US election 2024 live: Donald Trump defeats Kamala Harris to win historic second term as president

Olaf Scholz congratulated Donald Trump on Wednesday. In a post on X, the German chancellor said that Germany and the US will continue to work together to “successfully” promote “prosperity and freedom on both sides of the Atlantic”.

Scholz said:

I congratulate Donald Trump on his election as US president. For a long time, Germany and the US have been working together successfully promoting prosperity and freedom on both sides of the Atlantic. We will continue to do so for the wellbeing of our citizens.”

Amid the congratulations, France and Germany arranged a last-minute meeting of their defence ministers on Wednesday to discuss the results of the US elections and its implications for Ukraine and European defence, reports the Associated Press (AP).

The Italian premier, Giorgia Meloni, also offered congratulations to Trump. According to the AP, Meloni said:

Italy and the United States are sister nations, linked by an unshakeable alliance, common values and a historic friendship. It is a strategic bond, which I am sure we will now strengthen even more.”

More a natural ally of Trump than many European leaders, Meloni in 2022 became the head of Italy’s first far-right-led government since the second world war. She has forged alliances with other right-wing leaders in Europe and has made a mark cracking down on migration.

Many climate figures are horrified by the re-election of Donald Trump as president, citing his past denial of climate change and promise to drill for more fossil fuels. But they also say that the progress of cheap, clean energy is now unstoppable, and that action by states, cities and businesses can continue climate action in the US, as during Trump’s first term. The UN climate summit Cop29, starting next week in Azerbaijan, will be attended by Biden officials.

Christiana Figueres, UN climate chief from 2010-2016, who oversaw the landmark Paris agreement said:

The result from this election will be seen as a major blow to global climate action, but it cannot and will not halt the changes under way to decarbonise the economy and meet the goals of the Paris agreement.

Standing with oil and gas is the same as falling behind in a fast moving world. Clean energy technologies will continue to outcompete fossil fuels. There is an antidote to doom and despair. It’s action on the ground, and it’s happening in all corners of the Earth.”

Bill Hare, climate scientist and CEO of Climate Analytics, said:

The election of a climate denier to the US presidency is extremely dangerous for the world. We are already seeing extreme damages, loss of life around the globe due to human induced warming of 1.3C.

President Trump will not be above the laws of physics and nor will the country that he leads. If Trump follows through with his threat to withdraw from the Paris agreement, the biggest loser will be the United States.”

Gina McCarthy, former White House national climate adviser and Environmental Protection Agency administrator, said:

No matter what Trump may say, the shift to clean energy is unstoppable and our country is not turning back. Our coalition is bigger, more bipartisan, better organised, and fully prepared to deliver climate solutions, boost local economies, and drive climate ambition.

We cannot and will not let Trump stand in the way of giving our kids and grandkids the freedom to grow up in safer and healthier communities.”

Mitzi Jonelle Tan, from Youth Advocates for Climate Action Philippines, said:

Countries like the Philippines are already enduring life-shattering climate impacts. While the fossil fuel industry and leaders like Trump cling to a collapsing system, we cannot give in. We must continue to organise and campaign to bring the end of the fossil fuel era.”

Dr Friederike Otto, co-founder of World Weather Attribution at Imperial College London, UK, said:

Climate change doesn’t care about politics or which party is in government. The US will get hit by stronger storms and hotter heatwaves as long as the world burns oil, coal and gas.

Saying climate change isn’t real or dismantling climate policies won’t change that. I hope local governments will be able to step up in many places.”

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has congratulated Donald Trump on “his impressive election victory”.

Posting on X before the Associated Press had declared Trump the winner, Zelenskyy wrote about his hopes for the US and Ukraine working to put “an end to Russian aggression against Ukraine”.

He wrote:

Congratulations to @realDonaldTrump on his impressive election victory!

I recall our great meeting with President Trump back in September, when we discussed in detail the Ukraine-US strategic partnership, the victory plan, and ways to put an end to Russian aggression against Ukraine.

