Economy proved costly for Harris as Trump claims win

Donald Trump emerged onto the stage of the watch party at Palm Beach just after 2.20am local time, accompanied by his family and closest political supporters with the Lee Greenwood song 'God Bless the USA' playing as always at a Trump event.

He was there to claim victory, and duly did.

They are still counting the results, but most people have seen enough to call it.

Trump has won and is set to become the 47th President of the United States.

TV networks called the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania for Mr Trump and with wins in North Carolina and Georgia there appears no route to the presidency available for Kamala Harris.

She underperformed Joe Biden's vote in 2020 in all of the swing states. It is possible that all seven will be won by Donald Trump.

Earlier the Harris campaign announced that she would not address supporters at an event at her alma mater, Howard University in Washington DC. She is expected to speak there later today.

The Republican party has also won control of the US Senate - a vital part of the government structure - which will enable him to more easily implement his agenda.

If one were to pick a single issue that cost Ms Harris the win, it would have to be the economy and specifically the cost of living.

The surge in prices across the board in the US over the past four years was not something Kamala Harris could find the right words to talk about.

Donald Trump and his campaign knew it and ruthlessly hammered home the message "are you better off now than you were four years ago?"

With the voters facing high food, housing car, travel, cable TV and phone bills - not to mention pretty much everything else - they got what was effectively a Trump ad every time they went to pay for anything. The cost of living hurt poor people most, and they seem to have voted for Donald Trump, believing him to be the answer to their problems.

The other issue that cost Ms Harris the election was immigration and the control - or lack of it - on the southern border. It was always a strong issue for Trump (building a wall was his signature policy in 2016), but there was a real surge in irregular immigration through a still porous southern border after Covid restrictions were lifted.

Whether or not it was pent up supply is irrelevant, the public just saw huge inflows of migrants and wanted something done about it.

Inexplicably the Biden administration did not move to clamp down on the inflows until the spring of this year. They did stick the failure to pass a border control measure on the Republicans in the Senate, acting on the apparent orders of Mr Trump, who blocked a major action plan for immigration control. But it came too late in the day for this race.

Donald Trump may well end up implementing Joe Biden's bill in the near future.

It's not that Kamala Harris ran a bad campaign, far from it. Her campaign was astonishingly successful and polished, especially considering it was scrambled together with 107 days to election day, one of the shortest campaigns on record.

But the issues that revved up the Democrat base, and got a lot, but not enough, women activated to vote blue, notably abortion, democracy, racism, were not enough to get her to 270 electoral college votes.

The other big loser tonight is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Donald Trump has said he will end the war in Ukraine between election day and inauguration day on 20 January.

That clock is now running, and most believe his only way to end it is to pressure Ukraine into conceding territory invaded and captured by Russia.

The implications of that for European security are immense.