Grover Cleveland finally has some company. Former President Donald Trump cruised to victory on Tuesday night and is on track to win every swing state with votes still trickling in, becoming just the second president to serve non-consecutive terms. Republicans have also retaken the Senate and are favored to complete the sweep by winning the House.
There are plenty of superlatives to describe this election for Trump and the GOP. It is undoubtedly the greatest political comeback in American history. Even without the House result being known, it already looks like the most significant victory for the Republican Party since Ronald Reagan’s 49-state shellacking in 1984. It might be the greatest ever depending on the outcome in the House – even in 1984 the Democrats easily retained the lower chamber.
Things got off to a rocky start for Harris and only got worse throughout the evening.
Early on Democrats were seeing alarm bells in Virginia, which went for Biden by 10 points in 2020. As I highlighted in my election night guide, trouble in the Old Dominion, even if Harris hung on to win there, would likely signal losses in other battlegrounds. With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Trump looks to have cut Biden’s 2020 margin in half and is on track to win more votes there than any Republican presidential candidate ever.
Most polls expected Trump to win Florida easily, but his landslide was another ominous sign for Democrats. After Trump won there by 1.3 points in 2016 and 3.3 points in 2020, he carried the Sunshine State this year by an astonishing 13.1 percent.
In the battlegrounds, it was apparent just a few hours after polls closed that Harris was running significantly behind Biden and even Hillary Clinton’s margins in 2016. While results are still coming in, as of Tuesday morning Harris was underperforming Biden in every single county nationwide – a shocking result that speaks to the magnitude of the country’s rejection of Harris and embrace of Trump.
Trump also appears in a strong position to win the popular vote, becoming the first Republican candidate since George W. Bush in 2004 to do so. While the presidency is decided by the Electoral College and not the popular vote, the fact that Trump won a majority of the electorate is nonetheless enormously significant for several reasons.
First, it indicates a clear mandate for Trump to enact his America First agenda. The 45th and soon-to-be 47th president did not back-door his way into the Oval Office – he won by appealing to broad swaths of the country in red, purple, and blue states alike. Throughout his campaign he promised to be a president for “all Americans,” and that pledge clearly attracted a diverse group of voters from throughout the country.
Along with building on his margins of victory in the former swing states of Florida, Ohio (12 points in 2024 vs eight in 2020), and Iowa (14 points vs. 11 points), Trump ran just six points behind Harris in New Jersey after losing to Biden by 16 there four years ago. In New York, where Joe Biden won by 23 points, Trump cut Harris’s margin to just under 12. Perhaps the most under-the-radar embarrassment of the night for Harris was in her home state of California, which she carried by “only” 17 points after Biden won there by nearly 30 in 2020.
Second, Trump’s popular vote victory is an incredible morale booster for the conservative movement, proving that the country is not permanently shifting leftward as many pundits and “political experts” would have Americans believe. Liberal dreams of an “emerging Democratic majority,” so popular during the Obama years, have been utterly crushed.
Third, and perhaps most personally satisfying for Trump, he proved everyone wrong who said he had a hard ceiling at 47-48 percent of the vote. Even most pundits who predicted a Trump Electoral College victory believed Harris would win the popular vote. But once again the pollsters were wrong – the more voters have seen of Trump, the more they believe he is the right choice to lead the country.
Relatedly, Trump’s resounding victory was a monumental indictment of the left’s campaign of lawfare and slanderous lies against Trump and his supporters. For the past decade, the corporate media, Democrat establishment, and entertainment industry have been full throttle on convincing Americans that Trump is “fascist” and “literally Hitler.” They manufactured two impeachments and an endless stream of hoaxes to undermine him, and when that didn’t work, they tried to impoverish him and throw him in jail.
In the end, none of it worked. The American people saw through the lies and misdirection and chose the candidate who clearly delivered a better record while in office. The left was correct in saying that “democracy” was on the ballot this year – and in Trump’s victory, democracy prevailed.
The next four years will undoubtedly be filled with plenty of challenges and ups and downs for both Trump and the country. But in the wake of what many considered to be the most consequential election in decades, Americans can rest assured that they have a proven leader at the helm.
Shane Harris is a writer and political consultant from Southwest Ohio. You can follow him on X @shaneharris513.