The president won the popular vote, swept the battlegrounds, and reshaped the Republican party.
President-elect Donald Trump will reclaim the presidency next year with a wide-ranging agenda for America and a significant electoral mandate to implement his plans.
Having already won 295 Electoral College votes by the afternoon of Nov. 6, Trump was on track to capture the national popular vote and sweep all seven battleground states.
The president-elect was ahead by nearly 4.7 million votes in the national vote as of 11:16 p.m. on Nov. 6—a 3.3 percentage point margin. He is on track to best his own national totals from 2016 and 2020, having made significant gains in broad swaths of the country, notably in safe blue states, including New Jersey, Illinois, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Maine.
Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent, conceded the election in a speech in Washington on the afternoon of Nov. 6. A spokesman for the Trump campaign said Harris called Trump to congratulate him earlier in the day and that “both leaders agreed on the importance of unifying the country.”
Trump’s commanding performance was buttressed by that of the Republican Party, which recaptured the U.S. Senate and was well on its way to winning the House of Representatives. As of 10:39 p.m. on Nov. 6, Decision Desk HQ projected that the GOP had a 90 percent chance to retain control of the lower chamber.
“This was a movement like nobody has ever seen before, and frankly, this was, I believe, the greatest political movement of all time,” Trump said in his victory speech.
Should Republicans win both the House and Senate, Trump will face a different Congress from the one he did in his first term that started in 2017. Now, his allies are in charge of the House Republican caucus, and all but a few of his biggest intra-party detractors have been ousted in closely-watched primary contests. In the Senate, the long-time leader of the Republicans, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), is stepping down and setting the stage for a leadership contest all but sure to be decided by Trump’s endorsement.
By Ivan Pentchoukov and Janice Hisle
