It has happened for the second time in last eight years that a woman has failed to break the glass ceiling - the US presidency.
Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign was seen by many of her supporters as having the potential of saving the American democracy from an existential threat.
Harris trailed in every battleground state to Trump, a man she described as an existential danger to the country's foundational institutions.
In a stunning victory, Trump won both the popular vote and the electoral college votes. He bagged 292 electoral college votes as opposed to 224 for Harris.
Trump won the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia.
The Democratic presidential candidate was unable to garner enough votes to defeat Republican opponent Donald Trump.
Unlike Hillary Clinton, who was defeated by Trump in 2016, Harris shied away from highlighting the historic nature of her potential presidency during her campaign and instead focused on her experience and issues — only to also fall short.
Harris was named as a presidential nominee just three months ago, after Joe Biden had announced he was stepping down from the race for the White House after his disastrous showing in the first presidential debate on June 27.
Her party had a short time to get her in front of voters. As the sitting vice president, she struggled to disentangle herself from an unpopular Biden presidency that saw the highest inflation rates in four decades, a surge in illegal immigration and erupting conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.
In October, Harris, an experienced prosecutor, rapidly grew in confidence and stature during the presidential debate with Donald Trump.
As the Harris campaign grew with time and became more traditional as it spread across the country, it adopted a strong strategy of trying to peel off Republican voters it believed did not want to vote for Trump.
One of the big event of Harris’s campaign was a speech given on the Ellipse in Washington DC, the same spot from which Trump had launched the January 6 attack on the Capitol in 2021. Harris used the event to highlight the main theme of her campaign: Trump is a threat to US democracy.
A raft of celebrities from Taylor Swift and Beyonce to George Clooney and Harrison Ford proved unable to prevent Kamala Harris's crushing defeat in the US election, underlining the limited impact of sweeping star endorsements on voters.
Meanwhile, Republicans said the result proves voters cared the most about pocketbook issues affecting American families.
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