Former President Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States on Wednesday, toppling Kamala Harris in a tightly contested race.
Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States. While not every state result has been called, Trump’s ability to flip swing states like Georgia and, especially, Pennsylvania led to a decisive victory. Trump was also on track to win the popular vote, which would be the first time in 20 years a Republican presidential candidate had done so.
In a speech on stage in the early hours of Wednesday, Trump addressed his supporters and claimed victory in the race. He called his comeback “the greatest political movement of all time.” “We are going to turn our country around and make it very special,” he said. “This will forever be remembered as the day the American people regained control of their country.”
Harris had not yet conceded at the time the Associated Press called the race for Trump. Early Wednesday morning, Harris campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond said that she would address her supporters and the nation at Howard University at some point later that day.
Trump supporters were quick to take a victory lap. “The people of America gave @realDonaldTrump a crystal clear mandate for change tonight,” wrote Elon Musk on X. Musk donated well over $100 million to Trump’s campaign, and Trump has suggested he would put the billionaire in charge of a “government efficiency commission” in his administration. In his victory speech, Trump praised Musk, specifically for his company SpaceX’s dramatic rocket catch earlier this year.
Former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. celebrated Trump’s victory as well, writing on X “Let’s bring the country together and Make America Healthy Again!” Kennedy endorsed Trump in August. The former president recently said he would let Kennedy “go wild on health,” a stance he repeated in his victory speech.
President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential contest in July, ending his bid for reelection following a catastrophic debate performance against Trump that left Democrats questioning Biden’s viability as a winning candidate. Biden endorsed Harris as his successor and Democratic leaders and donors followed suit. Harris was formally nominated at the Chicago Democratic National Convention in August, and her campaign was one of the shortest in modern history, lasting a mere three months before Election Day.
Trump, who was convicted of 34 felonies in May and welcomed climate change because it would create more oceanfront properties, ran a nativist campaign built around a promise to deport millions of unauthorized immigrants and impose tariffs on imports from foreign countries, which many economists have said would create a depression. The 78-year-old billionaire has also vowed to roll back environmental policies and protections, severely curtail the rights of transgender people, and seek revenge against his political enemies.
In the final days of the campaign, Trump-aligned surrogates and influencers, like Musk, pushed for more men to cast their ballots for Trump. For months, Trump and his vice presidential pick JD Vance appeared on dozens of podcasts targeted at young men. Trump sat with the popular Kick streamer Adin Ross in a live video at Mar-a-Lago over the summer, joined wrestler and former vlogger Logan Paul’s Impaulsive podcast, and brought many influencers, like the Nelk Boys, along on the campaign trail.
After the July assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, Musk formally endorsed Trump. “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery,” Musk posted to X at the time.
Musk subsequently donated well over $100 million dollars to support Trump’s reelection and turned his platform X into a megaphone for the former president. Musk’s America PAC, along with Turning Point Action, led Trump’s canvassing operations in states like Michigan, Arizona, and Wisconsin. Some of these canvassers were refused pay and forced into unsafe working conditions, like being transported in the back of a U-Haul without seat belts, WIRED reported.
Other influencers lent Trump support as well. On Thursday, influencer and boxer Jake Paul formally endorsed Trump in a video posted to X. On Monday, Joe Rogan followed suit in a post sharing his most recent podcast episode with Musk. Paul has more than 20 million YouTube subscribers and Rogan hosts the most popular podcast in the US with over 14 million followers on Spotify.
“They have degraded and disparaged our amazing men for far too long,” Ashley St. Clair said in an X post on Monday. “Men must VOTE!”
In the leadup to the election, polls suggested a deep shift toward Harris among senior and independent women, seemingly driven by the Supreme Court overturning federal abortion rights and a subsequent wave of unpopular restrictions backed by Republicans at the state level. In the end, though, the Trump strategy of turning out voters in economically struggling, deindustrialized regions while chipping away at the margins among traditionally overwhelmingly Democratic minority constituencies carried the day.
Republicans will take back the Senate, making it much easier for an incoming Trump administration to confirm judges and cabinet officials. The balance of power in the House of Representatives has yet to be decided.