Standing on the precipice of another term, former President Trump declared victory early Wednesday in his race for president of the United States, in what appeared to be a stunning comeback for a candidate who had been counted out many times by the nation’s political establishment.
Trump appeared to have been locked in a close race with Vice President Kamala Harris during their whirlwind 107-day campaign, but he overtook the Democrat on Tuesday in the crucial swing states of Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, leaving virtually no path to victory for Harris.
The Associated Press had declared no winner in the swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada early Wednesday, though Trump was leading in all of those states.
Analysts said Harris’ possible paths to victory disappeared after the AP projected that Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania would go to Trump. The Republican was leading in both remaining “blue wall” states — Michigan and Wisconsin — considered crucial for a Harris victory.
Just before 2:30 a.m. Eastern time, Trump stood before a crowd at his campaign headquarters in West Palm Beach, Fla., and declared victory.
“It’s a political victory that our country has never seen before, nothing like this,” Trump said. “I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president.”
As of 11:45 p.m. Pacific time, Trump had surged ahead with 267 electoral votes to Harris’ 224 electoral votes, according to the Associated Press. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.
While Harris, seeking to become the nation’s first woman elected president, captured her home state of California and its 54 electoral votes, Trump won Pennsylvania’s crucial 19 electoral votes — a top prize in the race for the presidency — as well as North Carolina and Georgia, which each brought 16 electoral votes. He led in Arizona, Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin.
If Trump prevails, he will become the first convicted felon to occupy the Oval Office.
Shortly after AP called Pennsylvania, Trump spoke to cheering supporters at his campaign headquarters.
“This will truly be the golden age of America,” Trump said, adding that he was “going to help our country heal.”
“Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason,” he said in reference to the two assassination attempts he survived during the campaign. “And that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness.”
After his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, said the country had “just witnessed the greatest political comeback in the history of the United States of America,” Trump pointed out that the choice of Vance was controversial.
“He’s turned out to be a good choice,” Trump said. “I took a little heat at the beginning … but I knew the brain was a good one.”
Republicans on Tuesday seized control of the U.S. Senate from Democrats after flipping blue seats and holding on to GOP incumbents. Control of the House remained up in the air. California is home to at least half a dozen highly competitive House races, making the state a consequential battleground for down-ballot races this year.
Partisan control of Congress will greatly affect how much the newly elected president will be able to carry out his or her agenda.
In 2020, President Biden won Georgia by fewer than 12,000 votes. Last year, Trump was indicted in a sweeping racketeering case in which he was accused of conspiring with allies to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. After turning himself in at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, Trump was booked and photographed, making him the first former U.S. president to receive a mug shot.
Major victories for each candidate included Florida, where Trump won 30 electoral votes, and New York, where Harris won 28. On the West Coast, Harris carried Washington, which has 12 electoral votes, and Oregon, which has eight.
Harris campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond said the vice president would not be speaking on Tuesday night but planned to do so on Wednesday.
“We still have votes to count. We still have states that have not been called yet,” Richmond said in brief remarks at Howard University in Washington. “We will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken, so you won’t hear from the vice president tonight but you will hear from her tomorrow.”
Earlier in the evening, Harris’ campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, sent an email to campaign staffers that struck an optimistic tone, writing that turnout in battleground states was good and that it had already been expected to be “a razor thin race.”
“Those of you who were around in 2020 know this well: It takes time for all the votes to be counted — and all the votes will be counted. … What we do know is this race is not going to come into focus until the early morning hours,” she wrote in the email obtained by The Times.
Before polls began closing Tuesday, Trump posted unfounded claims on Truth Social about election fraud in Philadelphia and Detroit — cities that are located in battleground states.
“A lot of talk about massive CHEATING in Philadelphia. Law Enforcement coming!!!” Trump posted Tuesday evening.
He also wrote: “Philadelphia and Detroit! Heavy Law Enforcement is there!!!”
Philadelphia Dist. Atty. Larry Krasner called Trump’s claims “unfounded,” saying in a statement: “The only talk about massive cheating has come from one of the candidates, Donald J. Trump. There is no factual basis whatsoever within law enforcement to support this wild allegation.”
