In a historic comeback, former President Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris and will return to the White House for a second term.
Both candidates entered the election predicting optimism, but it was Trump’s campaign that saw momentum rise Tuesday evening as Harris supporters at Howard University faced disappointment.
Senate Republicans flipped control of the upper chamber after four years of Democratic control. Meanwhile, House Democrats could flip the lower chamber after key races are called.
With the election all but over, here are the top takeaways from the presidential and congressional elections.
Trump outruns polls again to win a second White House term
Heading into Election Day, Trump and Harris were neck and neck both nationally and in the seven battlegrounds.
But the candidates’ schedules over the final month of the campaign made clear they were prioritizing separate paths to the White House. Trump held dozens of rallies in the Sun Belt — Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina — while Harris chose to spend the bulk of her time campaigning in the blue wall, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
Still, by the time he declared himself the 2024 winner Wednesday morning, Trump had already been declared the victor in every battleground that had been called: Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
Furthermore, Trump’s margins in those states not only outpaced this cycle’s polling but overperformed his marks in the 2020 and 2016 presidential election cycles.
Early Wednesday morning, NBC News even predicted that Trump would win the national popular vote, another first in his third general election campaign.
The Associated Press called the contest for Trump on Wednesday at 5:44 a.m. after he won Wisconsin and passed the 270 electoral vote threshold.
Trump makes massive inroads with black and Latino voters
Republicans have been touting increased support among minority voters for years, and while that didn’t provide the red wave some predicted in the 2022 midterm elections, that phenomenon definitely showed up in 2024 exit polls.
Network exit polls saw Trump pulling roughly 20% support from black men in both Georgia and North Carolina, battlegrounds that proved critical for Trump’s second path to the White House. For comparison, in 2020, Trump saw just 11% support from black voters in Georgia and 7% in North Carolina.
Trump performed even better among Latino men, with NBC’s exit poll showing Trump actually leading Harris nationally among the demographic.
This comes after the Harris campaign claimed that Trump’s rhetoric over the past two weeks, coupled with controversial comments made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at the Madison Square Garden rally, was swinging the Latino vote back toward Democrats.
Money can’t buy an election
Harris’s campaign easily out-fundraised the Trump campaign, but it proved to make little difference in the election.
Despite raising at least $1 billion in roughly three months, an unprecedented amount of money, Harris will not succeed President Joe Biden as the next commander in chief.
In the three final months of the cycle, Harris’s team repeatedly bragged in memos that their ground game strategy in the battleground states outpaced Trump’s apparatus, which largely handed its strategy over to outside groups such as Elon Musk’s America PAC and Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point Action.
Republicans snatch back Senate
The GOP flipped control of the Senate easily Tuesday evening as Democrats faced a tough map defending vulnerable incumbents.
The first sign of Republican victory came early when Gov. Jim Justice (R-WV) easily defeated Democrat Glenn Elliott, the mayor of Wheeling, in the race to replace outgoing Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV).
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) lost his reelection as Republican challenger Bernie Moreno flipped his seat, and Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE) defeated independent challenger Dan Osborn, guaranteeing a Republican majority.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) also survived a challenge from Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX), further helping the GOP maintain its lead in the upper chamber.
Democrats saw some victory with Maryland’s Angela Alsobrooks defeating former GOP Gov. Larry Hogan in Maryland and Lisa Blunt Rochester winning the Delaware Senate race.
House Democrats fight to take back control
Control of the House may not be known for several days as the winners of key toss-up districts are still being calculated.
But Democrats flipped at least two seats, signaling their march to winning the lower chamber.
New York Democrat John Mannion defeated Rep. Brandon Williams (R-NY) and Democrat Josh Riley unseated Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-NY) in New York’s 19th District.
Only five toss-up seats out of 22 have been called as of 5:30 a.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, but that could change in the coming hours and days as winners are determined.
Candidates matter
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, quickly won his race against Republican gubernatorial nominee Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson. Robinson’s string of controversies underscored Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) argument that candidate quality matters.
Arizona Republican Senate nominee Kari Lake is another example of a Trumpian candidate who could not rely on the former president’s endorsement alone. Lake was trailing Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) for the state’s open Senate seat with 53% reporting, even as Trump maintained a 2-point advantage over Harris.
Candidate quality wasn’t only a problem for Republicans.
Volumes could be written about whether Democrats should have held an open primary rather than swapping out Harris for Biden. After all, Harris never made it out of Iowa during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
And based on exit polls, Harris clearly had trouble convincing voters that she offered a substantively different approach to handling the economy and immigration, both top issues this cycle.
Abortion amendments have a mixed night
For the first time since Roe v. Wade was overturned, a state abortion amendment failed when voters were given a chance to make their voices heard.
Florida voters failed to reach the 60% threshold needed to pass the Amendment 4 ballot question, meaning the state’s six-week abortion ban will stay in place.
The amendment, if it had passed, would have enshrined abortion access up until roughly 24 weeks.
The failed measure is a success for DeSantis, who enacted the six-week ban and campaigned against the amendment.
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South Dakota voters also rejected an abortion amendment establishing a constitutional right to abortion on Tuesday, while voters in Nebraska passed Measure 434, limiting abortion after the first trimester.
Yet in Maryland, Arizona, and New York, voters opted to enshrine abortion protection into the state’s constitution. Voters in Missouri overturned the state’s near-total abortion ban by passing Amendment 3, which enshrines abortion protection in the state’s constitution and allows the procedure through roughly 24 weeks.
