Donald Trump has reclaimed the presidency, defeating Vice President Kamala Harris in a resounding electoral sweep after four years of Democratic control of the White House.

Trump’s victory marked a remarkable return from political exile — a result that was once dismissed as a remote possibility after the Republican standard-bearer lost the presidency in 2020 and attempted to subvert that election, prompting a mob of his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol.

Four years later, Trump improved upon his 2020 performance, reaching beyond his traditional base of support and winning over Latino men and some college-educated voters who previously backed President Joe Biden.

“This will forever be remembered as the day the American people regained control of their country,” Trump told supporters gathered on Election Night in West Palm Beach. “It’s time to put the divisions of the last four years behind us. It’s time to unite.”

Polls showed a statistically tied race entering Election Day. But Trump secured the White House with definitive victories in Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, with other battleground states yet to be called — Michigan, Nevada and Arizona — all trending in his favor. Early Wednesday morning, Wisconsin tipped the balance to Trump, pushing his tally of electoral votes to 277 — more than the 270 needed to win the presidency.

Exit polls showed that economic discontent was a major factor in voter support for Trump. Two-thirds of voters said the economy was in bad shape. And the percentage of voters who said their financial situation was worse now than it was four years ago was higher than that of 2008, during the Great Recession.

One of the central tenets of Harris’ campaign against Trump was that he would pose a fundamental threat to American democracy. That messaging resonated with many, but a divided electorate also listed immigration, crime and reproductive rights as top concerns.

Gayle Trotter, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney and political analyst, had argued that public polls had likely failed to capture Trump’s true popularity and missed the stronger-than-expected showing for the former president.

“I’m confident, I’m very excited, I think Trump is going to over-perform all the polls as he’s done in the past,” Trotter said Tuesday evening while awaiting the results of the election at Trump’s celebration in South Florida. “I think they under-represent the support that he has.”

Harris had planned to address supporters from Howard University in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday but instead sent a top campaign aide out to do so in her place.

“We still have votes to count. We still have states that have not been called yet. We will continue to fight to make sure that every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken,” Cedric Richmond, Harris’ campaign co-chair, told the dwindling crowd on The Yard.

Richmond said Harris would return to Howard on Wednesday “not only to address her supporters but to address the nation.” Harris is expected to officially concede on Wednesday afternoon.

Trump, 78, is the oldest person ever elected president. He will also be the second to serve two non-consecutive terms in the White House, after Grover Cleveland’s return to the Oval Office in 1892.

The extent of Trump’s power will depend in part on whether his Republican Party wins control of both houses of Congress. Republicans took back a majority of the Senate, but control of the House has not been determined.

Yet, regardless of the outcome on Capitol Hill, Trump will return to an office endowed with new protections after the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that a president’s actions are largely immune from criminal prosecution.

Trump is the only convicted felon to win the presidency. He still faces a sentencing hearing in the coming weeks in a New York court after being found guilty by a jury on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a potential scandal ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Trump also faces two federal criminal indictments led by special prosecutor Jack Smith over his handling of highly classified documents in Florida and his role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election results. Trump said on the campaign trail that he would shut down those cases “within two seconds” upon taking office.

Trump campaigned on plans to seek “retribution” against his political enemies, an unprecedented vow to explicitly weaponize the Justice Department. In the final days of the race, Trump also deemed his Democratic opponents “enemies from within,” saying they pose a greater threat to the country than its most powerful foreign adversaries.

On the campaign trail, Trump made promises to organize mass deportations of undocumented immigrants across the United States, to deregulate the fossil fuel industry, to appoint vaccine skeptics to oversee federal health agencies, to devalue the U.S. dollar and to raise tariffs substantially on foreign goods.

His victory comes after a historically turbulent presidential campaign that saw two assassination attempts on his life, and a switch in his general election opponent halfway through the race. Biden, who defeated Trump in the last election, bowed out of the race in July over widespread concerns about his age, giving Harris just over 100 days to mount a campaign.

Miami Herald staff writer Max Greenwood reported from Palm Beach.

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