Former President Donald J. Trump (R) has been elected to serve as the 47th President of the United States.
The president-elect secured his win early Wednesday morning when Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were called in his favor, bringing his total number of electoral votes to 277, exceeding the 270-vote threshold needed to win the election.
Around 2:30am, president-elect Trump delivered a victory speech to his supporters at Mar-a-Lago promising to “help our country heal,” assuring Americans that “every single day [he] will be fighting for [them].”
Co-chair of the Harris-Waltz campaign Cedric Richmond announced around 1am Wednesday morning — shortly before Trump secured the election — that Vice President Kamala Harris (D) would not be addressing her supporters at this time.
Going into election day, all eyes were on the seven battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Of these states, North Carolina was the first to be secured by Trump, earning him sixteen electoral votes. The first swing state claimed by the Vice President was Virginia, adding thirteen electoral votes to her column.
Several hours passed before any additional battleground races were called by national news outlets, with Georgia going to Trump shortly before one in the morning on Wednesday.
With this, Trump recaptured the former Republican stronghold, which was won by President Joe Biden (D) in 2020 by only a few thousand votes, amounting to just a fraction of a percent.
Minnesota was then called in favor of Harris, awarding her an additional ten electoral votes.
The former president all but secured his position as the president-elect when Pennsylvania was called in his favor shortly after 1 a.m., bringing his total number of electoral votes—based on many news outlets’ calculations—to 267.
Decision Desk HQ called the race in Trump’s favor at 1:21 a.m. following his victory in Pennsylvania, as they had already placed Alaska’s three electoral votes in his column, given that the state has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1996. Based on these calculations, Pennsylvania’s nineteen electoral votes gave Trump the 270 votes needed to clinch the presidential election.
Other news outlets determined that Trump crossed this critical threshold when Wisconsin was called in his favor shortly before 2 a.m., giving him ten more electoral votes and bringing his total to 277.
Trump’s closing arguments in the final days of his campaign focused on issues such as border security and the economy, as well as underscoring the Biden-Harris administration’s record, asking voters if they are better off today than they were four years ago.
Harris primarily focused her closing arguments on abortion and her support for Hispanic Americans. She also emphasized a desire to “turn the page” and frequently labeled the former president as a danger to the country, even likening him to Adolf Hitler.
Despite Trump’s status as the former president, there were originally several other contenders vying for the Republican nomination, including North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, entrepreneur and commentator Vivek Ramaswamy, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.
Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, however, when Haley—who also served as the governor of South Carolina—announced that she would be dropping out of the race following a succession of losses on Super Tuesday.
In states across the country, including Maine, attempts were made to remove Trump’s name from the presidential primary ballot on the grounds that he was disqualified from serving as president under a Civil War-era amendment.
The Supreme Court unanimously halted these efforts, however, with a declaration that states do not have the authority to disqualify candidates for federal offices under the Fourteenth Amendment.
[RELATED: SCOTUS Unanimously Rules That States Cannot Disqualify Trump from the Ballot]
For the first several months of the general election season, Trump was competing against President Biden, facing off against the current White House occupant in a debate hosted by CNN in June.
Shortly thereafter, Biden announced that he would be dropping out of the presidential race, indicating that it was in the best interest of the country for him to do so. Almost immediately after posting a letter explaining his withdrawal on X, the president endorsed Harris as his successor.
[RELATED: Maine Politicians React to Biden Dropping Out of the 2024 Presidential Race]
Although many Democratic leaders had indicated a desire to have a “mini primary” in advance of the party’s August convention, this idea was quickly scrapped following Biden’s endorsement of the Vice President.
Because Harris entered the presidential race in mid-to-late July, she had only a few months to make her case to voters nationwide. Similarly, Trump was required to switch up his campaign strategy on short notice, given that he was now facing off against a new opponent.
Harris and Trump both held multiple events on Monday, closing out their respective campaigns with a flurry of speeches in key battleground states. While Harris chose to hold five events in various locations throughout Pennsylvania, Trump held rallies in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.
Leading up to election night, polling indicated that Trump and Harris were neck-and-neck, with most polls showing just a couple of percentage points between the two candidates.
For example, YouGov’s model on November 1 showed Harris with 50 percent of the nationwide popular vote and Trump with 47 percent.
FiveThirtyEight’s polling indicated that the race was even tighter, with Harris at 48 percent and Trump at 46.8 percent.
As of 2am Wednesday, Trump had a lead of approximately 5 million votes over Harris in the nationwide popular vote.
Early in the night on Tuesday, Decision Desk HQ was reporting that Trump had between a sixty percent and seventy percent chance of winning the electoral college vote, increasing in likelihood to nearly ninety percent as the night continued. After midnight, the former president’s chance of winning the electoral college continued to rise past the ninety percent mark, reaching as high as 95 percent shortly after 1am.
These predictions were ultimately proven true when the former president secured Pennsylvania’s nineteen electoral votes and Wisconsin’s ten early Wednesday morning.
Before the polls opened on Tuesday, millions of voters had already turned in their ballots, including over 42 million people who voted early in-person and another 35 million who mailed in their ballots. Taken together, this represents more than half the total number of votes cast in the 2020 election, according to Newsweek.
Trends in early voting which emerged in the days leading up to the election differed from state to state, with apparent advantages emerging for both Trump and Harris, Forbes reported.
Nevada, for example, saw Republicans participate in early voting a higher rate than Democrats, while the trends were reversed in Pennsylvania.
