US elections 2024: Trump set to reclaim White House in heated race
Former President Donald Trump is poised to reclaim the White House in his run against Democrat challenger Kamala Harris, declaring his victory in a speech early on Wednesday just shy of the necessary electoral votes.
His Republican Party is also projected to take control of the Senate for the first time in four years.
Trump currently holds 267 electoral votes compared to Harris's 224 votes, according to the latest figures from the Associated Press.
Several of the battleground swing states are still too early to call. However, Trump has taken the key state of Pennsylvania and is leading in Michigan and Wisconsin, often considered to be a part of "the blue wall", a political term referring to states which have largely voted Democrat in recent elections.
Speaking in the early hours of Wednesday from the West Palm Beach Convention Center in Florida, Trump told his supporters that his campaign was "a movement like no one has ever seen before".
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Trump said his first term was one where the United States was not involved in armed conflicts, saying: "We had no wars, for four years we had no wars. Except we defeated Isis in record time."
"I'm not going to start wars, I'm going to stop wars," he added, likely referring to Gaza and Ukraine.
"This will truly be the golden age of America," he said. "This is a magnificent victory for the American people that will allow us to make America great again."
Trump is leading in the popular vote, with just over 65 million votes, while Harris has received nearly 61 million votes so far.
The Harris campaign announced that the vice president would not be speaking on election night.
Economy, immigration and Gaza
The 2024 presidential election was dominated by economic issues and the country's immigration crisis, with the backdrop being the unpopular Israeli war on Gaza which the Biden-Harris administration has backed militarily and diplomatically.
Harris and the Democratic Party focused much of their outreach on the issues of abortion and the "state of democracy" in the country, disenchanting many Arab American and Muslim voters who wanted to see change in White House's policy on the war.
As voting wound down in the US on Tuesday evening, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered in New York City, calling the elections a farce.
“Remember Hiroshima. Remember Vietnam. Democratic Party, we know what side you’re on!” they chanted.
In the state of Michigan, where Harris had been expected to win, Trump is currently leading with 52.4 percent of the vote to Harris's 45.8 percent.
In Dearborn, the largest majority Arab American city, early results showed a stunning victory for Trump with some commentators decrying how the Democrats had ignored Arab American voters.
In the last few weeks of the election, Trump had received the endorsement of several Muslim leaders in Michigan, who said their support for the former president was due to outrage over the US backing of Israel's war on Gaza.
Trump himself is pro-Israel and has criticised Harris and President Joe Biden for hindering Israel's war efforts. But at the same time, Trump has vowed that if he were to be elected, he would bring a swift end to the war.
On Tuesday night, at an Arab Americans For Trump election night party, Dearborn Heights mayor Bill Bazzi told Middle East Eye: “One of the biggest reasons I endorsed Trump is because he’s been preaching the same thing: stop the war."
Despite mass outrage over the war, the Green Party's Jill Stein, who was running in the presidential election as a third-party candidate, fell short of achieving the party's goal of winning five percent of the vote - a threshold that would have allowed the Green Party to receive public funding.
Stein ran a presidential campaign largely focused on a commitment to end the war on Gaza and impose an arms embargo on Israel after Israel killed more than 43,000 Palestinians in the enclave and attacked schools, hospitals, mosques and UN shelters.
Meanwhile, outside of the presidential election, the remaining members of the "Squad", leftwing members of Congress who faced a dilemma in responding to the war on Gaza, were able to win reelection.
Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar easily defeated their Republican opponents, securing their fourth terms in office.
In the Senate, the Republican Party gained a majority of 51 seats after flipping two seats that were previously Democrat.
Republicans also currently lead with a majority of seats in the House of Representatives. At least 218 seats are required to have a majority in the House.
This is a developing story and will be updated...
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