Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president in the 2024 contest, has won a second term to the White House, defeating his Democratic opponent Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump’s win marks only the second time in U.S. history that a candidate has won two non-consecutive presidential races.
Trump won the Electoral College and appears to have narrowly won the popular vote for the first time in his three runs for president. This is the first time a Republican presidential candidate has won the popular vote since 2004.
Trump’s path to victory was secured through many of the same states he won in 2016, when he broke the “blue wall” of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. In addition to being projected to win those states this year, Trump also gained Nevada in his column — and a realignment of congressional districts across the country helped increase his overall Electoral College count compared to in 2016.
While votes are still being tabulated, The Associated Press called the race for Trump on Wednesday morning. If the current state of the race holds through those final vote counts, Trump will win by an Electoral College margin of 312 electors to Harris’s 226.
In an early morning victory speech he gave in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump claimed he had won a “powerful mandate” from voters, and said that his victory was a sign of strong support for the MAGA movement.
While Trump decisively won, his Electoral College margin would not ordinarily be considered a “mandate”-sized win. Indeed, his projected win this year is a smaller margin of victory than 10 of the previous 15 presidential election results, many of which were not considered mandate wins.
Trump’s speech included Christian nationalist overtones, with him declaring he was called on by God “to save our country and to restore America to greatness.”
“And now we are going to fulfill that mission together,” Trump said.
As president, Trump will likely seek to implement parts of Project 2025, a plan outlined by the far right Heritage Foundation for a second Trump presidency.
Although Trump has recently sought to distance himself from the right-wing manifesto, he praised the document years ago, and dozens of his former officials played an instrumental role in developing its proposals. One co-author of the project has even claimed that Trump has “blessed” Project 2025 and Heritage’s plan to draft hundreds of executive orders for him to sign when he enters the White House.
The document calls for weaponizing the Department of Justice (DOJ) and repressing local district attorneys’ offices if they go against the president; potentially prosecuting journalists with charges related to spying for using government whistleblowers as sources; further restricting access to abortion, including in states where the procedure is currently protected; undermining other reproductive rights, including in vitro fertilization, surrogacy and birth control; and repealing restrictions on child labor laws, among other proposals.
Exit polling data suggests that a number of traditional Democratic voting blocs were not as strong for Harris as they were in previous electoral contests.
Among Latinx voters, for example, Harris outperformed Trump by 8 points nationally. However, that margin is the smallest lead recorded by exit polling data since 1976 — for comparison, Biden in 2020 beat Trump among Latinx voters by a margin of 33 points.
Trump also won with first-time voters, attaining 54 percent support among that voting bloc versus Harris’s 45 percent, a huge shift since 2020.
Economic anxieties — typically a harbinger of detrimental election outcomes for incumbent candidates — also played a role in the race’s outcome. According to exit polls, 45 percent of voters said they were worse off financially under the Biden-Harris administration than they were before, while only 24 percent said they were better off.
Political pundits and observers weighed in the mistakes of the Harris campaign.
“Donald Trump was able to win in part because Democratic leadership, including President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, failed to listen to their core voters — young people, women, people of color, and progressive voters — who have been demanding that their government end its support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” read a press release from Hamid Bendaas, communications director of the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project.
Former Ohio state representative and progressive activist Nina Turner lambasted Democrats for their strategy of creating a “big tent” movement that included Republicans and notorious warmongers.
In a post on X, Turner rejected new calls for Democrats to “move right” in the future to win elections, saying:
To the right of campaigning with Liz Cheney and promising Republicans cabinet seats? No. This [this week’s election result] is what Democrats running to the right looks like.
Global leaders — including far right authoritarians who Trump has openly expressed admiration for — also weighed in on the U.S. election results.
Right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who is known for his attacks on immigrants and democratic dissent, described the win as a “much needed victory” and “the biggest comeback in U.S. political history.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has spent the past year waging a genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza with nearly unconditional U.S. support, called Trump’s win a “powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America.”
Meanwhile, in wake of Trump’s win, activists and mutual aid organizations are gearing up for the critical work that lies ahead.
In a series of posts shared on X, The Brigid Alliance, an organization that helps pay travel fees for people seeking abortion care, said that it is “ready and able to double down on our support for abortion seekers” even as the incoming administration appears ready to implement greater restrictions.
“Our movement is strong. We are resilient. We are creative. We have grappled with immense challenges in the past — we are grappling with them every single day,” the organization said. “It’s now up to all of us to summon that strength + resilience + creativity, keep our head up, and never, ever give up.”
And in a missive for YES! published earlier this month, Silky Shah, executive director of Detention Watch Network, a coalition that aims to abolish immigrant detention in the United States, suggested that immigrant advocates should respond to a Trump win by applying pressure to the Biden administration before the president leaves office.
“In the case of a Trump election win, demanding that the Biden administration dismantle the detention and deportation systems and rescind harsh border policies will be imperative. So far Biden has received a pass from liberals and even some immigration advocates on his ramping up of enforcement, but the short period of time between the election and inauguration will require a united front to make [Trump adviser] Stephen Miller’s dark agenda that much harder to implement,” Shah wrote.
After that, organizers must continue their efforts to resist immigrant detention and deportation, Shah added.
“The coming months will undoubtedly bring more heartache and confusion for immigrant communities. Regardless of who is president, educating people about their rights and expanding our base will be essential to building power toward longer-term change,” she said.
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