US election: How big a win was this for Donald Trump?
“America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate. It was a historic realignment. Uniting citizens of all backgrounds around a common core of common sense.”
Never knowingly understated, those were some of the words of Donald Trump as he proclaimed victory early on Wednesday morning.
Unlike some of his claims following the 2020 election, much of the statement above is supported by data.
President-elect Trump increased his vote share in 90% of US counties, compared with 2020, and became just the second Republican since 1988 to win the popular vote.
He also increased his vote significantly among many demographic groups which had been least likely to back him in the past.
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There’s still counting to do, not least in battleground Arizona, but now the result is clear, where does his victory rank in history, and how much of a mandate does he really have from the American people?
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How big was the win?
Kamala Harris would have won if she had persuaded 123,750 people in the right proportions in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan to vote for her instead of Trump.
That sounds like a big number, but it’s less than 0.1% of the 140 million-plus people that cast votes in the election, and less than 1% of the voters in those three key states.
Presidential elections often tend to be even closer than this, however. Trump’s win this year is the clearest one this century that wasn’t achieved by president Barack Obama.
How big were the gains?
Trump made improvements almost everywhere, but he may still end up on fewer total votes than he won last time.
Despite the warnings of what was at stake at this election, it looks like the final number of people to cast a ballot will be lower than in 2020.
The Democrat vote is down around 10 million, while Trump’s vote appears relatively similar to last time, despite a growing population.
In terms of share of the vote, however, he increased his in more counties than any other candidate since at least 2004, and he recorded the highest Republican vote share this century in more than two-thirds of counties across America.
Most of those improvements weren’t by much, however. Just 120 out of the 2,800 counties recorded an improvement of more than five points – the lowest number by a winning president this century other than Joe Biden.
That’s reflected if you look at the number of counties he flipped from being majority Democrat to majority Republican – 95 counties so far. That number was also the lowest this century, other than that achieved by Biden and less than half of what Trump flipped in 2016, perhaps a sign of the recent partisanship in US politics.
What about the type of people backing him?
This tells a similar story.
President-elect Trump gained ground among most voter groups. The biggest increase in support was among Latinos (up from around a third to just under half) and younger voters (up from around a third to two-fifths) who were key to securing his win.
A smaller increase of eight points was enough for him to win majority support among people earning less than $50,000, who had backed every Democrat since Bill Clinton. And crucially, he narrowly took back the suburbs, where American elections are so often won or lost.
Those marginal gains across different groups helped Trump to win the key battlegrounds and go some way to broadening his coalition of voters, making it more representative of the average American.
The youngest voters, oldest voters, lowest-earning voters and Latinos all voted significantly closer to the US average than they have done in other recent elections. So, while they might not necessarily be “for” the president-elect as a whole, they were willing to vote for him.
While black voters and voters who didn’t go to college also moved further towards Trump, these two groups still differ significantly from the average in this election. There also remains a clear education divide with college-educated people much more likely to vote Democrat.
The Democratic decline
While much of the story so far is about a small but united shift in support, there were also some really historic and surprising results, particularly in the big cities.
In New York, Chicago, Detroit and Las Vegas, Trump earned a higher vote share than any other Republican since George HW Bush in 1988.
He still lost overall in the counties that include those cities, but once more it was a story of progress, whether it was down to who turned out or increased support.
But there were previous Democratic strongholds that did turn Republican, including parts of Florida like the formerly true-blue Miami-Dade, which has the second-largest Latino voting age population in America and backed Hillary Clinton by a margin of almost 2:1 in 2016.
Its one million-plus voters backed a Republican for the first time since 1988, and president-elect Trump got the highest Republican vote share there since Ronald Reagan’s 1984 landslide.
He also returned Pinellas to the Republican column and made significant gains in other big population centres like Broward and Palm Beach Counties.
The turnaround of US politics since Trump shook it all up in 2016 means there are now only two counties, out of more than 3,000, that have voted for the winning candidate at every election since 2000.
Those are Blaine County, Montana, an agricultural area up on the Canadian border, and Essex County, a mountainous part of upstate New York, bordering Vermont.
Essex-man was a key part of some of Tony Blair’s big electoral wins at the turn of the millennium. Perhaps a different Essex-man rises again, this time to define America, as it moves towards the next period of its history.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
A Mexican navy ship has hit the Brooklyn Bridge during a promotional tour in New York City.
