Former President Donald Trump won a second term in office on Tuesday, defeating Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 race for the White House.
It was a decisive win after polls showed Trump and Harris competing in a razor-close election. But enough Americans in pivotal states were won over by Trump’s focus on inflation and immigration to propel him back to the White House. Trump’s victory also comes after he faced two shocking assassination attempts over the summer.
Early in election night, the nominees picked up their respective strongholds, with Harris winning much of the West Coast and Northeast and Trump clinching victories in the South. But Trump picked up North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, giving him enough momentum as they fought over swing states.
Earlier on election night, Trump was declared winner of the crucial state of Georgia, putting the crucial battleground state back into his column after narrowly losing the state four years ago.
Georgia was one of the most valuable battlegrounds with its 16 electoral votes, and both candidates had spent time there in the closing days of the campaign. Polls had shown a tight race leading up to Election Day.
The former president put to rest a long-simmering feud with Gov. Brian Kemp (R) over the summer, pleasing Republicans who viewed Kemp’s political operation as potentially pivotal to winning the state, as it proved to be..
Trump won Georgia comfortably in 2016, but the state turned blue in 2020 when President Biden carried it by less than 12,000 votes. It was the first time a Democrat won Georgia since 1992.
Georgia has been at the center of fights over election integrity since 2020, when Trump sought to overturn the state’s election results and made baseless claims of widespread fraud. He was indicted in 2023 over his efforts to overturn the results, though a judge has dropped multiple charges. Earlier in the day Tuesday, Former president Donald Trump was declared winner in North Carolina by the Associated Press and Edison Research projections, in his first battleground-state victory of Tuesday night. Trump carried the state twice before, but it was a narrow margin in 2020, and Vice President Kamala Harris was targeting it this time. The projection came as polls were closed almost everywhere in the high-stakes presidential contest — and many other battleground state remained too close to call, many of which Trump eventually won, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.