Kamala Harris conceded the election to Donald Trump on Wednesday, urging Americans devastated by the result to “not despair” but to stay engaged and remain vigilant in the fight to protect American democracy.

Under a dramatic orange sky, the vice-president arrived on stage to chants of “Kamala!” from the grounds of her alma mater, Howard University, in Washington. The speech came the afternoon after Trump surged past the 270 votes needed to win the electoral college, in a stunning political comeback nearly four years after his refusal to concede power incited a violent attack on the seat of American government.

“While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign,” said Harris, her voice hoarse after a whirlwind 107-day campaign. “Hear me when I say: the light of America’s promise will always burn bright, as long as we never give up.”

Earlier on Wednesday, Harris called Trump to congratulate him on his victory. A campaign aide said Harris emphasized the importance of a peaceful transfer of power and of being a president for all Americans, including those who did not vote for him. As the vice-president, she will play the ceremonial role of president of the Senate during the certification of Trump’s victory in January.

“In our nation, we owe loyalty not to a president or a party, but to the constitution of the United States,” Harris said, drawing loud applause when she committed to help Trump’s team transition to the White House.

Four years ago, Trump refused to concede the election to Joe Biden. His sprawling efforts to cling to power led to a violent assault on the US Capitol, for which he is facing federal charges. During the campaign, Harris said she agreed Trump was a fascist.

Harris nodded to the fears that Trump represents an existential threat to the future of American democracy and the planet. But she said now was not a time to “throw up our hands”.

“This is a time to organize, to mobilize and to stay engaged for the sake of freedom and justice and the future that we all know we can build together,” she said.

The vice-president’s public concession marked the end of a tumultuous election that lasted just more than 100 days, the shortest in modern memory after the president stepped aside and effectively anointed her his successor weeks before the party’s summer convention.

By Wednesday afternoon, Trump, the twice impeached former president who has been convicted of dozens of crimes and is accused of many more, had won at least five of the seven battleground states and appeared to be on track to claim the popular vote. Unlike in 2016, when Trump won a shock electoral victory against Hillary Clinton but lost the popular vote, he will return to power with what he called an “unprecedented and powerful mandate”.

| Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images (Pic): Kamala Harris supporters at her concession speech

Republicans easily flipped the US Senate, and they appeared within range of keeping control of the US House, a scenario that would give Trump’s party control of all levels of elected government in Washington.

The address was Harris’s first public appearance since Tuesday afternoon, when she stopped by the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington to thank phone-bankers working to get out the vote before polls closed. Harris had been expected to address supporters at the campaign’s campus watch party on Tuesday night. But as hope turned to despair, a campaign co-chair, Cedric Richmond, appeared instead to inform attendees that she would not be speaking.

Supporters returned to Howard on Wednesday to bid a painful farewell to a woman they had hoped might finally shatter the nation’s “hardest, highest” glass ceiling.

“I’ve been at this a long time and this time I really thought we were going to do it,” said Joanne Howes, a founding member of Emily’s List, an influential fundraising group that supports Democratic female candidates who back abortion rights. “We’re going to feel sad and sorrowful, but then we have to get up again. We can’t just accept that our democracy is over.”

Harris ran a tightly choreographed campaign, blanketing the battleground states with visits and television ads, while embracing the traditional Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts, including phone-banking and door-knocking. On the Saturday before the election, her campaign said people had knocked more than 800,000 doors in all-important Pennsylvania – a figure that was more than 10 times Biden’s 2020 margin of victory in the state. On Monday, the vice-president even knocked a few doors herself.

Harris framed her campaign around the theme of freedom and vowed to be a president for “all Americans”. She tried to craft an optimistic, forward-looking vision that spoke to Americans’ pervasive economic anxieties while also warning of the threat Trump posed to democratic institutions.

Public opinion polls showed an exceedingly close race until the very end. Her campaign had projected optimism in the final days, pointing to data they said showed undecided voters breaking their way after a racist joke at Trump’s grievance-fueled Madison Square Garden rally sparked a backlash among Puerto Rican celebrities and artists. At her campaign’s final rally in Philadelphia, Ricky Martin performed and Fat Joe implored fellow Latinos to back Harris: “When is enough enough?”

But the country was angry and disillusioned, furious with the incumbent party and hungry for change it saw in the norm-shattering former president. In the end, Trump made gains in nearly every corner of the country and across nearly every demographic group.

In concluding her brief remarks, the vice-president invoked what she called “a law of history”, citing an adage that “only when it is dark enough can you see the stars”.

“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,” she said. “America, if it is, let us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, billion stars. The light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service.”

Beyoncé’s Freedom played one last time, as the vice-president turned from the lectern and exited the stage.