Trump wins presidency for second time, completing improbable comeback
Former President Trump is projected to win the presidency, securing a second term nearly four years after he left Washington under a cloud of ignominy and with an uncertain political future, according to Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ).
DDHQ made the call after declaring Trump the projected winner of Pennsylvania and Alaska, which got him to exactly 270 electoral votes.
Trump defeated Vice President Harris in an election that saw a number of unexpected developments: A criminal trial involving Trump during the campaign, two assassination attempts against the former president and a change atop the Democratic ticket after President Biden dropped out of the race.
He becomes the first president in more than 120 years to lose the White House, and then to come back and win it again, after President Grover Cleveland in 1892.
Trump secured the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House following a roughly 100-day sprint of a campaign between him and Harris, with polling in seven key battleground states showing very little separation between the two candidates right up until Election Day.
The former president ultimately won a convincing victory, flipping Georgia back into his column, holding North Carolina and shattering the “blue wall.” He was projected to narrowly win the popular vote, something he failed to do in 2016 and that Republicans have only done once since 1992.
The former president and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), capitalized on voter discontent with higher costs, a surge in migration at the southern border and instability abroad during the Biden administration to pitch voters on a return to his policies.
Exit polls showed Trump making huge gains with Latino voters, bolstering his margins in rural areas and running nearly even with Harris among young men, a demographic Trump's campaign aggressively courted.
Trump has pledged to carry out the largest deportation operation in the nation’s history, to extend the tax cuts he signed into law in 2017, to impose universal tariffs on foreign imports, to roll back protections for transgender youth, to shut down the Education Department and to curb environmental regulations. He has also signaled he will seek to stock his administration with loyalists.
Trump overcame what was expected to be a huge deficit with female voters. Harris leaned into the issue of abortion rights after three of Trump's picks for the Supreme Court joined other conservatives in overturning the Roe v. Wade decision in 2022. This was the first presidential election to take place since the end of Roe.
The election of Trump could give the GOP president a chance to strengthen the conservative grip on the high court, as Republicans regained the majority in the Senate.
Trump narrowly won the White House in 2016, but lost his reelection bid in 2020. He spent the weeks after that election pushing unproven claims of widespread fraud, culminating in a violent attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, where his supporters tried to stop the certification of Biden’s victory.
He was indicted on federal charges in Washington, D.C., in 2023 over his efforts to remain in power after losing the 2020 election. But Trump has signaled he will swiftly move to fire special counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing the matter, kneecapping a major legal case against him.
Trump’s rhetoric and conduct during his first term has drawn scrutiny from several former Cabinet officials and top aides, including some who compared him to an authoritarian. He was indicted in four separate jurisdictions in 2023 and was convicted in New York City on 34 felony counts in May. He was impeached twice during his first term and left office with a favorability rating below 40 percent. And he left Washington in 2021 without attending his successor’s inauguration.
A number of politicians and pundits all but declared him politically dead, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) lashing out at Trump in a February 2021 speech from the Senate floor. McConnell did not vote to convict Trump in his impeachment trial over the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, however.
If Trump had been convicted, it could have ended his political career and prevented him from running for the White House again. Instead, he now stands to further shift the GOP in his image, while McConnell's position as Senate leader will end in January.
In a sign of how wrong some were in predicting Trump's political demise, he coasted to the GOP nomination thanks to a loyal base of supporters, and he appeared to be on a glide path to the presidency in July, when he survived an assassination attempt, rallied the full force of the party behind him at the GOP convention and led Biden in the polls.
But Biden dropped out later that month and was replaced by Harris, who galvanized Democratic voters and raised record sums of money. Trump struggled initially to respond to the change in opponent, and his rocky performance at a September debate further frustrated Republicans as the race tightened.
Trump gained in the polls in the closing weeks of the campaign, however, showing strength with Black and Latino voters. Both are key voting blocs that helped propel him to victory.
His campaign relied on a previously untested strategy of partnering with outside groups to reach voters in battleground states, a method that managed to overcome the stronger infrastructure of the Harris campaign.
At 78, Trump is the oldest person in the country’s history to be elected president, slightly older than Biden was in 2020. He has declined to release detailed medical records despite previously saying he would have no problem doing so.
Trump will become just the second president in the nation’s history to serve two nonconsecutive terms, but will be term limited by the 22nd Amendment, meaning he cannot seek reelection in 2028.