Text size

After a tight election and long vote-counting predictions, Donald Trump won a landslide victory to return to the White House after a highly unconventional campaign.

Here are some key takeaways from Republicans’ election victory on Tuesday:

When Trump won for the first time in 2016, his opponents often said it was a fluke due to Democratic overconfidence and quirks in the US election system. Not so this time.

With results still being counted Wednesday, Trump was ahead in every state where President Joe Biden flipped out of the Republican camp four years ago, leaving his rival Kamala Harris without any surprise defeats.

Early indications showed that Trump was on track to win not only the state-by-state Electoral College, which determines US presidents, but also the popular vote; This was the first time a Republican won in absolute vote count nationwide in 20 years after George W. Bush. earlier.

Trump will have less control over his authority than he did in his first term.

Republicans are expected to regain control of the Senate, as widely expected.

The House of Representatives remains very close to the decision, and even if Republicans win, they will enjoy the slimmest of majorities since all votes are needed, effectively empowering lawmakers on the margins.

Trump will likely face limited resistance from the Supreme Court, which has a strong conservative majority because of the three justices he nominated.

Ahead of the last election, the Supreme Court voted to shield Trump from prosecution for official actions, effectively blocking Trump from being prosecuted for the gathering of his supporters who violently attacked the U.S. Capitol following his 2020 defeat.

While Trump failed to win a majority in either group, he gained ground in part by winning more Black and Hispanic voters, generally seen as reliable constituencies for Democrats.

Trump won 45 percent of Hispanic voters and 12 percent of Black voters, compared to 32 percent of Hispanic voters and eight percent of Black voters in 2020, according to an NBC News exit poll.

This time, a majority of Hispanic men and 20 percent of Black men voted for Trump, according to the exit poll.

In a display of his Latino appeal, Trump became the first Republican to win Miami-Dade County since 1988 and the first Republican to win overwhelmingly Hispanic Starr County on Texas’ Mexican border since the 19th century.

“The Republican coalition is strong and expanded,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor at Princeton University.

His power over Harris, who would be the first woman and second black president, came despite Trump’s calls for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and the derogatory language he used at one of his closing rallies for Puerto Rico.

Exit polls showed economic problems were a major factor and voters remained concerned about inflation.

Harris did not begin running until July, after Biden withdrew from the race due to growing concerns about his age.

At a closing rally a week before the election, he acknowledged that this was “not a typical campaign” and that many voters were “still learning who I am.”

Speculation immediately turned to whether Biden leaving earlier would improve Harris’ chances or whether he would do better himself.

Harris nevertheless built an enthusiastic base and helped run a ground operation to garner votes, raising significantly more money than Trump.

Harris has repeatedly warned that Trump, who would be the first president to be impeached twice and convicted of a felony in his first term, was a threat to democracy.

Voters brushed aside concerns about ongoing lawsuits against Trump, including special counsel Jack Smith’s handling of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and his mishandling of top-secret documents while out of office.

It is certain that Trump will try to stop the lawsuits filed against him upon his return. His supporters contemplated revenge against Smith and others who challenged him.