Donald Trump rewrote history on Wednesday as he was elected America’s next president in a sweeping win that gave him a comfortable majority in America’s electoral college as well as a majority of the popular vote.
Trump, who will take office on January 20, 2025 and preside over the 250th anniversary celebrations of the founding of America in 2026, is only the second president to win non-successive terms. He is the first former president who is a convicted felon to win the presidency again. He is the only man who refused to accept the legitimacy of the last electoral outcome, and then survived an assassination attempt, to participate in and win the election again.
His opponent, vice president Kamala Harris, was expected to concede defeat later on Wednesday (Thursday morning IST).
An election that was billed as close didn’t end up being that close after all, as Trump either won, or was likely to win, the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — the Blue Wall that Democrats had pinned their hopes on — and Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia. He also won the popular vote, the first time a Republican candidate has in over two decades. And he shrank the margins of Democratic victories in even traditionally Blue states.
All of it pointed out to a nationwide mood for change, driven by Trump’s campaign against the Biden administration’s record on inflation, illegal immigration, and foreign wars. Trump has promised to bring down prices, unleash American energy independence by pushing oil and gas production disregarding the climate crisis, impose across the board tariffs on trading partners, end the war in Ukraine even before he takes office, support Israel, bring back manufacturing to America, and take on China.
JD Vance, the 40-year old Senator from Ohio, the author of Hillbilly Elegy, a book that helped explain the distress in the American Midwest and now an ideologue of the MAGA movement with a commitment to domestic manufacturing, will be America’s next vice president. His wife, Usha, a lawyer, is of Indian origin.
At Mar-a-Lago, his private resort in Florida, Trump delivered a victory speech where he hailed his Make America Great Again movement as the greatest of all times in America and promised to heal the country by taking it into a golden age. “This is a magnificent victory for the American people that will allow us to make America great again… This will forever be remembered as the day the American people regained control of their country.”
Trump recognised the role of Elon Musk, who is likely to head the government efficiency commission in the next administration, and Robert F Kennedy Jr, a vaccine sceptic who is expected to get a role in health policy.
Republicans also took control of the US Senate, flipping Democratic held senate seats in Montana, West Virginia, and Ohio, even as they led, at the time of going to press, in senate battles in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The control over the chamber will allow Trump to get the nominations of his cabinet members and other top officials confirmed, and may even open doors for him to nominate younger more ideologically aligned judges to the Supreme Court that is already arch-conservative in its orientation.
At the time of going to press, it wasn’t clear which way the House would lean. If the Democrats win, control over the chamber with its budgetary and impeachment powers will remain the only check the party has over Trump. Hakeem Jeffries will then be Speaker. If the Republicans win, Trump will effectively have control over both the executive as well as the legislature, besides the overwhelming influence he has over the judiciary due to the nature of the supreme court justices.
Harris, who became the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party only in August after Joe Biden was forced out of the race due to a disastrous debate performance, was the first Black woman of Indian heritage to be the nominee of a major party for the top of the ticket. But she was unable to overcome the incumbency liabilities associated with the Biden administration, from which she failed to distance herself, nor was she able to convince a majority of Americans that Trump was a “Fascist” who threatened American democracy and freedom. Her attempts to make it a “vibe” election also fell flat in the face of “real” issues such as inflation, immigration and global conflict.
In the end, a majority of voters, especially in the critical swing states, preferred the change that Trump represented.