Former US President Donald Trump was elected on Wednesday morning as the 47th president after winning several key states, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris.
In the American system, where the presidential election is counted in a series of state-by-state contests, both Harris and Trump were quickly declared winners after the polls closed on Tuesday in states where their parties enjoy clear majority support.
Trump followed through with major victories in those areas, combining his victory in Pennsylvania with wins in Georgia and North Carolina, giving him at least 267 of the 270 electoral votes needed for a majority. Harris would have needed to win all of the remaining states, including Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona.
The state of Wisconsin was declared won by Trump in the early hours of Wednesday.
Trump followed through with major victories in those areas, combining his victory in Pennsylvania with wins in Georgia and North Carolina to get at least 267 of the 270 electoral votes needed for a majority. Harris would need to win all of the remaining states, including Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona.
Additionally, Republicans took control of the 100-member Senate on Tuesday night, but it was not yet known which party would control the US House of Representatives.
Trump claimed victory early Wednesday when he thanked his supporters at a rally in Florida.
“This was a movement like no one had seen before and, frankly, this was, I think, the greatest political movement of all time,” Trump said.
He pledged to “fix our borders” and “fix everything in our country.”
Trump also said he would work toward a “strong, secure, and prosperous America.”
A Harris campaign official told a crowd of her supporters in Washington that she would not address the rally overnight but would speak later Wednesday.
Each state’s electoral system includes different rules for how and when votes are counted, increasing the complexity of how results are reported.
In some states, ballots cast in person before Election Day, or by mail, were allowed to be counted as they arrived, allowing for faster results.
But in other states, those counts didn’t begin until polls closed Tuesday night, while others also allowed ballots to be mailed out until Tuesday, meaning final results in those areas won’t be available until within several days.
The final outcome loomed over the prospect of legal challenges. Both the Trump and Harris campaigns were prepared with legal experts to challenge any wrongdoing they saw.
A victory for Harris would make her the country’s first female president. A Trump victory would make him the first American leader since Grover Cleveland in the 1890s to serve non-consecutive terms.
The next president is scheduled to be sworn in for his four-year term on January 20.
A key foreign policy focus in either the Trump or Harris administration will be US-China relations, including issues such as trade, Taiwan and China’s actions in the South China Sea.
Vincent Wang, dean of Adelphi University’s college of arts and sciences, told VOA Mandarin that China would approach potential presidents differently, including potentially being more aggressive toward the United States if Harris wins.
“China can create some events to give (Harris) a show of force,” Wang said. “After all, the United States is involved in wars in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza. In the Taiwan Strait, China has already led “I think China may expand its gray zone strategy closer to Taiwan as a way to test Harris.”
“If Trump is elected, I think China won’t dare, because it doesn’t go through conscription, it has already said harsh words. If it wakes up today, it could say it’s going to raise tariffs by 200%. If it wakes up tomorrow, it could want to bomb Beijing. So I think this so-called Trump-type deterrent, on the contrary, will make them a little more moderate.”
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