“I’m feeling really excited, we’re witnessing history at our school, and it’s just amazing to see a black woman to be able to be in this height of power,” said student Kai Taylor.

But within hours, Trump had claimed victory, becoming only the second president to win re-election after a loss, in one of the most extraordinary political comebacks in history.

“This is karma, ladies and gentlemen!” shouted UFC president Dana White from the stage in Florida.

“Nobody deserves this more than his family does. This is what happens when the machine comes after you. Couldn’t stop him. He keeps going forward. He’s the most resilient man I’ve ever met in my life!”

Trump is due to be sentenced on November 26 for falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal with porn star Stormy Daniels. He was also meant to face trial in Georgia for election interference in that state, and Washington, DC, for the events leading up to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

But Trump’s performance capped one of the most fiercely contested and turbulent presidential campaigns in modern history, tapping into voters’ fears about an “invasion” of illegal immigrants, crime, inflation, and “biological men in women’s sports.”

The campaign was also one of the most violent, with two assassination attempts against the former president, bomb threats on polling centres from foreign actors, and attacks on ballot drop boxes across the country.

“I said that many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason,” Trump said. “And that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness, and now we are going to fulfil that mission together.

“The task will not be easy, but I will bring every ounce of energy, spirit, and fight that I have in my soul to the job that you have entrusted to me.”

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At 78, Trump is the oldest person elected to the office. His vice presidential nominee, 40-year-old J.D. Vance, will become the highest-ranking member of the millennial generation in the US government.

“I think we just witnessed the greatest political comeback in the history of the United States of America,” Vance told the crowd.

Trump is now expected to give vaccine sceptic Robert F. Kennedy a role in his administration overseeing health. Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, who bankrolled much of Trump’s campaign, will also be appointed to a role reducing government red tape and expenditure.

The two candidates could not have offered a more different vision. Trump painted a bleak picture of a nation “destroyed” under the Biden-Harris administration, promising to embark on “the biggest deportation program” in history to get rid of illegal immigrants, an immediate expansion of gas and oil drilling, and tariffs on all imported goods.

Abortion was an issue that Harris campaigned heavily on, along with populist economic policies targeting middle-class families, such as building more affordable homes, banning price gouging and expanding child tax credits, and one which brought millions of women to the polls.

The election was also the first to take place after the deadly January 6 attack at the US Capitol, and the first to be held after Trump’s conservative judges on US Supreme Court overturned federal abortion rights in America.

She also sought to make the election a referendum on Trump and a chance to turn the page on years of chaos, anger and distrust.

But Harris struggled to differentiate herself from Biden, faced an ongoing backlash over the war in Gaza, fractures in the support of black and Latino voters, and failed to get enough people to show up at the polls despite a sweeping mobilisation effort and a string of high-profile surrogates and endorsements.

And Trump banked his campaign on turning out new voters – particularly white and black men. In some parts of the country, it seems to have worked.

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