US elections 2024: Donald Trump wins presidency in US election

Former US President Donald Trump has won the US presidential election and will return to the White House, after defeating incumbent vice president and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

A win in the swing state of Wisconsin pushed Trump's campaign into victory with 277 electoral votes compared to Harris's 224 votes, according to the latest figures from The Associated Press. 

The Republican Party has taken back control of the Senate for the first time in four years and the party posted gains in keeping control of the House of Representatives.

With the White House and Congress under Republican control, the party has been given a powerful mandate to lead as they choose, including the appointment of Supreme Court judges.

As final votes are counted, Trump has also pulled ahead in Michigan, considered to be a part of the "blue wall", a political term referring to states which have largely voted Democrat in recent elections.

Voters in the Michigan city of Dearborn, the largest Arab American community in the US, overwhelmingly supported Trump in a clear protest against the Biden administration's handling of Israel's war on Gaza.

Declaring victory before he secured the electoral votes needed, Trump told his supporters that his campaign was "a movement like no one has ever seen before". 

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 [the Islamic State group] in record time.

"I'm not going to start wars, I'm going to stop wars," he added, likely referring to Gaza and Ukraine.

'I'm not going to start wars, I'm going to stop wars'

- Donald Trump

"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 leads in the popular vote, with more than 70 million votes (51.1 percent) so far, while Harris has received nearly 65 million votes (47.4 percent).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was among the first world leaders to congratulate Trump on Wednesday, describing his projected victory on the social media platform X as "history's greatest comeback".

Netanyahu wrote: "Your historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America. This is a huge victory!”

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 and immigration issues, 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 campaign 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 the 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.

Where does Donald Trump stand on Israel, Palestine and the Middle East?

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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 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, which has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians in the enclave and attacked schools, hospitals, mosques and UN shelters.

Squad members re-elected

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.

Tlaib's victory with more than three-quarters of the vote in Michigan's 12th congressional district election came after the Palestinian-American had pointedly refused to endorse Harris in the final days of campaigning.

Omar, the first Somali-born member of Congress, was also comfortably re-elected in Minnesota's fifth district, winning more than three-quarters of the vote against her Republican challenger Dalia al-Aqidi, an Iraqi-born immigrant.

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.