Vice President Harris is expected to call President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday to concede the 2024 presidential race and is expected to speak publicly, according to two Harris aides.
Her campaign has not yet announced the exact timing of her public remarks, though she’s expected to speak later in the day at Howard University. In the meantime, she is working on her speech, one of the aides said.
President Joe Biden also plans to call Trump Wednesday and also plans to speak publicly about the election results, according to a White House official.
Biden’s reaction to Trump’s victory overall is set to include all of the things Trump never did when Biden won in 2020 — a call to congratulate him, an invitation to the White House and an offer to attend his inauguration, the White House official said.
NBC News called the presidential race Wednesday morning, projecting that Trump won just after 5:30 a.m. ET, capturing 276 electoral votes compared to Harris’ 223.
For his part, Trump declared victory around 2:30 a.m. ET in remarks to his supporters at a Florida election party.
While Nevada, Michigan and Arizona were too close to call on Wednesday morning, Trump carried several critical battleground states where both candidates spent a considerable amount of time on the trail: Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin.
Harris, 60, launched her presidential campaign after President Joe Biden, 81, withdrew from the race on July 21 and endorsed her, his vice president, as the candidate to become the Democratic Party’s nominee. Biden dropped out after his devastating performance in the June presidential debate against Trump after which key members of the party expressed deep concerns about his age as well as his ability to win in the general election and to serve another four years in the White House.
Polls had shown in recent weeks that the race was dead even and Harris had faced a gender gap in which more men, specifically white men, were backing Trump. NBC News’ Exit Poll found that 54% of male voters cast their ballots for the former president, while 44% went for Harris.
The vice president had repeatedly said that she was the “underdog” in the 2024 contest and struggled to distance herself from Biden and his administration and present herself as a change candidate.
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