come in with as clear a victory. Over the last century, just four other challengers beat incumbent presidents. The only three with a bigger win in the electoral college than Biden is forecasted to get were Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, Ronald Reagan in 1980 and Bill Clinton in 1992.
Biden’s popular vote win is even bigger. Once all the votes are counted (and there are plenty outstanding), Biden’s probably going to win somewhere between 51% and 52% of the popular vote. The only challenger to score a higher percentage over the last century was Roosevelt in 1932.
Biden’s win was equal to or bigger than Trump’s, depending on how you look at it. Biden’s likely to win contests containing the same number of electoral votes (306) that Trump got. Trump, of course, didn’t even get a plurality of the popular vote, let alone a majority. Biden did get a majority, and he did so as a challenger. Beating an incumbent is considerably more difficult than winning a race without an incumbent seeking re-election.
So what’s keeping Trump from conceding? We can’t say for sure, though it’s quite unusual from a historical angle.
This includes Thomas Dewey in 1948, who is perhaps the best historical analogy to Trump. The winner in that election (Harry Truman) got about the same share of electoral votes and was ahead by a similar share in the popular vote. And like for Biden this election, Truman won a number of states by less than a point. That didn’t stop Dewey from congratulating Truman on his win.