Donald Trump was projected to become the 47th president early Wednesday, completing the most incredible political comeback in American history.
Trump, 78, was on course for an Electoral College landslide over Vice President Kamala Harris after he reversed his 2020 losses in the crucial states of Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — running up big margins among his white rural and working class base while making significant inroads among ethnic minorities.
“There’s never been anything like this in this country, and maybe beyond,” the Republican nominee told a rapturous victory celebration at the Palm Beach County Convention Center not far from his Mar-a-Lago resort.
“We’re going to help our country heal,” Trump added, “and it needs help very badly. We’re going to fix our borders … fix everything about our country.”
Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images
The former president’s victory was the highlight of a big Election Night for Republicans, who were also projected to regain control of the Senate after four years in the minority.
The fate of the House of Representatives was too close to call early Wednesday, with the majority not likely to be determined for several days.
But most stunningly, as of early Wednesday, Trump was favored to win the popular vote and end a 20-year losing streak among Republican nominees in the raw vote total.
In an eerie repeat of the scenes on Election Night 2016, thousands of Harris supporters who gathered on the campus of the veep’s alma mater, Howard University, to watch the results come in were left shocked and in tears as it became clear their candidate could not win.
In the end, it was not Harris but her campaign co-chair, Cedric Richmond, who was left to inform the desolate crowd that the Democratic nominee would not be appearing.
“We still have votes to count … so you won’t hear from the vice president tonight,” said Richmond, a former Louisiana congressman and Biden White House official. “She will be back here tomorrow.”
“Go HU and go Harris.”
AFP via Getty Images
The 45th president had projected supreme confidence against Harris, 60, in the final days of the race, with heavy messaging aimed at male voters and a marathon schedule of rallies and media appearances — including a shift at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s.
Meanwhile, Harris downplayed both her potential to make history as the first female president and her racial identity as a child of Jamaican and Indian immigrants.
Instead, she campaigned as a pro-small business warrior for the middle class, while seemingly disavowing a host of former left-wing stances she had espoused as San Francisco district attorney, California attorney general and a senator from the Golden State.
Trump’s victory makes him just the second president to be elected in non-consecutive cycles, joining Democrat Grover Cleveland — who was picked as the 22nd president in 1884 and the 24th president in 1892, with Republican Benjamin Harrison of Indiana serving four years in between.
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