I appreciate President Trump’s commitment to the “peace through strength” approach in global affairs. This is exactly the principle that can practically bring just peace in Ukraine closer. I am hopeful that we will put it into action together.

We look forward to an era of a strong United States of America under President Trump’s decisive leadership. We rely on continued strong bipartisan support for Ukraine in the United States.

We are interested in developing mutually beneficial political and economic cooperation that will benefit both of our nations. Ukraine, as one of Europe’s strongest military powers, is committed to ensuring long-term peace and security in Europe and the transatlantic community with the support of our allies.

I am looking forward to personally congratulating President Trump and discussing ways to strengthen Ukraine’s strategic partnership with the United States.

Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election sent the dollar soaring, even before his win was officially announced, towards its biggest one-day rise, while cryptocurrency traders pushed bitcoin to a fresh all-time high.

The likelihood that the Republicans would also grab a majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives, giving Trump sweeping powers to cut taxes and impose tariffs on imported goods, was also judged as a positive for the US currency even before some states had given their verdict.

Trump declared victory on Wednesday morning after taking the key swing state of Pennsylvania. At the time, the Republican led his Democrat rival, Kamala Harris, by 267 electoral votes to her 224, with 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. The Associated Press declared Trump the winner at 5.34am EST.

The US currency’s climb began after very early indications of a Republican win in Georgia and gathered pace throughout the day.

Even before the election was called for Donald Trump, world leaders congratulated the former president on his imminent return to office:

• France’s president Emmanuel Macron became one of the first to tweet his congratulations, writing on X: “Congratulations President Donald Trump. Ready to work together as we have done for four years.”

• Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also congratulated Donald Trump, sharing a photo of him and his wife, Sara, with the ex-president. Netanyahu wrote: “Your historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America.”

• Hungarian prime minister and Trump ally Viktor Orbán has welcomed the US election results. “Good Morning Hungary! On the road to a beautiful victory, it’s in the bag,” he said on his Facebook page earlier on Wednesday.

• British prime minister Keir Starmer said: “Congratulations president-elect Trump on your historic election victory. I look forward to working with you in the years ahead. As the closest of allies, we stand shoulder to shoulder in defence of our shared values of freedom, democracy and enterprise. From growth and security to innovation and tech, I know that the UK-US special relationship will continue to prosper on both sides of the Atlantic for years to come,” he said.

• India’s prime minister Narendra Modi offered “hearty congratulations to my friend Donald Trump”, alongside several photos of the two men tightly embracing each other and holding hands. Modi said he was “looking forward to collaboration” between the US and India.

• Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte has congratulated Trump and said he showed “strong US leadership” in his first term in office that strengthened the alliance. In a statement Rutte said he looked forward to working with Trump “to advance peace through strength through Nato”.

• Portugal’s prime minister, Luís Montenegro, Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Irish PM Simon Harris, Charles Michel, president of the European Council, also offered their congratulations.

Republicans have recaptured the US Senate, achieving what was billed in advance as the most attainable goal for the party in this year’s elections.

The GOP regained control after it became clear that the Democrats had lost their one-seat majority in Congress’s 100-member upper chamber.

Republicans gained two Senate seats, as Trump-backed businessperson Bernie Moreno defeated three-term Democratic senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio, and Trump loyalist Jim Justice won the seat once held by Joe Manchin in West Virginia.

Republican incumbents also fought off Democratic challengers in Texas, where Ted Cruz defeated Colin Allred, and in Florida, where Rick Scott won out over Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.

Donald Trump has won the US presidential election, the Associated Press reports, with voters overlooking his divisive speeches, felony conviction and three separate criminal indictments to send the Republican former president back to the White House.

The AP says he has reached the 270-electoral college vote threshold to return to office by winning Wisconsin.

The extraordinary victory will make the 78-year-old New York real estate magnate only the second former president in US history to win the White House after previously losing re-election.

He also becomes the oldest person ever elected to the presidency.

