Donald Trump has won the 2024 election, with AP declaring he has the required 270 electoral college votes to become the 47th US president.
Trump becomes the first convicted criminal to win the White House after winning the state of Wisconsin.
Kamala Harris fell behind in all of the battleground states on election day, evaporating any path to victory the Democratic candidate had.
Votes are still being counted as America wakes up (it’s just gone 5am on the west coast and 8am on the east coast), so before we jump across here to continue our coverage on our Thursday blog, here’s a quick wrap of what’s happened so far:
The president-elect: Donald Trump during his victory speech at Palm Beach, Florida.Credit: AP
A US citizen living in Australia whose overseas ballot for the key swing state of Pennsylvania is being challenged says he feels “delegitimised” by the attempt to discount his vote.
David Leyden, 30, from Toorak, in Melbourne’s inner south-east, is registered to vote in Pennsylvania’s Washington County.
David Leyden, 30, from Toorak, was registered to vote in Pennsylvania’s Washington County.
He found out on Tuesday morning his mail-in vote was one of more than 4000 overseas ballots being disputed across 14 counties by right-wing groups, as first reported by US outlets Votebeat and Lancaster Online.
Pennsylvania state law requires someone to be a resident of the state to vote, but the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says the challenges are illegitimate because federal law allows citizens living overseas to vote in the last place they lived.
Leyden, who voted for Kamala Harris, said he plans to write a submission to protest against the decision.
“My postal vote is seen as just this data point,” he said. “People like myself are just Americans living overseas looking to participate in the democratic process.”
Abortion was a hot-button issue in this election – the first since the Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade decision in 2022 – and it was on ballot papers in 10 states, alongside the presidency.
Voters in Missouri cleared the way to undo one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion bans in one of seven victories for abortion rights advocates, while Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota defeated similar constitutional amendments, leaving bans in place.
Abortion rights amendments passed in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland and Montana. Nevada voters also approved an amendment, but they’ll need to pass it again it in 2026 for it to take effect. Another that bans discrimination on the basis of “pregnancy outcomes” prevailed in New York.
The abortion landscape underwent a seismic shift after the Supreme Court’s decision ended the nationwide right to abortion and cleared the way for state-based bans.
AP
The election was called for Donald Trump after he won a majority – at this stage 277 – of Electoral College votes.
A quick recap on the way presidential elections work: the winning candidate in each state receives that state’s Electoral College votes (the number of Electoral College votes is based on population, and can vary between three and 54 per state).
Donald Trump walks out to claim victory.Credit: Getty Images
That means a candidate can lose the popular vote but win the election based on the Electoral College votes, or vice versa.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College vote – and the presidency – Donald Trump, while Joe Biden won both votes in 2020.
This time around it appears Trump will win both. On AP’s count, Trump is currently leading Harris by 4.9 million votes nationwide.
Our Morning Edition podcast episode on what went right for Donald Trump – and what went so wrong for Kamala Harris – is now live.
In the episode, digital foreign editor Chris Zappone says it’s possible the election was less about democracy or freedom, as articulated by Harris, and a pure economic play.
“The consumer, the citizen, is just unhappy and uncomfortable, and they want change and Trump, for all of his disruption – for a lot of people in their own lives, maybe they didn’t feel that disruption, and they just associated him with lower prices and an easier time at the grocery store,” Zappone says.
Australian mining magnate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest says Donald Trump is an economic pragmatist who will keep the “engine rolling” on the green energy transition.
The Fortescue chairman said Trump has been positive about both green energy and fossil fuels during the election campaign.
Forrest said the biggest recent surge in investment in the American economy was in renewable energy. “He [Trump] is going to keep that economic engine rolling,” he predicted.
“Will he lean forward as much? I don’t know. But remember, he’s an economic pragmatist, so he’s going to follow the money, and the money is going into green energy simply because it’s more competitive. I don’t expect that to change,” he said.