The New York Fire Department said authorities were responding to injuries but had no details about how many people might have been hurt or whether they were on the vessel or on the bridge.
Sky’s US partner network NBC News reports that at least three people were seriously injured in the incident.
The Mexican navy said in a post on X that the Cuauhtemoc, an academy training vessel, was damaged in the accident, which has prevented it from continuing its voyage.
Eyewitness video of the collision posted online showed the mast of the ship, which was flying a large Mexican flag, scraping the underneath of the bridge.
Pic: AP
The vessel then drifted toward the edge of the river as onlookers scrambled away from shore.
The Mexican navy said the status of personnel and material was under review by naval and local authorities, which were providing assistance.
The Cuauhtemoc is about 297ft long and 40ft wide, according to the Mexican navy. It sailed for the first time in 1982.
Pic: AP
Each year, it sets out at the end of classes at the naval military school to finish cadets’ training.
It left the Mexican port of Acapulco, on the Pacific coast, on 6 April with 277 people onboard, the navy said at the time.
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One person has died in a bomb explosion near a reproductive health clinic in California, authorities have said.
The incident took place in Palm Springs, a city two hours east of Los Angeles, and is being investigated as a possible car explosion.
The city’s mayor Ron DeHarte said one person died in the blast, adding that the bomb was “either in or near” a vehicle. The deceased’s identity is not known, Palm Springs police said.
Dr Maher Abdallah, who runs the American Reproductive Centers clinic, told the Associated Press his facility was damaged but all staff were safe and accounted for.
The explosion damaged the office space where the practice conducts patient consultations, but the IVF lab and stored embryos were unharmed, he added.
“I really have no clue what happened,” he said. “Thank God today happened to be a day that we have no patients.”
Debris covers the ground after the explosion. Pic: ABC7 Los Angeles/AP
In a statement posted on Facebook the clinic said it was “heartbroken” to learn someone died in the explosion and added: “Our deepest condolences go out to the individuals and families affected.”
It continued: “Our mission has always been to help build families, and in times like these, we are reminded of just how fragile and precious life is.
“In the face of this tragedy, we remain committed to creating hope – because we believe that healing begins with community, compassion, and care.
The clinic will be fully operational on Monday, it added.
“This moment has shaken us – but it has not stopped us. We will continue to serve with strength, love, and the hope that brings new life into the world,” the statement concluded.
Pic: ABC7 Los Angeles/AP
The Palm Springs city government said in a post on Facebook that the explosion happened on North Indian Canyon Drive, near East Tachevah Drive, before 11am local time (6pm GMT).
A burned-out car can be seen in a parking lot behind the building in aerial footage.
The blast caved in the clinic’s roof and blew debris across four lanes of the road.
Another person said he was inside a cannabis dispensary nearby when he felt a massive explosion.
Nima Tabrizi said: “The building just shook, and we go outside and there’s massive cloud smoke.”
Investigators from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are travelling to the scene to help assess what happened.
California governor Gavin Newsom has been briefed on the explosion, his press office said.
A former FBI director has been interviewed by the US Secret Service over a social media post that Republicans say was a call for violence against President Donald Trump.
James Comey, who led the FBI from 2013 until he was fired in 2017 by Mr Trump during his first term in office, shared a photo of seashells appearing to form the numbers “86 47”.
James Comey later removed the Instagram post. File pic: AP
He captioned the Instagram post: “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”
Some have interpreted the post as a threat, alleging that 86 47 means to violently remove Mr Trump from office, including by assassination.
Mr Comey later removed the post, saying he thought the numbers “were a political message” and that he was not aware that the numeric arrangement could be associated with violence.
“I didn’t realise some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind, so I took the post down,” Mr Comey said.
Mr Trump rejected the former FBI director’s explanation, telling Fox News: “He knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant… that meant assassination.”
Donald Trump Jr accused Mr Comey of “casually calling for my dad to be murdered”.
US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed in a post on X that Mr Comey had been interviewed as part of “an ongoing investigation” but gave no indication of whether he might face further action.
The Secret Service is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich said Mr Comey had put out “what can clearly be interpreted as a hit on the sitting president of the United States”.
“This is deeply concerning to all of us and is being taken seriously,” Mr Budowich wrote on X.
Another White House official James Blair said the post was a “Clarion Call (…) to terrorists & hostile regimes to kill the President of the United States as he travels in the Middle East”.
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