Kamala Harris yet to speak as Trump wins White House
Kamala Harris lost her bid to be the first woman president of America, as Donald Trump won the US Presidential election with a decisive win.
The vice president has yet to speak despite the fact that it was clear Wednesday morning that Trump won in several important swing states.
After Trump’s early election results started to trickle out, Harris cancelled an appearance she had planned for Howard University, Washington DC where she was a student.
The Republican won the battleground states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Wisconsin to win 279 electoral vote to 223. The results of several states have yet to be released.
Early projections showed that Trump would win the battleground states again, even though they had switched back to Democrats for the 2020 elections. In 2016, he defeated Hillary Clinton by destroying the Democrats’ “Blue Wall” in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Trump also beats Harris in the popular vote, making him the first Republican since George W Bush to be in the lead in national polls in 2004.
As predicted, Trump won conservative states across the US while Harris won liberal ones from New York to California.
Her 15-week campaign did not garner enough support across the nation to defeat Trump. Early exit poll results showed that her campaign focused on abortion rights but failed to resonate.
The Democrat has not yet made any comments, but is expected later on Wednesday. According to a senior Trump advisor, CBS’ US partner BBC reported that Harris was expected to call Trump and tell him to accept defeat in 2020.
Cedric Richmond, the campaign co-chairman, announced shortly after midnight that she would no longer be attending.
He said, “We still need to count votes.”
The party atmosphere that had been present at Howard a few hours before was already tense as Trump won two swing states. Lindy Li, a Democratic fundraiser at Harris’s HQ told BBC that the mood in the Harris HQ was “pretty gloomy right now”.
After President Biden resigned from the race, Vice-President Harris (60) became the Democratic Party’s candidate only in July. If she had won, the former California Senator would have been the first black woman, woman of color, and South Asian American to be elected president.
CBS’s exit poll data indicates that the Democratic candidate may have performed poorly with women.
The numbers show that 54% of women voted for her. Joe Biden, however, won 57% of female voters in 2020.
According to Associated Press data on exit polls, Black and Latino voters were also slightly less likely than four years ago to support Harris.
Around 86 millions voters cast their votes early during the most turbulent campaign in recent American History.
The Republican Party enjoyed a resurgence in the United States, winning key battles for Congress in important states and regaining control of the Senate.
The Republicans won two seats from the Democrats in West Virginia, Ohio and Texas. They also defeated a strong challenger in Texas.
The Republicans, who control the House to a narrow margin, are ruled by neither party.
If the Republican Party does gain control of both chambers it will make it easier for Trump’s agenda to be implemented, which includes mass deportations and tax cuts.
Both sides had a large army of lawyers ready to take on any legal challenge after the election.
The law enforcement agencies in the United States were also alerted to possible violence.
CBS reports that on Tuesday about 30 hoax threats involving bombs were made against election-related sites across the country, with more than half in Georgia.