Former President Donald Trump has won the 2024 presidential election, as a coalition of evangelical, pro-life Christians, parents, Hispanics, and others carried him to victory over Vice President Kamala Harris and into a second term he promised will become “the golden age of America.”

President Trump outperformed every metric of the 2016 and 2020 elections as he held traditional Republican states, prevailed in a majority of battleground states, and raised a red column deep inside the Democrats’ blue wall. Trump exceeded the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency by dominating the swing states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, and Wisconsin. Although Trump held a lead in Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada, none had officially been called as of this writing. If trends hold, Donald Trump may also become the first Republican presidential candidate to win the popular vote since 2004.

“This will forever be remembered as the day the American people regained control of their country,” President Trump told an enthusiastic crowd of supporters at the West Palm Beach Convention Center around 2:30 Wednesday morning.

At one point during his victory remarks, the president turned mystical. “Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason, and that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness. And now we are going to fulfill that mission together,” said Trump. “I will bring every ounce of energy, spirit, and fight that I have in my soul to the job that you’ve entrusted to me.” 

“We just witnessed the greatest political comeback in the history of the United States of America,” said Vice President-Elect J.D. Vance as the crowd chanted. “Under President Trump’s leadership, we’re never going to stop fighting for you. … We’re going to lead the greatest economic comeback in American history.” Trump later praised the Ohio senator as “a good choice” for his ticket.

Kamala Harris chose not to address her supporters last night and apparently did not place the traditional concession call to President Trump overnight.

Unlike the 2024 election, which dragged on for days, the 2024 race ended overnight as President Trump showed surprising strength in traditional Democratic strongholds. Trump lost deep-blue New Jersey by just six points this year and New York by 11 points. In 2020, the Republican lost the two states by 16 points and 23 points, respectively.

With his victory, Trump becomes the second president in American history elected to serve two non-consecutive terms since Grover Cleveland became America’s 22nd and 24th president in 1892.

Trump’s stronger-than-expected showing brought an end to an historic race. Never in modern American history had a party deposed a candidate who had won a primary, as Democratic Party leaders jettisoned President Joe Biden in favor of Kamala Harris without consulting voters. Harris touted her role as the first black, Asian female ever to run for president.

But the true historic firsts belonged to President Donald Trump: In 2024, he became the first presidential candidate to become the subject of a lawsuit to ban him from the ballot in the name of protecting democracy; the first presidential candidate targeted for prosecution by former members of the Biden-Harris administration’s Justice Department; the first candidate convicted of 34 felonies on charges that he falsified business records, which experts regard as legally dubious; the first presidential candidate to be shot on the campaign trail since George Wallace in 1972; and the first president to be the subject of two assassination attempts since Gerald Ford in 1975.

Exit polls showed Trump’s most vibrant support came from evangelical Christians. White evangelical Christians made up nearly one in four voters (22%) in the 2024 election, and Donald Trump won 81% of the evangelical vote, according to NBC News. Fox News found Trump won voters who attend services weekly or more often by 30 points (64% to 34%). Conversely, Kamala Harris won 62% of the 33% of voters who “never” attend church, a 26-point gap.

Trump won among every group that attends church, even “a few times a year or less” (50% to 49%), “about once a month” and “a few times a month” (both 55% to 43%), and “once a week or more” (64% to 34%).

FRC Action President Tony Perkins credited Trump’s massive evangelical support to “the overreach of the Left.”

Perkins said some were “fearful” that “the absence of the president articulating a consistent pro-life platform and policy positions” would “depress the evangelical turnout.” While Trump’s record spoke very clearly, “it was the extreme rhetoric of Kamala Harris that provided the extra motivation to pro-life voters.”

Another “strong motivating issue” for evangelical voters “is the transgendering of our children,” said Perkins in an election evening interview with CBN News.

People of faith deeply impacted the 2024 election, as two out of three (65%) voters identified as Protestant, Roman Catholic, other denominations, or part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Trump won Protestants by 22 points (60% to 38%), Roman Catholics by nine points (54% to 45%), Mormons by 29 points (62% to 33%), and “other Christian” believers by 24 points (61% to 37%). Trump won white Protestants by 41 points (70% to 29%) and white Catholics by 20 points (59% to 39%). Harris won Hispanic Catholics (58% to 40%), while Trump won Hispanic evangelicals and Protestants (57% to 40%). Harris won all other non-white voting demographics who identified as Catholic, Protestant, secular, or “other.”

“What’s really made the difference is in this election versus 2020, a lot of Christian organizations like the Family Policy Alliance, Family Research Council and others made a concerted effort to get the estimated 32 million Christians that sat out the 2020 election. They sat out in 2022, as well. And we think that’s why the so-called red wave did not reach the shore,” Craig DeRoche, president of the Family Policy Alliance, told Perkins during a special election evening program hosted on the Real Life Network.

Evangelicals voted pro-life and “pro-borders, because our God is a God of order and border through Scripture,” Pastor Jack Hibbs — the founder of Calvary Chapel in Chino Hills, California — told Perkins.