Forrest was speaking after the company’s annual general meeting in Perth on Wednesday, prior to the election being called for Trump.
When Donald Trump first entered the White House in 2017, he had no political experience and little knowledge of the levers of federal power. His agenda was stymied by Congress and the courts, as well as senior staff members who served as guardrails.
That will not be the case when Trump returns to Washington in early 2025 – there will be far fewer checks on him as he enacts his sweeping plan to transform America.
Trump supporters celebrate an extraordinary victory.Credit: AP
Why will he be able to enact his vision?
Firstly, the Republicans have already claimed back the Senate and may yet also win a majority in the House, providing an easier path through Congress for his proposals.
Trump’s Republican critics in Congress have largely been defeated or retired, and the US Supreme Court, with three Trump-appointed justices, issued a ruling earlier this year affording presidents broad immunity from prosecution.
Trump has also vowed to bring with him loyalists who will enact his agenda, no questions asked, and who will arrive with hundreds of draft executive orders, legislative proposals and in-depth policy papers in hand.
His agenda includes plans to launch the largest deportation effort in the nation’s history, to use the Justice Department to punish his enemies, to dramatically expand the use of tariffs and to pursue a zero-sum approach to foreign policy that threatens to upend longstanding foreign alliances. That means the future of NATO is again in doubt.
In terms of his criminal proceedings, when he becomes president on January 20, Trump could appoint an attorney-general who would erase the federal charges against him.
With AP
The women didn’t win it.
Despite high hopes that women, particularly college-educated women and young women, would turn out in numbers big enough to win the election for Kamala Harris, America has passed on its second historic opportunity to elect a female president.
For the second time the US electorate has turned its back on a female presidential candidate.Credit: Marija Ercegovac
If we thought the desolation in 2016 was bad, when a fresher Donald Trump trounced the highly qualified Hillary Clinton, it is worse now.
The dire consequences of abortion bans for women’s health are now evident, and will continue under a Trump presidency.
Apart from being a convicted felon, Trump has now been accused by about 27 women of sexual misconduct.
The fact that this barely rated a mention on the election trail is deeply dispiriting.
But it seems perfectly apposite – because it’s clear that the critical mass of American voters didn’t care.
Read Jacqueline Maley’s full analysis here.
This is Donald Trump’s second victory in a US presidential race, but this win comes with several firsts for the US.
For starters, Trump is the first person convicted of a felony to be elected president. He is also the first former president to return to power since Grover Cleveland won the White House in the 1892 election. At 78, Trump is also the oldest person elected to the office.
Donald Trump, pictured with his wife Melania Trump and their son Barron, after claiming victory.Credit: Bloomberg
His vice president, 40-year-old Ohio Senator JD Vance, will become the highest-ranking member of the Millennial generation in the US government.
After Trump reluctantly left the White House in early 2021 following the Capitol riots, Democrats – who at the time controlled the House – impeached him for his role in the insurrection. That made him the only president to be impeached twice. (The Senate later acquitted him, with many Republicans arguing that he no longer posed a threat because he had left office.)
Trump also faces sentencing later this month after a New York jury found him guilty in May of 34 felony charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex. His victory poses questions about whether he will ever face punishment.
With AP
Zelensky could do little more than put on a brave face following Trump’s victory (see previous post), but CNN’s political commentator Van Jones has put a spotlight on how this victory will be received outside the US.
He pointedly referenced Ukraine’s ongoing war with Russia among other examples of issues of global importance that could well be changed by a second Trump presidency.
American and Ukrainian flags placed in honour of fallen servicemen flutter in the wind in front of statue in central square, in Kyiv, Ukraine on US election day.Credit: AP
Jones, a progressive commentator, said the election results would not be well-received in many places around the world.
“If you are a soldier in Ukraine, watching an ever more aggressive Russia, you are very nervous tonight,” Jones said.
Original URL: https://www.smh.com.au/link/follow-20170101-p5ko7y