After a bitter campaign filled with fiery rhetoric and false claims, Donald Trump was reelected president early Wednesday, becoming the second president in U.S. history to win a nonconsecutive term in the Oval Office.
Vote counting was widely expected to draw out later into the week, but Trump’s wins in battleground states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia caused the race to be called around 1:45 a.m. Wednesday. Compared to the 2020 election, Trump outperformed himself in most contested states, according to the New York Times.
Trump ran a campaign focused on immigration, national security and tariffs. He disparaged Harris by criticizing her performance as vice president within the Biden administration and bashing her role in handling the U.S.-Mexico border relations. He also spread widely recognized misinformation at his rallies and during the presidential debates, repeatedly making debunked claims about immigrants and his own crowd sizes.
Numerous former Trump associates repeatedly questioned his fitness for office and his close association with foreign strongmen, especially Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Republicans also took control of the Senate for the first time since 2021, flipping three seats that were previously controlled by Democrats. In Ohio, Republican Bernie Moreno defeated incumbent Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, while Gov. Jim Justice won the Senate election in West Virginia to replace retiring Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat turned Independent. The other flipped seat is in Montana, where Republican Tim Sheehy beat three-term incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.
According to Harris’s campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond, she will not speak to supporters tonight at her Howard University watch party. Harris is expected to address supporters and the rest of the nation tomorrow.
Trump will be the first president to serve a nonconsecutive term in the White House after Grover Cleveland, who served as the 22nd and 24th President of the United States. Trump will be both the 45th and 47th president.
Contact city and state editor Nick Mossman at nick.mossman@richmond.edu, writer Maria Byrnes at maria.byrnes@richmond.edu, and managing editor Son Tran at son.tran@richmond.edu.
Executive editor Caitlin McCormack contributed to reporting.
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