Krasner said that “if Donald J. Trump has any facts to support his wild allegations, we want them now. Right now. We are not holding our breath.”
The Detroit Police Department said on the social media platform X that officers were stationed at voting sites citywide, “ensuring everyone is able to cast their votes safely” and making sure poll workers are able to do their jobs without disruption.
The stakes of this election could hardly be higher.
Election day marked the end of a head-spinning campaign that, for Harris, began in July when President Biden, 81, dropped out of the race after a disastrous debate performance in which he struggled to complete sentences and did not push back on Trump’s falsehoods.
Harris cast Trump as a dangerous, revenge-seeking tyrant who would use the military against American citizens who disagree with him, help only the wealthy and his “billionaire donors,” and threaten the lives of women by further eroding their rights to abortion and other medical care.
“America, this is not a candidate for president who is thinking about how to make your life better,” Harris said of Trump in a speech near the National Mall in Washington last week. “This is someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power.”
Trump also has tried to portray his opponent as an extremist — calling her “a Marxist” and “a fascist” — and has blasted her for inflation and the high cost of groceries over the last four years. He has accused her of allowing an “invasion” of violent criminal migrants into the country and falsely asserted that she would push for open borders if elected.
“Kamala Harris is a train wreck who has destroyed everything in her path,” Trump said in a speech at Madison Square Garden in New York last week. “To make her president would be a gamble with the lives of millions and millions of people. She would get us into World War III.”
Harris, riding a wave of enthusiasm from Democrats who had grown concerned about Biden’s age and mental acuity, initially surged in the polls. She and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, framed their campaign as one that would bring joy back to America’s bitter politics.
The California-born Harris — the country’s first female, first Black and first Asian American vice president — has already secured her place in history as a first many times during her career.
A former prosecutor, she served as San Francisco’s first female district attorney, California’s first female attorney general, and the second Black woman elected to the U.S. Senate.
After her exuberant entrance into the presidential race, Harris’ campaign of joy gave way to warning, with the vice president saying that Trump was a threat to American democracy and that he would have few guardrails after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the summer that he was entitled to substantial immunity from prosecution for official acts in office.
Harris frequently campaigned with Republicans disaffected with Trump, including former Rep. Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.
Trump repeatedly tried to delegitimize Harris’ candidacy, falsely describing Biden’s voluntary decision to quit the race as an illegal “coup” carried out by Democrats.
Trump survived two assassination attempts during the 2024 campaign.
During a July rally in Butler, Pa., a rooftop gunman clipped Trump in the right ear and killed an attendee. Flanked by Secret Service agents, the bloodied former president pumped his fist and said “fight” three times before being whisked away.
At the Republican National Convention days later, Trump was hailed as a martyr, with attendees wearing bandages over their ears in solidarity with him. Biden was still in the race, the GOP appeared unified behind their candidate, and Trump’s victory seemed, to many, all but inevitable.
But just three days after Trump accepted his party’s nomination, the race was upended yet again when Biden dropped out and endorsed Harris.
A second assassination attempt came in September, while Trump was golfing at his club in Florida. A Secret Service agent fired shots at a man with a gun who had hidden in foliage at the golf course. Trump was not injured.
Trump’s return to the top of the Republican ticket marks an extraordinary political comeback after he lost to Biden in 2020, attempted to overturn the election results and left Washington in disgrace after his most ardent supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on his behalf during the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
This year, the twice-impeached former president was convicted of falsifying business records in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, the adult film actor who said she had sex with Trump, who was married.
Last month, Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff, retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, warned that his former boss fit the “definition of fascist,” that he lacks empathy, and that he had made admiring statements about Adolf Hitler. Soon afterward, Harris began openly calling Trump a fascist.
Trump, who has dubbed his opponent “Comrade Kamala,” has called Harris “mentally disabled” and a “low-IQ individual.” He has questioned the Black identity of Harris, the biracial daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, falsely accusing her of shifting her racial and ethnic identity over time.