Kamala Harris has lost her bid to become America’s first woman leader, as her Republican rival Donald Trump surged to a decisive victory in the US presidential election.
The vice-president is yet to speak, despite it becoming clear by Wednesday morning that Trump had secured wins in several key swing states.
Harris cancelled her expected election night appearance at Howard University in Washington DC, where she was an undergraduate, after Trump gained momentum as early results began to trickle in.
The Republican swept the key battleground states – racking up wins in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Wisconsin – to claim 279 electoral votes to 223. Several states are yet to be announced.
Early projections revealed fairly quickly that the key battleground states, which had swung back to the Democrats in the 2020 election, would be won by Trump again. He defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 by demolishing the Democrats’ so-called “Blue Wall” of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Trump is also beating Harris in the popular vote – the first Republican to lead nationally since George W Bush in 2004.
As expected, Trump stormed to victory in conservative strongholds across the US, while Harris won liberal states from New York to California.
But her 15-week campaign failed to galvanise enough support to defeat Trump across the country – with early exit poll data showing her campaign, which had included a focus on abortion rights, failing to resonate.
The Democrat is yet to offer any remarks but is expected to speak later on Wednesday. A senior Trump adviser told the BBC’s US partner CBS that they expected Harris to call the president-elect to concede defeat – which Trump refused to do in 2020.
The vice-president was due to address supporters on Tuesday night, but campaign co-chairman Cedric Richmond announced shortly after midnight on that she would not attend.
“We still have votes to count,” he had said at the time.
The party-like atmosphere of a few hours earlier at Howard had already turned sour as two swing states were called for Trump. At Harris HQ, Democratic fundraiser Lindy Li told the BBC the mood was “pretty grim right now”.
Vice-President Harris, 60, only became the Democratic Party candidate in July, after President Joe Biden withdrew from the race under pressure from within the party. Had she claimed victory, the former California senator would have become the first woman, black woman and South Asian-American to win the presidency.
But CBS exit poll data suggests that the Democratic nominee may have under-performed with women.
Some 54% of female voters cast their ballots for her, the numbers indicate. But Joe Biden won the support of 57% of women in 2020.
Black and Latino voters also appeared slightly less likely to support Harris than they were to back Biden four years ago, according to Associated Press exit poll data.
About 86 million voters cast their ballots early during one of the most turbulent campaigns in recent American history.
The Republican party enjoyed a resurgence across the country, winning a number of key congressional battles in key states and taking back control of the Senate.
The Republicans wrested two seats in West Virginia and Ohio from the Democrats and saw off a stiff challenge in Texas.
Neither party seemed to have an overall edge in the House, which Republicans narrowly control.
If the party does regain control of both chambers, it would make it easier for Trump to push through his agenda – which includes mass deportations of illegal migrants and sweeping tax cuts.
Both sides had armies of lawyers on standby for legal challenges on and after election day.
Law enforcement agencies nationwide were also on high alert for potential violence.
About 30 hoax bomb threats targeted election-related locations nationwide on Tuesday, more than half of them in the state of Georgia alone, reports CBS.
North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his twice-weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.