Donald Trump has pulled off an astounding political comeback and regained the White House after being declared the winner of the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

He becomes the first president in over 130 years – and only the second in history – to win a non-consecutive second term.

His defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris marks a remarkable return for a twice-impeached president, who left office in 2021 on the back of claims that he had incited an assault on the U.S. Capitol building, and who was convicted earlier this year on multiple counts of business fraud.

The 78-year-old Trump will also become the oldest president ever inaugurated, beating President Joe Biden’s record by five months.

He pulled off his remarkable victory on a night reminiscent of 2016, sweeping the key swing states of North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania.

Associated Press called Wisconsin at 5.34am (ET) on Wednesday and the race just three minutes later.

Harris did not concede on the night. Instead, former Rep. Cedric Richmond – her campaign co-chair – announced soon after midnight that she had gone to bed and would not be addressing supporters until ‘tomorrow’.

The pivotal moment came when North Carolina was called for Trump at 11:19pm (ET).

Then, the quiet crowd at the official Republican watch party, held in a convention center in Florida’s West Palm Beach, erupted in a release of nervous energy.

At the same time, the mood at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort – where he was sat amid friends and family watching the results roll in – switched from cautious optimism to ‘a sense of destiny’, one attendee said.

Later at the convention center in the early hours of Wednesday morning, Trump was joined on stage by his jubilant family and campaign staff, as he addressed his adoring fans and declared: ‘We’re going to help our country heal.’

‘This was, I believe, the greatest political movement of all time,’ he said. ‘This is a magnificent victory for the American people, that will allow us to make America great again.’

Certainly, Trump’s resounding win brings an end to a tumultuous 2024 campaign – punctuated with Biden’s dramatic withdrawal from the race in July, as well as two shocking attempts on Trump’s life.

But his inflammatory rhetoric and propensity for personal attacks means he will now lead a divided country that shows little sign of healing.

After announcing he would run again back in November 2022, Trump comfortably saw off other Republican hopefuls – including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley – to secure the Party nomination in March this year.

Entering the summer, he held a comfortable polling lead over President Biden, 81, whose record on the economy and immigration, as well as the obvious problem of his advancing age, were proving disastrous among voters.

The now notorious CNN television debate between the two presumptive nominees on June 27 – in which Biden froze and mumbled, appearing unable to clearly answer even basic questions – only helped Trump further.

On July 13, while addressing crowds at rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the bullet of would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks ripped through Trump’s right ear. After being swarmed by Secret Service agents, Trump rose to his feet – his shoes missing and his face bloodied – pumping his fist in the air and shouting: ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’

Just days later, he received a hero’s welcome in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at the Republican National Convention.

MAGA fans donned mock bandages on their ears in solidarity with the former president and, in a stirring speech on the final night, Trump told a packed-out convention center that he would be a ‘president for all of America’.

But, just three days later, everything changed. Holed up in Camp David with his family, Biden posted a bombshell letter on X announcing that he was withdrawing from the 2024 race.

‘I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,’ he wrote, before endorsing Kamala Harris as his replacement on the Democratic ticket within the hour.

Harris swiftly corralled support, raking in more than $100 million in donor cash in 24 hours. As she formally accepted the party nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago the following month – a star-studded event featuring the likes of Oprah, Eva Longoria and Kerry Washington – she was polling comfortably ahead of Trump.

Harris then trounced Trump in the first and last TV debate between the pair on September 10. His wild accusation that Haitian migrants were ‘eating the dogs […] eating the cats’ of American citizens was an instant internet meme.

In fact, such was Harris’s surging popularity that a second attempt to assassinate Trump – on his West Palm Beach golf course just days later – barely moved the needle.

Fresh pain came for the Trump campaign as his running mate – and now the Vice President-elect – Ohio Senator JD Vance, was hit by a string of disinterred comments in which he attacked female Democrats.

In the most damning, from a 2021 interview, he called Harris, and other women who don’t have children of their own, ‘childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives’.

Indeed, a gender divide swiftly became a key feature of the 2024 race.

Trump’s role in helping to reverse Roe v Wade in 2022, removing the constitutional right to an abortion and returning the decision on related laws to the states, has proven particularly unpopular with female voters.

The final ABC/Ipsos poll, published this Sunday, had Harris with an 11-point advantage among women.

In the end, however, it seems abortion wasn’t the silver-bullet issue Harris had hoped for. In Florida, Governor DeSantis’s controversial 6-week abortion ban was also on the ballot. But, despite having won every other pro-abortion ballot measure since Roe was overturned, Democrats failed for the first time on Tuesday, falling short of the 60 percent of votes needed to overturn the Florida ban.

Trump, meanwhile, has made substantial inroads with male voters this year. Despite concerns that he and Vance were making the campaign – complete with a shirt-ripping Hulk Hogan – too ‘bro-tastic’, it appears a strong male voter turnout helped Trump clinch it in the end.

In recent weeks, Harris’s healthy poll lead waned, as she finally buckled to pressure to submit herself to rigorous TV interviews. Her rambling and often incoherent answers to questions drew ire even among fans, with veteran Dem strategist David Axelrod last month accusing Harris of going to ‘word salad city’.

In the final days of the campaign, pollsters were almost unanimous in their verdict: this race was too close to call.

Some Trump-friendly analysts, however, pointed to the fact he is consistently under-polled, and that a dead-heat suggested he had the advantage.

Certainly, the immigration crisis on the Southern border, the state of the economy and inflation, as well as the Biden-Harris administration’s record on foreign affairs – from the botched Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021, to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and the outbreak of war in Israel last year – all worked in Trump’s favor.

Following his victory, Trump must now prepare for government once again, undoubtedly drawing from a band of MAGA loyalists who have stuck with him through roiling controversies.

In 2016, he brought in officials from the Republican National Committee as well as from the armed forces who were seen as moderating influences.

This time around, he controls the RNC with his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, at the helm. Meanwhile, military officers who served in his first administration, such as his Chief of Staff, General John Kelly, have warned Trump is not fit for office.

Trump’s opponents fear his new administration will be packed with extremists who will empower the president to do as he pleases.

On day one in 2017, Trump immediately signed an executive order banning travel from seven mostly Muslim countries.

This time, he has promised to fire the special counsel who is prosecuting him on election interference charges, free some inmates convicted of January 6 offenses, and begin large-scale deportations of illegal immigrants.

Despite the ignominy of those Jan 6 riots and his false ‘stolen vote’ claims after Biden narrowly defeated him in 2020, the American public have softened their opinion on his first term over the last four years, choosing instead to remember the strong economy and secure borders that he oversaw.

Boldly launching his campaign on the back of unexpectedly disappointing 2022 midterm results for Republicans, it was Trump’s sheer force of personality that ultimately saw him grip the party’s grassroots and surge back to unshakeable public prominence.

Tim Murtaugh, Team Trump’s communications chief, told the Daily Mail that the key moment came in closing hours of the race, when Trump donned an apron and manned the fry station at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania last month.

‘It wasn’t necessarily the act of making French fries or running the drive-thru window,’ he said.

‘It was when he made his approach in the motorcade down the street in Bucks County [PA]. There were 10,000 people lining the street, ten deep on both sides, and that was not a crowd that we built.’

The McDonald’s stunt was meant to be unadvertised, but a local paper got hold of the details and published a story, bringing out a spontaneous crowd.

In the end, an equally spontaneous and sizeable voter turnout – both in early ballots and on Election Day itself – buoyed Trump to victory and kick-started a second term that no doubt will be as dramatic and consequential as the first.