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Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world
Kamala Harris called Donald Trump to concede the 2024 presidential election on Wednesday afternoon, after the former Republican president scored a stunning victory to secure another four years in the White House.
A senior Harris campaign aide confirmed the Democratic vice-president had called the president-elect to congratulate him.
The aide provided few details of the call, saying only that Harris had “discussed the importance of a peaceful transfer of power and being a president for all Americans” with Trump.
Trump’s campaign also confirmed the conversation, saying the two candidates had “agreed on the importance of unifying the country”.
The statement from the spokesperson Steven Cheung said Trump had noted Harris’s “strength, professionalism and tenacity throughout the campaign”.
Harris is scheduled to address the nation from Howard University, her alma mater in Washington, DC, later on Wednesday.
The vice-president had originally been expected to speak to a large crowd of supporters at the historically Black college on Tuesday night. But she did not appear at her own election night party after vote counts made it clear that she was on course to lose to her Republican rival.
Trump was declared the winner early on Wednesday morning after sweeping critical battlegrounds in the south and industrial Midwest and securing the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the White House. But on Wednesday he also remained on track to win the popular vote, something no Republican has done in two decades.
“America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” Trump said in a victory speech in the early hours of Wednesday morning, predicting a “golden age” for the US under his leadership.
Harris was far from the only Democrat to suffer defeat at the ballot box on Tuesday. The Democratic party will cede control of the US Senate after Republicans successfully flipped three seats in West Virginia, Ohio and Montana.
Control of the House of Representatives still hangs in the balance, with dozens of races left to be called, but Republicans remain bullish on their chances of holding on to the lower chamber of Congress.
That would give Trump’s party a “unified government”, with control over the White House, Senate and House, and wide latitude to push through the president-elect’s legislative agenda.