Trump claims victory after AP declares Pennsylvania

Donald Trump declared victory early Wednesday morning after The Associated Press declared he'd won Pennsylvania.

The state that became the focal point of the election was officially called for the former president by AP at 2:24 a.m. Eastern time.

Trump took to the stage in Florida minutes later to declare: “Look what happened! Is this great?”

He said he is going to “help our country heal ... we made history tonight for a reason.”

“I will not rest until we have delivered a strong, prosperous America,” he added. “This is a magnificent victory.”

Vice President-elect JD Vance said, “We just witnessed the greatest comeback in American history” and said the incoming administration would do the same for the economy.

Multiple news agencies reported Trump was near victory, but Vice President Kamala Harris had not conceded early Wednesday. Trump’s apparent victory in Pennsylvania significantly narrowed her path though votes were still being counted in several key swing states. After the Pennsylvania call, Trump was at 267 Electoral Votes — just three shy of the 270 needed to win the Electoral College.

He appeared to clinch the state by pulling even more support out of rural and Rust Belt parts of the state than he did in 2020 and by running up his vote share in Philadelphia’s majority Latino wards.

After months of pundits signaling the presidential contest could be the closest in years, Trump looked poised to win the state by largest margin in the last three elections. He was also leading in the popular vote, though ballots were still being tabulated nationwide.

His Pennsylvania victory appeared to usher in a red wave with Republicans leading or victorious in other key races around the state and country.

Both campaigns focused almost incessantly on Pennsylvania with more than 100 campaign stops by Trump, Harris or their running mates in the last 10 months and more than half a billion dollars pumped into airwaves, mailboxes and radio to secure the state’s 19 electoral votes.

An electorate here that had repeatedly cited the economy as its biggest concern, rejected a Democratic return to the White House and embraced Trump’s bombastic and often incendiary rhetoric in his third run, following four criminal indictments and a conviction.

Trump, along with his running mate Vance, successfully captured the frustration and longing of voters in Pennsylvania, many of them working-class men in places like Philadelphia and Allentown that had increasingly drifted away from the Democratic Party.

The playbook looked a lot like his victory here in 2016 when he drove up numbers in one-time Democratic strongholds in Rust Belt towns hurting from a loss of manufacturing that goes back decades but has lingered. Trump seized on that, hammering Harris as an extension of President Joe Biden and linking lost American opportunities to illegal immigration and border insecurity, often without proof but to his political benefit.

The state played host to the one and only debate between Harris and Trump, at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia. It was the scene of an assassination attempt on Trump’s life in Butler and where Harris debuted her running mate at Temple University. Trump did a photo op serving fries at McDonald’s in Feasterville, while Harris went to a Puerto Rican restaurant in North Philadelphia.

Both candidates ping-ponged around the state Monday to deliver their closing pitches to voters with Harris capping her campaign with a rally outside the iconic Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The Philadelphia Inquirer and Boston Herald contributed to this report.