Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the nation Wednesday to officially concede the 2024 presidential election to Donald Trump.
Harris delivered a speech to the country and her supporters at Howard University in Washington D.C., her alma mater.
“While I concede this election,” Harris said, “I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign.”
“I will never give up a fight for a future where Americans can pursue their dreams ambitions and aspirations,” she said. America, she added, “will never give up the fight for our democracy.”
Harris confirmed she called Trump to congratulate him on his election win, discussing the importance of a peaceful transfer of power with the president-elect. Biden has also called Trump to congratulate him and to invite him to the White House to discuss the transition. Biden plans to address the nation Thursday on the election results, the White House said.
Howard had served as her election night headquarters where Harris had hoped to deliver a victory speech Tuesday night. But as midnight approached on the East Coast and election results trickled in showing victories for Donald Trump, the cheers in the crowd became silent and the Harris campaign turned off its projected broadcasts of CNN. Instead, the DJ blared music from speakers to hype the crowd.
"We still have votes to count. We still have states that have not been called yet. We will continue overnight to try to make sure that every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken," campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond said. "So you won't hear from the vice president tonight. But you will hear from her tomorrow, because she will be back here tomorrow to address not only the HU family, not only to address her supporters, but to address the nation."
Harris’ surest way to 270 electoral votes was through Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, states Trump won in 2016 and President Joe Biden captured narrowly in 2020. But in state after state, including North Carolina and Georgia, Trump outperformed what he did in the 2020 election while Harris failed to do as well as Biden did in winning the presidency four years ago.
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Trump's win against Harris, the first woman of color to lead a major party ticket, marks the second time he has defeated a female rival in a general election.
Harris rose to the top of the ticket after Biden exited the race with less than 100 days until Election day after a disastrous debate with the Republican nominee raised questions about his age and ability. Despite an initial surge of energy and excitement around her campaign, she struggled during a compressed timeline to convince disillusioned voters that she represented a break from an unpopular administration.
Harris focused particularly on reproductive rights, an issue that drew women to her candidacy after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision and states began implementing restrictions on abortions. And while abortion rights measures won in seven states, it wasn't enough get Harris the win.
Trump, meanwhile, sought to court male voters with a hypermasculine approach. At the ballot box, Trump trounced Harris among men while about half of women backed Harris.
Trump ultimately won over voters with grand promises to improve the economy, block the flow of immigrants on the Southern border and his siren call to “make America great again.”
Overall, about half of Trump voters said inflation was the biggest issue factoring into their election decisions, according to evidence from the NBC News Exit Poll.
Nearly half — 45% — of all voters said they were worse off financially than they were four years ago. That was a higher level of dissatisfaction than what registered in exit polls in any recent election going back to 2008, when the election took place amid the financial crisis that propelled Barack Obama to victory. And though the economy is growing, with a low jobless rate and a booming stock market, 2 in 3 voters rated the U.S. economy poorly, a level higher than in 2020, when the country struggled to get in gear during the Covid pandemic.
Harris and Trump ran very different campaigns, with Harris promising to work with people who disagreed with her, while Trump warned about “the enemy within.” Besides abortion rights, she emphasized preserving democratic norms and tackling housing costs and other bread-and-butter economic issues.
Harris refused to be drawn into spats with Trump, when for example he questioned whether she had downplayed her identity as a Black woman. Harris’ mother came to the United States from India while her father is from Jamaica.
Trump characterized Harris as a socialist, though she has a more centrist record, and insulted her intelligence and her qualifications. Harris was San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general before becoming a U.S. senator. Biden tapped her as his running mate after she ended her own campaign for president in 2020.
But as part of the Biden administration, Harris struggled with other issues — the war in Gaza was the main one — over which she alienated many traditional Democratic voters.
By contrast, Trump presented a dark vision of America, and one that fact checkers found filled with exaggerations and inaccuracies. He called migrants “vermin” and charged they were committing violent crimes, made wild accusations about schools helping transgender schools transition without their parents’ consent, and repeated his false claims that he, not Biden, had won the 2020 presidential election. Late in the campaign, a comedian at his Madison Square Garden rally insulted Puerto Ricans with a “floating island of garbage” punchline.
Trump has been found guilty of illegally influencing the 2016 election by making hush payments to a porn actress. He faces federal charges over his efforts to remain in the White House after the 2020 election and state charges in Georgia.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
