Former President Donald John Trump is the winner of the 2024 presidential election, and will become the first person to win back the Oval Office after losing a reelection bid since Democrat Grover Cleveland in 1892.
Trump — the 45th and soon-to-be 47th president — secured a path to a 270-vote threshold in the Electoral College with a victory in Pennsylvania, one of the “blue wall” states he won in 2016, and where he campaigned vigorously throughout the campaign.
Vice President Kamala Harris turned in a strong showing among female voters. But she underperformed among urban voters and young voters that she needed to turn out to hold off the red tide outside the big blue cities.
Ballots were still being counted as of early Wednesday morning, and final results will not be known in several states for hours, days, or even weeks. The battle for control of Congress was still undecided: Republicans won control of the Senate, but control of the House still awaited results in close California congressional races.
But the presidential election was called far earlier than many observers and analysts had anticipated was possible (aside from Breitbart News editor-in-chief Alex Marlow, who told Breitbart News Sunday on SiriusXM Patriot 125 on November 3 that he expected Trump could do so well that the final results could be in early on Tuesday evening).
Some projections even suggested that Trump could win the national popular vote with a strong showing in California.
Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) will ascend to the vice presidency at the age of 40, the third-youngest vice president in U.S. history. His success may be a signal that the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement will live on for decades.
In victory, Trump completed what is indisputably the greatest political comeback in American history. Cleveland, too, faced a closely and bitterly divided country in the wake of the U.S. Civil War. But Trump faced multiple prosecutions, two assassination attempts, censorship on social media, overt media bias, and even efforts to intimidate his lawyers.
Harris built her candidacy on the idea that she represented a “new generation” of leaders, as the first black, female, and Indian vice president. She relied heavily on the issue of abortion rights but offered few other policies to voters.
She was never meant to be the candidate; she took the nomination only after President Joe Biden was forced to quit the campaign after a disastrous debate performance in June that shook Democrats’ confidence in his mental stamina.
Harris never won one primary vote. She is now the second female candidate to fall short of the prize. But she put up as good a fight as Democrats could have hoped for in circumstances that would have been tough for any incumbent.
Trump overcame doubts about his rhetoric; his role in the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021; and concerns about his own age. He ran a focused, disciplined, and even innovative campaign in the closing weeks, reaching out to unusual constituencies, including black, Muslim, and Hispanic voters. Many lawsuits and much rancor still awaits; Democrats may try to block Trump by claiming he is an “insurrectionist” within the ban imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
But for now, after one of the most improbable campaigns in the long annals of American politics, the voters have selected the leader who will preside over the 250th birthday of the country.
He is, once again, President-elect Trump.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.