What to know about the 2024 election results
- Vice President Kamala Harris addressed a crowd of supporters hours after Donald Trump was projected the winner of the 2024 presidential election. She encouraged her supporters not to lose hope, saying that while she concedes the election, "I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign."
- Democrats are grappling with the magnitude of Harris' loss, with some saying the party has drifted from its onetime identity as the protectors of those left behind to representing party elites and celebrities.
- The Trump transition team is actively working on staffing up. Trump is expected to place a premium on Cabinet nominees without backgrounds in government service, and Donald Trump Jr. is seen as a final gatekeeper for job candidates.
- Republicans will control the Senate, though Democrats were projected the winners of competitive Senate seats in Wisconsin and Michigan. House control remains uncalled.
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Trump’s victory likely upends all the criminal cases against him
Trump’s projected election night win is likely to lead him to a number of other victories in court.
Being elected president will most likely result in the federal criminal cases against him being dismissed, while his state criminal cases could at the least be frozen until after he leaves office.
Justice Department officials have already begun evaluating how to wind down the two federal cases against Trump before he takes office in order to comply with department policy that a sitting president can’t be prosecuted, NBC News reported today, citing two people familiar with the matter.
Record voter gains among Latinos for Trump mainly boiled down to their top issue — the economy
Latino voters took a big right turn in an election dominated by voter outrage over the high cost of food and housing, helping Trump secure a second term in the White House.
Harris finished with a slim majority of support from Hispanic voters, at 53%, while Trump vacuumed up about 45% of the vote, a 13-point increase from 2020 and a record high for a Republican presidential nominee, according to NBC News exit polls.
Trump’s Hispanic vote percentage beat the previous record, set by George W. Bush in 2004, when Bush won as much as 44% of the Hispanic vote. But in 2012, the vote swung heavily left, with 71% of Hispanics voting for President Barack Obama, followed by lower but still significant support for Hillary Clinton in 2016, at about 66%, and then Joe Biden in 2020, at 65%.
Asian Americans favored Harris but shifted right by 5 percentage points
Asian American support for Trump was 5 percentage points higher this election cycle than in 2020, marking a slight shift to the right.
The NBC News Exit Poll of early and Election Day voters indicated that 54% of Asian American voters chose Harris, while 39% voted for Trump. Harris lost 7 points compared to Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) support for Biden in 2020.
Karthick Ramakrishnan, founder of AAPI Data, said the polling shows a continuing shift that began with the 2016 presidential election cycle and Trump’s entry into the political arena.
Europe is ‘very worried’ about a second Trump term
NBC News' Richard Engel joined "TODAY" to talk about the mixed reaction from countries and world leaders to Trump’s being elected the next president of the United States. He said Europe is "very worried," especially when it comes to NATO and his reliability as a leader. Engel also said Ukraine “has the most to lose.”
In Puerto Rico governor’s race, the statehood candidate who’s pro-Trump edges ahead
Jenniffer González of the New Progressive Party, which supports statehood for Puerto Rico, has declared victory as preliminary election results in the governor’s race put her ahead of her main opponent, Juan Dalmau — who emerged as a strong contender after he became the face of a new third-party coalition that merged the minority Puerto Rican Independence Party with the Citizens’ Victory Movement.
“I will be the governor of all Puerto Ricans, of those who voted, of those who did not vote and of those who did not support me,” González, a Republican who is Puerto Rico’s nonvoting delegate in Congress, said in Spanish in a speech late last night. “And although there are still votes to be counted, I know that the trend is clear.”
As of this afternoon, González had 39% of the vote with 91% of precincts reporting, according to the Puerto Rico Elections Commission. Dalmau was in second place with nearly 33%.
Democratic voters wrestle with Harris’ loss to Trump: What went wrong?
For many Democratic voters, Harris’ loss to Trump was disappointing but not surprising, they said in interviews, agreeing that their party hadn’t done enough to talk about the economy and lamenting lingering racism and sexism.
Democratic voters in battleground states say they see many reasons for her defeat: the abbreviated campaign, a lack of economic messaging, a drift too far to the left on social issues, the war in Gaza and bias against Harris because she is a woman of color.
Trump seized on Americans’ economic frustrations while he drew young men and Latino voters, in particular, according to NBC News exit polls.
Leaders of China, Japan and South Korea congratulate Trump
Chinese President Xi Jinping has congratulated Trump, Chinese state media reported, telling him that the world’s two biggest economies “will both benefit from cooperation and lose from confrontation.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning did not confirm reports that the two leaders had spoken by phone.
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who is awaiting a decision from lawmakers next week about whether he will stay in office, told reporters he had spoken with Trump for about five minutes, during which they agreed to meet “as soon as possible.”
He said that it was the first one-on-one conversation he had had with Trump and that he felt Trump was “very friendly.”
“I got the impression that he is the kind of person with whom I can have a frank conversation,” Ishiba said.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol also had a call with Trump, a South Korean official said, amid international concern over North Korea sending soldiers to Russia for possible deployment in Ukraine. “We will work to forge perfect South Korean-U.S. security ties with the new administration,” his office said earlier.
James Clyburn says House Democrats must be ready to serve as Trump's 'loyal opposition'
Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., said that if Trump’s agenda for his second term echoes the plans he laid out on the campaign trail, congressional Democrats will have to be active in their opposition and in laying out alternatives to his proposals.
“If his agenda is anything akin to what his campaign was all about, we are going to be very active, not just as loyal opposition, but we’ll be laying out alternatives to his proposals,” Clyburn said on MSNBC’s “The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell.”
Clyburn also argued that Democrats failed to communicate Biden’s accomplishments during the campaign, allowing voters to mistakenly attribute his accomplishments to Trump.
“Part of the difficulty we had in this campaign is that a lot of things that people attributed to Donald Trump really belonged to Joe Biden, and I don’t think they did a good enough job of delineating that for the voting public,” he said.
Australian prime minister speaks to Trump as ambassador to U.S. deletes comments about him
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he spoke with Trump "to personally congratulate him on his election victory" as Australia's U.S. ambassador deleted comments he had made about Trump.
Albanese said on X that he and Trump talked about the importance of the treaty alliance between their two countries, as well as "the strength of the Australia-US relationship in security, AUKUS, trade and investment."
AUKUS is a trilateral security partnership among Australia, Britain and the U.S. that is initially focused on helping Australia acquire nuclear-powered attack submarines.
Kevin Rudd, a former prime minister who is now Australia's ambassador to the U.S., deleted from his personal website and social media accounts disparaging comments he made about Trump when he was the head of an independent U.S.-based think tank "out of respect for the office of President of the United States," his office said in a statement.
"This has been done to eliminate the possibility of such comments being misconstrued as reflecting his positions as Ambassador and, by extension, the views of the Australian Government," Rudd's office said.
Vance's unlikely political arc from Trump critic to vice president-elect
After an unlikely journey into politics and a transformation from Trump critic to fierce ally, Vance is now set to become the 50th vice president. NBC News' Vaughn Hillyard reports for "TODAY."