DONALD TRUMP claimed victory in the 2024 presidential election, saying that “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate”. Pennsylvania was called for the Republican shortly after 2am Eastern time. He had already taken a clear lead in the race, having earlier claimed the swing states of North Carolina and Georgia. Kamala Harris’s path to victory vanished, as she badly underperformed Joe Biden’s showing of four years ago.

Ms Harris’s fortunes shrank remarkably quickly. Within a few hours of the first polls closing it had become clear that she was failing to make headway against Mr Trump. It appears that Mr Trump was able to draw support from both urban and rural voters at levels notably higher than in his contest against Mr Biden in 2020.

Mr Trump was speaking during the early hours of November 6th, at Palm Beach County convention centre, in Florida. In the previous days opinion polls had appeared to show that momentum favoured Ms Harris, whereas the former president had appeared tired and frustrated with his campaign. That makes his apparent success all the more remarkable. Republicans also claimed control of the Senate, as had been widely expected, and seemed well placed to take the House too.

Beyond the key battlegrounds, the picture had been similarly dispiriting for the Harris campaign. In Virginia, which Mr Biden won comfortably in 2020, Ms Harris eked out only a narrow victory, though even there she was lagging behind Mr Biden’s performance in suburban counties such as Loudoun, outside Washington, DC. That was a concerning trend—and a hint of her eventual losses in Pennsylvania. Her prospects in other parts of the Midwest, including in Michigan and Wisconsin, where suburban voters were crucial to her chances, looked no better. In Florida, Ms Harris did worse than Mr Biden, who lost by just over three percentage points in 2020.

A pressing question for Ms Harris—and the Democrats more widely—is why they did so poorly. As incumbents in other parts of the world discovered, voters were evidently ready to punish those in office. In addition, expectations that women would turn out in sufficiently large numbers to elect the first female president proved wrong. Mr Trump, meanwhile, appears to have done enough to fire up non-white voters, including Latinos and black male voters, to broaden his appeal beyond his showing in previous presidential elections. As a political comeback story, it is a striking one.■

This story has been updated