In the end, it wasn’t even close. A presidential election long forecast to dance on a knife’s edge very quickly turned out to be a rout for Donald Trump.
Instead of the days-long wait for a result that many had predicted, Trump secured enough votes to declare victory at 2:30am local time on the morning after the election. There was no need to cry electoral foul this time, as he did in 2020. Broadcasters confirmed the result soon after.
Trump’s victory did not rest on small margins in a handful of swing states, as was the case when he won in 2016. Instead, the Republican gained support across the electoral map in states both red and blue, sweeping aside many of the conventional assumptions about both his and his party’s limitations. Even in his birthplace of New York state, one of the bluest strongholds in the country, Trump winnowed a 23-point gap down to 11.