Donald Trump to become U.S. president again | CBC News

THE LATEST: 

• Wisconsin projection puts Donald Trump over the top in presidential race.
• Trump also won battleground states Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania.
• Harris is expected to speak Wednesday.
• The current electoral vote tally is 276 for Trump and 223 for Harris.
• Republicans reclaim Senate, with House control still uncertain.
• Abortion rights activists hailed ballot measure wins in some, but not all, states. 

Republican Donald Trump will become the 47th president of the United States after beating Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in the election to complete a stunning political comeback.

Trump, 78, is the first person to win two non-consecutive presidential terms since the late 1800s and the first to ever hold the nation’s highest office as a convicted felon.

The victory was sealed when swing state Wisconsin and its 10 electoral college votes were called for Trump by the U.S. networks and the Associated Press just after 5:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday, putting him over the necessary 270 electoral college votes needed to win the presidency.

Trump took Wisconsin for the second time in three elections after narrowly losing it to Joe Biden four years ago.

This time, Biden bowed out of the running after a disastrous performance in a rare June debate, part of a remarkable election season in which Trump survived an assassination attempt. While concerns about Biden’s age and capacity to handle the job were paramount, Trump will be the oldest president upon inauguration on Jan. 21, 2025.

Wisconsin was among a haul of swing state victories projected for Trump, following wins in Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

“It is now clear that we’ve achieved the most incredible political thing. Look what happened. Isn’t this crazy?” Trump told cheering supporters after the Pennsylvania result, at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., just before 2:30 a.m. ET. “I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honour of being elected your 47th president.”

Harris, 60, is expected to address supporters and the nation sometime on Wednesday. 

WATCH l VP-elect Vance celebrates ‘incredible journey’ to victory:

J.D. Vance says Trump made ‘greatest political comeback in the United States of America’

Donald Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, celebrated their election night success after several battleground states were called for Trump, promising to lead ‘the greatest economic comeback in American history.’

In a result with worldwide reverberations, enough American voters overlooked Trump’s turbulent first time — he was twice impeached by the Democratic-led House, and his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after he promoted false claims of widespread voting fraud.

Trump, 78, faced criminal indictments related to that post-election period, as well as a real estate fraud case in New York that led to a conviction earlier this year. Sentencing is due to take place in that case later this month.

Trump’s improbable comeback carries implications at home and abroad, from the wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East, to the bargaining tables where America’s allies face tough conversations on defence spending and trade.

Canada risks being hit harder than most from Trump’s threat of a 10 per cent tariff on all imported products.

Inflation, border concerns for voters surveyed

Trump ultimately won over voters with grand promises to improve the economy, block the flow of immigrants on the southern border and with his siren call to “make America great again.” He also appealed to religious voters in both parties by seizing on the Democrats’ support for the transgender community.

After Trump’s declaration of victory, the American dollar surged and U.S. stock futures hit record highs as investors bet on lower taxes and higher interest rates.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron, Western leaders who Trump sometimes criticized during his first term, were among the world leaders congratulating Trump by Wednesday morning. They were joined in offering congratulations by, among others, India’s Narendra Modi, Recep Erdogan of Turkey and Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose phone call with Trump in 2019 was the centrepiece of his first impeachment on Capitol Hill, did so as well.

“I appreciate President Trump’s commitment to the ‘peace through strength’ approach in global affairs,” Zelenskyy said on X. “This is exactly the principle that can practically bring just peace in Ukraine closer.”

On foreign policy, Trump has pledged to fundamentally alter the U.S. relationship with NATO and to resolve the Ukraine war with possible peace talks that might require Kyiv to cede territory. Trump has expressed concern with the amount of U.S. aid to Ukraine, though in many cases that money supports U.S. companies involved in arms and defence production.

Overall, though, domestic concerns weighed heavily for U.S. voters. About half of Trump voters said inflation was the biggest issue factoring into their election decisions. About as many said the same for the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 115,000 voters.

At the same time, Black and Latino voters appeared slightly less likely to support Harris than they were to back Biden four years ago, according to AP VoteCast. About eight in 10 Black voters backed Harris, down from the roughly nine in 10 who backed Biden. More than half of Hispanic voters supported Harris, but that was down slightly from the roughly six in 10 who backed Biden in 2020.

Exit polls of voters also illustrated a significant gender gap in several states, with Harris enjoying a double-digit margin among woman voters and Trump enjoying large margins from male voters.

On the economy, Trump said he would impose sweeping tariffs on imported goods and on specific companies and countries. He pledged to end taxes on tips and overtime, to make emergency generators tax-deductible in states hit by natural disasters, to lower corporate tax rates and to open federal lands to foreign companies and housing. He also vowed to undo much of Biden’s climate change work.

Trump was also ahead in the popular vote, with over 51 per cent to Harris’s 47 per cent, although results in western states that are reliably Democratic could reduce that margin. Still, Trump had never reached even 48 per cent in his two previous presidential runs.