Donald Trump is projected to return to the White House as America’s 47th president after winning one of the most bitterly contested elections in the history of the United States.
The Republican has clinched 267 electoral college votes of the 270 he needs to win against Kamala Harris, his Democratic rival, which would deny the country its first female president.
Trump hailed his “incredible movement” after taking the stage surrounded by his friends, family and political allies.
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“This will be the golden age of America,” he said, calling his expected win a “magnificent victory for the American people”.
Pennsylvania, for so long the state that many felt could determine the outcome of the election, has backed Trump to be the next president. With 95 per cent of the votes counted, the Associated Press has called the state’s 19 electoral college votes for the former president.
Trump is the first former president to become a convicted felon since the end of his first term in January 2021. Civil courts have found him liable for sexual assault and fraudulent business practices in separate lawsuits over the past four years and he still faces a raft of charges over his alleged attempts to overturn the result of the 2020 election. The future of those cases is now in serious jeopardy.
Trump arriving at his election night watch party
EVAN VUCCI/AP
Nonetheless, Trump, 78, appears to have been able to convince voters that they should elect him for the second time in eight years. Polls showed for months the election was going to go down to the wire, but Trump’s consistent lead in key policy areas such as the economy and immigration held up on polling day.
The electorate appeared not to have heeded Harris’s warning that Trump was “a fascist”, a theme she picked up in the last weeks of the campaign after he was accused by John Kelly, his former chief of staff, of admiring Adolf Hitler.
Supporters of Trump’s America First agenda will await him fulfilling his promise to deport millions of illegal immigrants and to impose tough tariffs on imported foreign goods. His opponents, meanwhile, will fear that another four-year Trump term will bring greater division at home and isolation from events overseas. His promise to bring a swift end to the war in Ukraine has led to concerns that he is set to reward President Putin of Russia for his invasion of his neighbour.
Trump’s victory was all but confirmed by winning the three key swing states of North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania. He is leading in the other four — Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada.
Trump, with his wife Melania behind him, visited his campaign headquarters to thank staff
BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS
A record $15.9 billion was spent on the election by the campaigns and other groups, according to Barron’s.
Pennsylvania, seen as the key to unlocking the doors to the Oval Office for both candidates, was expected to prove the tipping point with its 19 votes in the electoral college set to take Trump to the 270 required for victory.
Both candidates criss-crossed the state in recent weeks but the vice-president did not pick up enough votes in urban areas to offset his charge through America’s vast rural communities and smaller post-industrial towns.
The same was true in the other swing northern states — Michigan and Wisconsin — where Trump’s support appears to have again been underestimated by pollsters who had the race much closer in the days leading up to polling day.
In an equally crushing blow to the Democrats, the Republicans have also won control of the Senate, giving Trump a powerful advantage.
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West Virginia and Ohio were won from the Democrats to push the Republicans to 51 seats in the upper house. That position could be strengthened by other expected gains, especially Montana where the Republicans are almost certain to win.
The post-mortem examination in the Democratic Party will begin almost immediately, and it will be brutal, with heavy scrutiny of President Biden’s decision to leave the race as late as he did.
That denied the party the chance of a competitive primary process in which a stronger candidate might have emerged.
Harris’s campaign focus on policy areas she was comfortable with, such as reproductive healthcare, will also be analysed. Many felt that she did not do enough to reach voters who were primarily worried about other issues, such as the economy and immigration.
Her decision to pick Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, as her running-mate may also be deemed to have backfired.
