Trump claims victory after Fox News projects US presidency win

Republican Donald Trump has declared victory in the 2024 presidential election after Fox News predicted his victory over Democrat Kamala Harris, which will culminate a stunning political comeback four years after leaving the White House.

“America has given us a powerful and unprecedented mandate,” he said early Wednesday to a large crowd of supporters at the Palm Beach County Convention Center.

Other media outlets have not yet announced Trump’s victory in the race, but he appeared on the verge of victory after winning the states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia, and beating him in the other four states, according to Edison Research.

Harris did not speak to her supporters who gathered at her alma mater, Howard University. Her campaign co-chair, Cedric Richmond, addressed the crowd briefly after midnight, saying Harris would speak publicly on Wednesday.

“We still have votes to count,” he added.

The former president has been showing strength across wide swaths of the country, improving on his 2020 performance everywhere from rural areas to urban centers.

Republicans won a majority in the US Senate after flipping Democratic seats in West Virginia and Ohio. Neither party appears to have an advantage in the battle for control of the House of Representatives, where Republicans currently hold a slim majority.

Trump entered Election Day with a 50-50 chance of regaining the White House, a marked shift from January 6, 2021, when many pundits declared his political career was over. On that day, crowds of his supporters stormed Congress in a violent attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Trump received more support from Hispanics, traditionally Democratic voters, and low-income households that have felt the impact of rising prices most keenly since the last presidential election in 2020, according to Edison exit polls.

Trump won 45% of Hispanic voters nationwide, trailing Harris at 53% but up 13 percentage points from 2020.

About 31% of voters said the economy was their top issue, and they voted for Trump by a margin of 79% to 20%, according to exit polls. About 45% of voters across the country said that their family’s financial situation is worse today than it was four years ago, and they preferred Trump by 80% to 17%.

Global investors were increasingly counting on a Trump win late Tuesday. U.S. stock futures and the dollar rose, while Treasury yields rose and Bitcoin rose — all of which analysts and investors pointed to as trades favoring a Trump victory.

At Howard University, where a large party was held for Harris, supporters were leaving in droves, anticipating that the vice president would not address the crowd Tuesday night.

Cedric Richmond, Harris’ campaign co-chair, briefly addressed the crowd and said Harris would not speak. “We still have votes to count,” he added. “We still have states that have not been called yet.”

Trump was getting a larger share of the vote than he had four years ago in almost every corner of the country.

By 12:30 a.m. ET, officials had nearly completed their vote counts in more than 1,600 counties — about half the country — and Trump’s share was up about 2 percentage points from 2020, reflecting a broad, if not particularly profound, shift in Americans’ support. For his party. The president they overthrew four years ago.

He has improved his numbers in suburban counties, rural areas and even some large cities that have historically been bastions of Democratic support. In high-income and low-income counties; In places where unemployment was relatively high and in places where unemployment has now reached record levels.

Harris relied on large margins among urban and suburban voters, but her support in those places lagged significantly behind that of President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

Nearly three-quarters of voters said American democracy is under threat, according to exit polls, highlighting the depth of polarization in a country where divisions have become more apparent during a fiercely competitive race.

Trump has used increasingly apocalyptic rhetoric while raising unfounded fears of a lack of confidence in the electoral system. Harris warned that Trump’s second term would threaten the foundations of American democracy.

Hours before the polls closed, Trump claimed on his website Truth Social, without evidence, that there was “a lot of talk about mass fraud” in Philadelphia, echoing his false claims in 2020 of fraud occurring in large, Democratic-dominated cities. In a later post, he also confirmed there was fraud in Detroit.

“I’m not responding to this nonsense,” Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey told Reuters.

“There is absolutely no truth to this claim,” Philadelphia City Commissioner Seth Bluestein responded to Channel X, saying.

Trump voted earlier near his home in Palm Beach, Florida.

“If I lose the election, and if it is a fair election, I will be the first to admit it,” Trump told reporters.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a prominent Trump supporter, watched the results at Mar-a-Lago with Trump.

Millions of Americans waited in orderly lines to cast their ballots, with scattered disturbances reported in a few states, including several discredited bomb threats that the FBI said appeared to emanate from Russian email domains.

Tuesday’s vote capped a stunning race marked by unprecedented events, including two assassination attempts against Trump, Biden’s surprise withdrawal and Harris’ meteoric rise.

No matter who wins, history will be made.

The first female vice president, Harris, 60, will become the first Black woman and South Asian American to win the presidency.

Trump (78 years old), the only president to be impeached twice and the first former president to be criminally convicted, will also become the first president to win two non-consecutive terms in more than a century.