One of the most tumultuous Presidential campaigns in U.S. history remained unresolved in the early hours after Election Day. Votes in critical states were still being tallied in the race between Vice-President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump, with Trump holding an edge in key battlegrounds. If Trump’s lead in the Electoral College foreshadows a victory, the outcome will be interpreted as a rejection of the Presidency of Joe Biden, whom many voters blamed for the inflation that followed the COVID-19 pandemic. In Harris’s unusually short campaign after Biden dropped out of the race, following his disastrous performance in a debate against Trump, she struggled to differentiate herself from her predecessor, and to address discontent among several voting blocs that have traditionally supported Democrats. Political analysts will likely examine electoral data for insights into the movement of some Latino voters toward Trump, and abstentions and third-party votes cast by young and Arab American voters angered by U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza. The morning after the election, the results seemed to echo the outcome of the 2016 race, in which Trump outperformed tight prëelection polls to surpass Hillary Clinton—another Democratic candidate who, like Harris, had attempted to become the first woman President.

By Wednesday morning, the Republicans had also gained control of the Senate, after Bernie Moreno ousted Sherrod Brown, in Ohio, and Jim Justice won the seat previously occupied by Joe Manchin, in West Virginia. A number of races remained unresolved in the Senate and the House, where Democrats held on to hopes of reversing their narrow loss of the chamber in 2022.

If elected, Trump, at age seventy-eight, would become the oldest person to win the Presidency, and the second politician to return to the White House after failing in his initial bid for reëlection. In the four years since he left office, Trump has been convicted of thirty-four felony counts in a New York trial over hush-money payments to an adult-film actress, making him the first former President to become a convicted felon. Trump survived two assassination attempts in the final months of the campaign, including one in which a bullet grazed his ear. As his White House bid wound down, Trump returned to the xenophobia and sexism that have characterized his career in politics, and continued lying about his loss in the 2020 election, refusing to commit to accepting a possible defeat in this one.

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