Nationwide statistics show that Democrats and Republicans early voted this year at almost the same rate, with about 14.8 million ballots being cast by Democrats and 14.1 million by Republicans, representing 37.9 percent and 36 percent of early vote totals respectively. About 10.2 million early votes were cast by unaffiliated or third-party voters.
This is up significantly from 2020, when Republicans made up only 30.5 percent of early voters compared to 44.8 percent of Democrats.
In Maine, more than 370,000 absentee ballots were cast, the second-highest total in the past five presidential elections, led only by 2020 when nearly 515,000 absentee ballots were cast during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Maine Secretary of State’s Office reported at 3pm Tuesday that 373,841 of the 388,383 absentee ballots issued this year were returned. According to WMTW, more than 150,000 voters cast their ballots early in-person.
Although Maine’s votes were still being tabulated when the presidential race was called, most major news outlets had already projected that Harris would carry the First Congressional District, as well as the state overall, while Trump would take the Second Congressional District.
As of 2am Wednesday morning, about 60 percent of ballots statewide had been counted.
President-elect Trump is set to return to the White House on January 20, 2025.
MAGA!!!!
A very welcomed return to sanity.
Let the retribution tour begin and don’t stop till the deep state is nothing more than a hole in the ground with a marker declaring the participants as traders to the constitution and the people.
Thank God.
Great. Win. But Maine is still stuck with the same democrat shlups !
I wonder how the democrats feel about packing the Court now.
” In states across the country, including Maine, attempts were made to remove Trump’s name from the presidential primary ballot.” Perhaps it time for the State of Maine to remove Sheena Bellows from her Secretary of State position for making an illegal attempt to abort President Trump’s candidacy in Maine.
King should switch to the winning team to get the best deals for Maine citizens.
After all he is an INDEPENDENT, committed to what is best for the citizens he represents.
I say chop off the top 4 levels of the cia-fbi-doj, do a forensic audit of all ongoing cases, biden crime family and the 20 shell companies, epstine island, covid, washington insider trading, find where the money for Ukraine really went, demand the j6 sham hearing records and hold the members in contempt till delivered, free j6 political prisoners and give them retributions for the denial of a speedy trial, reclaim any unspent BBB money and then audit, audit, audit. Then on day 2….
It’s not just my imagination but today the air is fresher, my general state of mind more positive than it’s been for years. It’s been a long 4 years, malaise, depression, and worries about war, poverty and crime. I’m absolutely convinced that there was wholesale election fraud with illegals, college students voting twice, and absentee ballots mailed out without being requested to deceased or long gone tenants and residents. Despite all the fraud, Trump still won – by margins much larger than published (if fraudulent Democrat voting is considered)
YMCA ITS FYN TO STAY AT THE YMCA A ! GID BLESS AMERICA! 💪🇺🇸🙌🥳
🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌 bye bye Harry balz ….
YMCA , YMCA A !
Well,….. We saved our Republic, but I’m quite disappointed in the results for the state of Maine,……
I did my part, but it obviously wasn’t enough,…..
“GOD SAVED MY LIFE FOR A REASON!”
President Trump’s Victory Speech on Election Night
Am hoping those two citizens asking Bellows to address the voter registration rates in ME follow through. We’ve got to find a way to remove her.
Meanwhile, tapping my watch, drumming my fingers, how’s that rank choice vote count coming? Another thing that needs to be trashed.
I imagine king is saying “remember what I said about the popular vote”? nevermind, I’m just a knucklehead sometimes. So anyway, looking for a nice independent to replace rino collins in the next round, more to come….
There will be a meeting of the Damariscotta Democrats for Harris this afternoon at 3:00 pm . They will be meeting on the Newcastle / Damariscotta bridge where they have been for months waving their flags for Biden .
At 3:30 sharp , they will hold each others trembling hands , wave their pine tree flags , and summarily jump into the river . Bye Bye .
I hope King thinks about being an INDEPENDENT and working for MAINE and not a party.
How could the second district have voted dem folded golden back in when Trump won that district by a landslide? What’s wrong with you people in that district? Don’t you understand that TRump needs Congress to help him get things done that we are asking for? A bunch of retards that for some reason didn’t want the French named guy but rather have the turncoat.
We placed a number of Republican candidates’ signs in some public areas in Maine where they are permitted in our hometown area of Maine. All our signs were removed. Our Republican candidates’ signs were replaced by us a number of times, but the replacement signs were removed as well. We reported this to the police, and they said they’d be on the lookout for such removals, as such removal violates the law. I can’t prove it as I have no smoking gun, but I do suspect the “tolerant” side (Democrats) as the perpetrators. No Democrat signs or messages known to us were touched by vandals. And the Democrat side calls us fascists, deplorables, garbage and worse. But that’s ok. Neither hypocrisy nor law breaking is wrong if you’re a Democrat.
MAGA OVERLOAD next 4 will be wonderful
Oh happy day! Watch the enemies meltdown; it’s so 😆 hilarious‼️ Will they ever sober/grow up? Watch out Augusta, the Trump train is coming to Maine…as surely as the sun rises tomorrow!
A few days pre election, in the first hour of our first night in our new apartment in Wiscasset, we heard a knock on the front door. Thinking it was a friendly neighbor with, say, a pie, I opened the door only to see a bug eyed, very frantic older woman holding clipboard of names/addresses who asked if I would give her my political affiliation and proceeded on a loud Trump rant. I told her it was a right to keep my vote private. She actually had her foot on my threshold. Good thing I shut the door right in time…Lefties have zero tact, social skills or normal decorum, like handling three year olds in an all out tantrum blitz! A pie may have been a more civilized approach.
Yes, there is a God!!!