Donald Trump has completed a stunning political comeback, and the United States has entered an uncertain new era.
Trump won a clear victory in the presidential election over Vice President Kamala Harris, likely including in all seven battleground states. After a defiant campaign filled with grim portrayals of the country’s condition, he is on course to become the first Republican to win the national popular vote in 20 years. The New York Times called the race for Trump shortly before 6 a.m. Eastern.
The result showed a country that had shifted to the political right, with voters unhappy about President Biden’s performance, especially on the economy and immigration.Four years after being impeached for his role in a violent attack on Congress, five months after being convicted of a felony in New York and three months after surviving an assassination attempt, Trump will begin preparing his return to the White House.“We’ve achieved the most incredible political thing,” Trump said at a celebration overnight at Mar-a-Lago, the Florida resort he owns. “This will forever be remembered as the day the American people regained control of their country.” He promised to close the border, “help our country heal” and “fix everything.”
Another sign of the breadth of Trump’s victory came in the races for the Senate. Republicans regained control by recapturing seats in Ohio, West Virginia and perhaps Montana. Races in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin remain close. It is unclear which party will control the House.
The Republican Party appeared to expand its electorate in meaningful ways, especially among Latino voters.Trump ran on an ambitious — and in many ways radical — agenda of across-the-board tariffs, mass deportations, oil drilling, regulatory rollbacks, tax cuts, foreign policy changes and more. He has also signaled that he will violate democratic traditions to accomplish his goals.
It remains unclear how far he will go, but he is in a stronger position now than he was eight years ago. His aides have spent months planning for a second term and vetting potential appointees to ensure that his administration is staffed with loyalists rather than the establishment Republicans who often stymied him in his first term. In Congress, few of the Trump-skeptical Republicans from 2017 will remain.
All of which leaves Democrats and Trump’s other critics in a weaker position than they were in eight years ago. Starting on Jan. 20, Democrats may control no branch of the federal government. If Democrats hope to slow Trump’s agenda, they will often need to persuade other Republicans to oppose him.Harris’s defeat was a rejection of both Biden’s performance as president and her own brief campaign. She became the nominee after the primaries were over, and many voters said they didn’t know enough about her or worried she was too liberal.
But the outcome also fits a pattern in high-income countries: The U.S. has joined Australia, Britain, Germany, Italy and Japan as a country where the ruling party has recently lost power. In the U.S., the presidency is on the verge of changing hands for the third time in eight years, the biggest period of White House instability since the 1970s.
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