Donald Trump won a second term as president Wednesday after wins in key battleground states, NBC News projects, leaving Democrats wondering what went wrong.
The historic victory avenged Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, which he and many of his supporters baselessly continued to insist was stolen from him.
“I think we just witnessed the greatest political comeback in the history of the United States of America,” Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, Trump’s running mate, said early Wednesday at the campaign’s victory party in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump and Vance spoke before most news outlets had declared him the winner, but the night was, at that point, clearly going in his direction. Trump thanked his supporters for the “extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president.”
Democrats were stunned as battleground state after battleground state went to Republicans. A veteran Democratic strategist said of the pall over the party: “Have you ever been to a funeral? That would be a Mardi Gras compared to this.”
The loss leaves the Democratic Party without a clear leader moving forward and searching for answers about how Trump could have become the first Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years.
“How is it possible that we could lose to this guy? It’s just malpractice,” a Democratic fundraiser said.
Vice President Kamala Harris chose not to address supporters in Washington, D.C., on election night after Trump won Georgia and North Carolina, the first two battlegrounds to fall in the race for the White House.
Cedric Richmond, a co-chair of Harris’ campaign, told the crowd at Howard University that she would not speak publicly until later Wednesday.
“We still have votes to count. We still have states that have not been called,” Richmond said shortly before 1 a.m. ET. “You will hear from her tomorrow.”
The decision to stay quiet accompanied a drastic shift in mood for her campaign aides, her supporters and Democratic officials as vote totals in battleground states suggested an increasingly narrow path to victory.
At Harris headquarters on the campus of Howard, thousands stared at screens in near-silence, appearing stone-faced. No one waved the American flags that were handed out earlier in the evening. The vibe went from joyful and celebratory to worried and anxious.
A few dozen people in the crowd, clearly done with watching the returns, started chanting: “Music! Music!” Soon after, a giant screen playing cable news was muted, and the DJ began playing rap music. Some Harris staffers paced around with blank looks on their faces.
In an ominous development for Democrats, the share of voters identifying with their party hit the lowest mark this century. According to the NBC News Exit Poll, 32% of voters identified as a Democratic, down from 37% four years ago. The exit poll also found the highest level of voters identifying as independent or “Something else” this century (34%). The share of voters identifying as a Republican has moved less, standing at 34% this year.
The two candidates’ supporters split over the main issues facing the country on Election Day, differences that, in part, reflected where they put their focus. NBC News exit polling also showed significant demographic shifts in the two parties’ coalitions.
Among the most pronounced changes: Latino men favored Trump by a 10-point margin, 54% to 44%, after they backed the 2020 Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, by a 23-point spread 59% to 36%.
In a smaller shift — but a sizable one in its own right — Harris held a 25-point edge among Latino women, down 14 points from Biden’s 39-point spread over Trump in 2020.
At the same time, Trump experienced attrition among suburban white women, carrying 51% of them this year, compared with 56% four years ago, according to the exit polls. Harris also got a boost from older voters, taking the 65-plus set 50% to 49%. That reversed Trump’s 5-point 2020 win among senior citizens. Moreover, older voters made up 28% of the electorate, more than the 22% they constituted in 2020.
Most Harris voters rated democracy as their top issue, while most Trump voters said the economy mattered most to them. In all, 35% of voters placed democracy at the top of their lists, while 31% said the economy and 14% said abortion.
Fifty-six percent of Harris voters put democracy first, while 21% named abortion as their highest priority and 13% picked the economy. Fifty-one percent of Trump voters saw the economy as the biggest issue, 20% named immigration, and 12% said democracy.
Harris promised that she would restore abortion rights that were left vulnerable to restrictions by the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. Trump said that abortion decisions belong in the hands of states, where they now reside, but that he favors bans that exempt cases of rape, incest and danger to the life of the woman.
Overall, 51% of voters said in 2020 that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. But now, 66% say that. At the same time, the percentage of voters who believe abortion should be illegal in all cases dropped from 17% in 2020 to 6% this year.
Both candidates and their campaigns expressed confidence in the closing days that they were on track to win.
“The momentum is on our side,” Harris said Monday night at her final rally, in Philadelphia.
“I think we’re going to have a very big victory today,” Trump said as he cast his ballot in West Palm Beach on Tuesday afternoon.
Despite candidates’ sense of success, 72% of voters said in NBC News exit polls that they are either angry about or dissatisfied with the state of the country, with only 26% reporting that they are satisfied with or enthusiastic about it.
There were signs of demographic shifts in the electorate in the early exit polls. Trump’s popularity waned among white voters, while it ticked up among Black and Latino voters. In 2020, 57% of white voters viewed Trump favorably, as did 38% of Latino voters and 10% of Black voters. This year, only 49% of white voters said they saw Trump favorably, while his numbers among Latino and Black voters rose to 42% and 14%, respectively.
