Kamala Harris called Donald Trump on Wednesday afternoon and formally conceded the election to him, giving him a warning about the days ahead.
‘She discussed the importance of a peaceful transfer of power and being a president for all Americans,’ a senior Harris aide said.
Harris, during her campaign, repeatedly vowed to a be a president ‘for all Americans.’
She will concede to the nation at Howard University later today – almost 12 hours after the election was called for her Republican rival. Trump is spending the day at his home at Mar-a-Lago.
Kamala Harris formally conceded the election to Donald Trump
Her phone call came shortly after Michigan was called for the president-elect, giving him the third state in the ‘blue wall’ of states that would decide the election.
Trump now has 292 electoral votes to Harris’ 224. It takes 270 to win the presidency.
Democrats were counting on that ‘blue wall’ to give Harris the White House. But Trump won the trio of states – Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Joe Biden won all three in 2020 but Harris wasn’t able to keep them in the Democrats’ corner.
Trump is the first president in over 130 years – and only the second in history – to win a non-consecutive second term.
Exit polls shows his victory came after he made gains with nearly every voting bloc he lost in the 2020 election and put together a coalition of multi-ethnic working-class voters.
And Harris did worse on Tuesday than Biden in the 2020 contest among key voting groups including women, the working class and Latinos.
That is what the numbers from exit polls show.
But the election results also comes down to this: Trump had vision for America while Harris had word salad, voters trusted him more to fix the economy, and the American people thought Biden put the country on the wrong track.
It all added up to Donald Trump overcoming a criminal conviction, indictments, and an assassin’s bullet to return to the White House.
Donald Trump with wife Melania and son Barron on Election night
And Trump did it in a landslide. The election that was predicted to be a nail biter instead was a red tsunami.
Trump didn’t just win the electoral college but the popular vote, garnering 71.2 million votes to Harris’ 66.4 million. Tellingly, Harris garnered less overall votes than Biden in 2020. That year their ticket won 81 million votes.
The popular vote is still being tallied but Trump could be the first Republican president since George W Bush to win it.
