Vice President Kamala Harris has formally acknowledged that Donald Trump has won the US presidential election in a concession speech in Washington, DC.
Harris declined to concede on Tuesday night, even as it became increasingly obvious that Trump was on track to win more than the 270 electoral college votes needed to secure the White House.
“I know many people feel like we are entering a dark time, but for the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case,” Harris said on Wednesday evening, speaking from a stage at Howard University.
“The outcome of this election is not what we wanted, not what we fought for, not what we voted for,” Harris said.
“I am so proud of the race we ran and the way we ran it,” she told the audience, thanking President Joe Biden, her running mate Tim Walz, and her husband Doug Emhoff.
“I am here to say that while I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign,” Harris said. “We will continue to wage this fight in the voting booths, in courts and in the public square.”
“We must accept the results of this election,” Harris said, to boos from the crowd. “We will engage in a peaceful transfer of power.”
She described her party's ideas as reflecting “America at our best” and urged Democrats to keep fighting despite the “setbacks.”
Harris became the Democrats’ presidential nominee in July, after the party pressured President Joe Biden to drop out of the race, citing his abysmal performance in the debate with Trump. Harris was able to skip the primary process and take over Biden’s war chest, while enjoying a post-convention bump in the polls.
Biden had named Harris as his running mate in mid-2020, as part of a deal with top Democrats to secure their support for his nomination. She had campaigned for the top job herself, but dropped out before the first primaries due to a lack of funds and interest from the party base.
The Biden-Harris ticket officially received 81 million votes in 2020, in a surprise defeat for Trump’s re-election bid. Harris-Walz got just over 67 million votes this time around, to Trump’s 72 million.