Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris will deliver a speech conceding defeat in the US presidential election to Republican candidate Donald Trump, the White House said.
Harris will deliver the speech at 4 pm local time (2.30 am IST on Thursday) at Howard University in Washington.
On Wednesday, the vice president had cancelled her election night speech after it became clear that former president Trump would cross the magic mark of 270 electoral college votes and return to the White House as the 47th president of the United States.
Despite polls predicting that the election was too close to call, Trump steamrolled Harris and went on to pick up key swing states, including Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin, setting the stage for his return to the Oval Office.
He also won the popular vote, becoming the first Republican to do so in 20 years, after George W Bush in 2004.
Delivering a victory speech to a room full of roaring supporters in Florida, Trump said “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate”.
Powerful, Unsuccessful Campaign
Harris, who had 224 electoral college votes as of Wednesday night against Trump’s 280, ran a powerful campaign in her bid to become the first woman president of the United States. The 60-year-old former prosecutor also made history as the first black woman and the first South Asian woman to get the presidential nomination from a major party. She raised $1 billion in less than three months and was endorsed by celebrities like Taylor Swift, Beyonce and Oprah as well as several Republicans.
But her campaign failed to overcome Trump and his MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement’s messaging around the economy and immigration, which proved to be key concerns for voters going into this year’s elections. Several polls showed that people felt they were better off under Donald Trump during his presidency (2016-2020) than they were under the Joe Biden-Harris administration.
Experts said that as the vice president in an unpopular administration, Harris could not successfully portray herself as the candidate of change, which is something Trump did very effectively. Asked during a daytime show about what she would do differently from Biden, Harris had said, “Not a thing comes to mind”.
Many felt Harris was also handicapped by the fact that she had only a few weeks to campaign after Biden dropped out of the race in July. Trump, on the other hand, had been getting his message out to voters since before the 2016 elections and continued to occupy a space in the national consciousness in the US even after leaving office in 2020.
Record Setter
At 78, Trump is the oldest person to be elected the president of the US and only the second to be elected for two non-consecutive terms – after Grover Cleveland in 1897. The former president survived an assassination attempt during the campaign and, after the victory, described the political movement helmed by him as the greatest of all time.
“We are going to help our country heal, fix our borders, we made history for a reason tonight. We have achieved the most incredible political win. I want to thank the American people. I will fight for you and your family with every breath in my body,” he said.
Stock markets surged in the US and several other countries, including India, after his victory.
(With inputs from Reuters)
