As the sun set on Howard University in Washington DC, a group of women gathered on a grassy patch in the centre of campus.

They held hands in a wide circle and sang hymns, many wiping tears from their faces.

They had just watched a concession speech given by Kamala Harris.

Many had been at the university the night before, hoping to witness America electing its first female president.

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“I don’t think she could have done anything differently,” one said, “she ran a good campaign, I just think misogyny and racism is deep-rooted in America.”

Another lay the blame at the door of President Biden.

“Unfortunately I think if he’d have gone sooner, she would have had more chance to tell her story and establish herself,” another said.

In Democratic Party circles, the inquest had begun even before Harris spoke.

Not only had she been defeated in all seven of the key swing states, the map showed rightward shifts across the country. Questions about what went wrong for the campaign and the Democratic Party are at a fever pitch.

David Plouffe, a senior campaign adviser for Harris, posted on X: “It was a privilege to spend the last 100 days with Kamala Harris… We dug out of a deep hole but not enough.”

Many are reading that deep hole as one left by Joe Biden, who some say didn’t leave his vice president enough time to make her pitch to the nation known. Mr Plouffe has since deleted his entire X account.

Others wondered whether President Biden’s ego had led him to cling to power too long. Had the man who once pledged to be a transition candidate been so intoxicated by the heady heights of the Oval Office that he couldn’t bear to step aside?

Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen told Sky News she didn’t “think this was so personal towards Kamala Harris”.

She said: “The campaign miscalculated the importance of the economy as a central message.

“I think they thought it was going to be a referendum on Donald Trump and a referendum on abortion. And those two calculations, I think, had them underplay what we know voters’ key issue was, which is the economy.”

President Biden spoke in the Rose Garden, paying tribute to Ms Harris’s campaign and promising a peaceful transition of power to president-elect Donald Trump.

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But his speech will probably be remembered as much for what he didn’t say. There was no introspection about the loss, no answers offered for why it was such a bruising defeat.

Brett Bruin, former White House director of global engagement who worked under Barack Obama, said: “I can’t help but think back to what President Obama said after his first defeat at the congressional level. He acknowledged it was a shellacking.

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“We didn’t hear that from President Biden. This has been part of the problem throughout his presidency, it’s part of the reason why Biden and Harris were so unsuccessful when it came to unpopularity is that they didn’t acknowledge the problems, they didn’t address the problems.

“I wonder when the Democratic Party are going to say, ‘we have to change’.”

Donald Trump has said there is “no price tag” for his campaign promise of mass deportations.

The US president-elect said one of his priorities upon taking office in January was to make the US border “strong and powerful”, part of what he said was a mandate “to bring common sense” to America following his election victory over Kamala Harris.

As a candidate, Mr Trump often said he would begin the “largest deportation effort in American history”.

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Speaking to NBC News, Sky’s US partner, he dismissed concerns about the cost of his plan, saying “it’s not a question of a price tag. It’s not – really, we have no choice”.

He also pointed to what he has identified as issues of crime linked to immigration, saying that when people “have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag”.

“We obviously have to make the border strong and powerful, and we have to – at the same time, we want people to come into our country,” he added.

“And you know, I’m not somebody that says, ‘no, you can’t come in.’ We want people to come in.”

It’s difficult to know how many undocumented immigrants there are in the US, but Patrick J Lechleitner, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told NBC News in July that a mass deportation effort would be a huge logistical and financial challenge.

In the election, the Republican candidate enjoyed gains among Latino voters, whom many believed would reject him over his anti-immigration rhetoric and racist jokes about Puerto Rico made by a comedian at his rally at Madison Square Garden last month.

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Rather than losing him votes, Mr Trump indicated on Thursday that his own tough stance and his message on immigration was partly responsible for his win.

Mr Trump said: “They want to have borders, and they like people coming in, but they have to come in with love for the country. They have to come in legally.”

He also mentioned the gains he made from 2020 among young voters, women, and Asian American voters, accusing Democrats of not being in line “with the thinking of the country”.

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The president-elect also discussed the phone conversations he had with Ms Harris and US President Joe Biden since the election, calling them “very nice” and “very respectful both ways”.

He said the US vice president “talked about transition, and she said she’d like it to be smooth as can be, which I agree with, of course”.

Joe Biden has called for Americans to “bring down the temperature” as he addressed the US for the first time in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s sweeping election victory.

Speaking in the White House Rose Garden, the US president said: “I know for some people it is a time for victory, for others it is a time of loss… the country chooses one or the other.

“I have said many times you can’t love your country only when you win, you can’t love your neighbour only when you agree.”

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The president said he had spoken with Mr Trump and said he has ordered his team to ensure a “peaceful and orderly transition” of power.

He said: “The people vote and choose their own leaders and they do it peacefully. In a democracy, the will of the people prevails.”

His remarks could be seen as a subtle dig at how Mr Trump refused to accept he lost the election in 2020.

The president also spoke about the “integrity of the American electoral system”, saying: “It is honest, it is fair and it is transparent. It can be trusted, win or lose.”

He concluded: “America endures. We’re going to be okay, but we need to stay engaged.”

Mr Biden’s speech was intended to highlight what he sees as his achievements, Sky News’ US correspondent Mark Stone said. With more time, those achievements may have been more clear, he added.

“I thought it was interesting that he kind of made the point, almost suggesting if we’d had a bit more time, maybe the American people would have felt the achievements that this administration has put forward,” he said.

‘We must accept the result’, Harris tells supporters

It comes after vice president Kamala Harris called Mr Trump to concede the race and congratulate him.

In a speech in Washington DC, she told her supporters she was “proud of the race we ran” but said “we must accept the result”.

Trump’s path to decisive victory

Mr Trump won a decisive victory – comfortably clearing the 270 Electoral College votes needed to secure the presidency and clinching five battleground states: North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

He is also leading in Arizona and Nevada, which are yet to be called, according to Sky’s US partner NBC News, meaning Mr Trump is on course to claim all seven swing states.

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The 78-year-old president-elect has been keeping a low profile after addressing his supporters in Florida yesterday morning to declare victory.

He is the first defeated president in over a century to return to the Oval Office and also the first convicted of a crime to win the presidency.

Mr Trump is facing several criminal and civil cases, but experts say his victory will essentially end the cases brought against him – at least while he is in the White House.

After spending his first day as president-elect receiving congratulatory phone calls from world leaders, Mr Trump will now begin the process of choosing who will be in his second White House administration before inauguration day on 20 January.