Happy Wednesday! We didn’t get much sleep last night, so please excuse any typos, errors, and rhetorical flights of fancy.
American voters have spoken and have delivered Republicans sweeping victories across the country from the presidential race and beyond. The Tuesday election, which saw former President Donald Trump handily defeat Vice President Kamala Harris, also ushered in a new Republican majority in the United States Senate and will likely enable the GOP to maintain control of the House of Representatives.
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Trump, the president-elect, addressed jubilant supporters early Wednesday morning in West Palm Beach, Florida, after networks projected the Republican nominee would defeat Harris, capping an hours-long election night celebration that finished with a larger than expected victory after a grueling two-year quest for the White House.
“We have a great feeling of love in this very large room,” Trump said to a hall packed with a few thousand (at least) admirers inside the Palm Beach County Convention Center. “We’re going to make you very proud of your vote.”
“America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” the former and future president added, crediting his victory and the GOP takeover of the Senate to the “MAGA movement.”
The Republican ticket carried the Sun Belt battlegrounds of Georgia and North Carolina, then broke through the “Blue Wall” by taking Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It was enough to secure Trump the majority of electoral votes, even as the remaining swing states of Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada remain too close to call—though the margins suggest he could carry all three. Doing so would give Trump 312 electoral votes and the largest Electoral College win for a Republican since 1988.
In the race for control of the Senate, meanwhile, Republicans are on track to pick up nearly all of the winnable seats, meaning the only question left about the GOP majority is how large it will be. As of publication time, Republicans had secured 52 seats. Beyond flipping the West Virginia seat held by retiring independent (and former Democrat) Joe Manchin, Republican Senate candidates defeated Democratic incumbents in Ohio and Montana, and could still do so in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Nevada, where the races are too close to call. The House majority remains up in the air with several outstanding races, primarily in California. But the GOP is well situated to keep a narrow edge there as well, looking stronger than expected in districts, like Nebraska’s 2nd, that had Republicans nervous in the final weeks.
“New York and California were always the road to the majority, and there’s still a giant question mark over California. So I just hope that what I saw there on the ground translates to the ballot,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told Axios.
The flip side to the red wave is the utter defeat for Harris and the Democratic Party. As the vice president’s watch party at Howard University in Washington, D.C., got underway Tuesday evening, the atmosphere seemed a world apart from the broader political discourse. The crowd outside of Frederick Douglas Hall at Harris’ alma mater danced to such songs as “Alright” by Kendrick Lamar. Attendees cheered when CNN called states for Harris and booed when the network added states to Trump’s column.
As more tallies came in, the worse it looked for the Democrats’ chances to retain the White House. In the VIP section near the stage, elected officials and other special guests looked increasingly downcast, and soon the pessimism seemed to spread to the general admission section.
And very early Wednesday morning it was not Harris but her campaign’s co-chair, Cedric Richmond, who finally addressed the crowd to say that the vice president would wait to see all the results and would speak to the nation later on Wednesday. (Indeed, Harris is now scheduled to speak at 6 pm ET.) It was perhaps the grimmest outcome on a dismal night for the Democratic party when, a few hours later, the networks began to call Harris’ must-win states for Trump and eventually declare the former president the victor.
If there was a bright spot for the Democratic Party, it was in North Carolina, where the scandal-plagued Republican nominee for governor, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, lost by nearly 15 points to the Democrat, Attorney General Josh Stein. Stein will succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper to extend the party’s control of that state’s chief executive to 12 straight years.
But at the top of the ticket, it wasn’t particularly close in the Tar Heel State, with Trump appearing to win by a larger margin there than he did in 2020 or 2016. And in that example was the story of the election: Trump and the GOP have come back, stronger than ever.
Notable and Quotable
“Dark MAGA Assemble!”
—Elon Musk, posting on X just before the polls began to close in several states, November 5, 2024.
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