On the other hand, 78% of voters who identify as LGBT voted for Kamala Harris, a 58-point landslide. Trump won the 91% of voters who do not belong to those sexual categories by six points (52% to 46%). Only 1% of voters identified as “non-binary” or “other” in the Fox News exit poll. A majority (54%) of voters said “support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far”; less than one in four voters (22%) want the government to take more actions rooted in extreme gender ideology.

Several election analysts credited the transgender issue, a frequent target of Republican campaign ads, with turning Democratic voters toward the GOP. “The Republicans have finally gotten over their squeamishness. For whatever reason, in 2022, they couldn’t talk about the Left saying that boys should go into girls’ locker rooms,” that minors whose “brains aren’t developed until they’re 18 can make permanent disfiguring” surgeries, and that male sex offenders who identify as female have the “right” to be housed in female prisons. “I think that was a bridge too far,” said DeRoche. “A lot of pollsters are saying that that issue alone was definitive.”

Even some in the legacy media appear to believe the Left has gone too far in promoting transgender ideology. “Democrats should be smarter on the women’s athletics thing: 85% of Americans oppose men transitioning after puberty and competing against women,” declared Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Wednesday morning.

“Nobody wants to hurt transgenders,” agreed panelist Mike Barnicle. “But how many of them are there?”

President Trump also received a supermajority of votes from pro-life advocates: 91% of those who believe life should be protected in all or most cases voted for the president, according to NBC News. But 72% said abortion was important to them — and Kamala Harris won those voters by 24 points (61% to 37%). A 53% majority of Americans supported what J.D. Vance has called a “national minimal standard” of protecting unborn life after 15 weeks. CBS News noted that “current exit polls show that abortion does not rise to be a top issue for voters” among men or women.

“After engaging in a national call to the Youth Vote to vote pro-life first, engaging in 156 competitive primary races and focusing on 12 states in the general election, Students for Life Action (SFLAction) welcomes a winning team to Washington, D.C. and congratulates President-elect Donald Trump, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, and majorities in the U.S. Senate,” the group told The Washington Stand. “We can document almost 24,000 confirmed minds changed through outreach, which is especially impressive when considering that the ‘last two presidential elections were effectively decided by 78,000 and 44,000 votes, respectively,’ as reports The Washington Post.”

“President Trump says he wants to end federal involvement with abortion, and we can do that,” SFLA Action President Kristan Hawkins told TWS. “[W]e need to defund Planned Parenthood. As long as federal money supports abortion vendors and pays for abortion at home and around the world, abortion is federal. This includes reaffirming life-saving policies such as Mexico City, which can be signed into effect on day one.” Also, “we need to release the pro-life prayer warriors in prison because of the weaponized use of government by the Biden-Harris administration.”

The marriage gap held true in 2024. Kamala Harris won 58% of never-married voters, an 18-point spread, while Trump won married voters by 10 points (54% to 44%). But Harris lost unmarried men (52% to 46%), piling up an advantage among single women (59%). Trump narrowly won parents; Harris narrowly won the childless demographic.

President Trump won an estimated 15% of black voters, a high-water mark for Republican candidates. The 2024 election also featured a surprising number of new voters. “About 1 in 10 voters in this electorate report having not voted in 2020,” reported CBS News.

Harris narrowly won Gen Z and Millennials, while Trump won slim margins of Generation X and the Baby Boomers, and won the Silent Generation by 15 points. Harris also won those who said they or someone in their household had immigrated to the United States by 17 points, 57% to 40% (13% of the electorate) and narrowly prevailed among those whose grandparents immigrated (50% to 48%).

In light of Harris’s performance, some are second-guessing the decision to choose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) over Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D). Harris made her selection in light of rampant campus protests demanding a ceasefire in Israel; the Democratic activist base perceived Shapiro, who is Jewish, as too pro-Israeli. “I hate to say this, but I’m not sure how much Tim Walz contributed to the ticket,” Lindi Li, a member of the DNC finance committee, told Fox Business on Tuesday night.

But the Democrats’ greatest vulnerability is the economy, which continued to shed jobs in October’s disastrous jobs report. “Nationally, the share of people saying they’ve gotten worse off under the current administration (45%) is the highest in presidential exit polls that have asked the question — even surpassing the 42% ‘worse off’ in 2008, in the teeth of the Great Recession,” reported ABC News. The organization found that 70% of Americans said the country is heading in the wrong direction, and 87% of Americans said personally they were holding steady or falling behind economically. Fully 83% of voters said they wanted to see “substantial change” or “complete and total upheaval” in U.S. policies.

Christians remain optimistic for the future. In a Trump administration, it is “going to be much better for evangelicals and the ability to live out their faith in influence this country and the world,” Perkins told CBN News.

God has “entrusted to us this moment in history. And we will give an account for it. But we’re operating not in our own strength and power, but we’re operating in the power of the Holy Spirit,” said Perkins. “This is an exciting time to be alive.”