Trump was first elected in 2016, but lost his re-election bid to Joe Biden in 2020, when the Democrat was 77. Trump then spent weeks attempting to prevent his rival from taking office, culminating in the 6 January 2021 insurrection, which saw his supporters attack the US Capitol after Trump addressed them outside the White House.

In the years that followed, prosecutors at the federal level and in the states of Georgia and New York brought felony charges against him, and earlier this year, he was convicted in Manhattan on 34 counts of business fraud, while the other cases have stalled. He was also found liable in a civil court case of sexual abuse.

Trump is bound by term limits, and cannot seek re-election. The only other president to serve two non-consecutive terms was Democrat Grover Cleveland, who was in office from 1885 to 1889, and again from 1893 to 1897.

Donald Trump is poised to win the US presidency after an unexpected sweep through key battleground states.

The former president was set for a return to the White House after a contentious election in which democracy itself had been at stake and which is likely to take the United States into uncharted political waters.

Polls had Trump and Kamala Harris neck and neck for large stretches of the campaign – suggesting a nail-biting election night and potentially days of waiting for a final result. In the end, the Republican nominee took North Carolina surprisingly early, the first battleground state to be called, and later he took Georgia and then Pennsylvania. He was strongly positioned in Arizona and Nevada, other key contests.

As the mood in Kamala Harris’s camp turned to disappointment, a jubilant Trump took to the stage at his Florida watch party around 2am ET to declare “we made history”.

Speaking to chants of “USA! USA!”, Trump told his supporters:

“This was a movement like nobody’s ever seen before, and frankly, this was, I believe, the greatest political movement of all time. There’s never been anything like this in this country, and maybe beyond.

“And now it’s going to reach a new level of importance, because we’re going to help our country. We’ll help our country … we have a country that needs help, and it needs help very badly. We’re going to fix our borders. We’re going to fix everything about our country. And we made history for a reason tonight, and the reason is going to be just that we overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible, and it is now clear that we’ve achieved the most incredible political thing.

“I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president, and every citizen, I will fight for you, for your family and your future. Every single day, I will be fighting for you and with every breath in my body, I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe and prosperous America that our children deserve and that you deserve. This will truly be the golden age of America.”

Here is a round up of some of the key moments of the US election night:

• The swing states still to be called are Wisconsin (10 electoral college votes), Nevada (6), Michigan (15) and Arizona (11). The other states still to be called are Alaska and Maine. Alaska is considered a red state, and its three electoral college votes could deliver Trump the presidency.

• Missouri, Colorado, New York and Maryland all passed measures to protect abortion rights, while in Florida, an effort to roll back a six-week ban fell short.

• Republicans have retaken the majority in the Senate, the Associated Press reported, after picking up seats in Ohio and West Virginia, and fending off challenges to their candidates in Texas and Nebraska. Republicans will control Congress’s upper chamber for the first time in four years. Donald Trump will be in a position to confirm his supreme court justices, federal judges and appointees to cabinet posts.

• The House is still in play, but Republicans hold a strong lead, with 190 representatives to the Democrats’ 168.

• There were decisive victories for Democrats elsewhere in the election. The US will have two Black women serving as senators for the first time in American history, with the election of Lisa Blunt Rochester from Delaware and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland.

• Sarah McBride, a Delaware state senator, also made history as the first out transgender person elected to the US House of Representatives. McBride, 34, won Delaware’s at-large House seat in Tuesday’s general election against the Republican candidate John Whalen III, a former Delaware state police officer and businessman. The House seat, Delaware’s only one, has been Democratic since 2010.

• Trump won in Iowa despite the state’s foremost pollster Ann Selzer on Saturday finding Harris leading by a small amount that was nonetheless within the survey’s margin of error. The finding was viewed as a potential sign of strength for Harris in nearby Wisconsin and Michigan, two swing states that are demographically similar to Iowa. The Trump campaign decried Selzer’s poll as an outlier, which turned out to be the case.