Washington DC November 6 2024: Donald Trump has won the US presidential election, the Associated Press reports, with voters overlooking his divisive speeches, felony conviction and three separate criminal indictments to send the Republican former president back to the White House.
The AP says he has reached the 270-electoral college vote threshold to return to office by winning Wisconsin.
The extraordinary victory will make the 78-year-old New York real estate magnate only the second former president in US history to win the White House after previously losing re-election.
He also becomes the oldest person ever elected to the presidency.
Trump was first elected in 2016, but lost his re-election bid to Joe Biden in 2020, when the Democrat was 77. Trump then spent weeks attempting to prevent his rival from taking office, culminating in the 6 January 2021 insurrection, which saw his supporters attack the US Capitol after Trump addressed them outside the White House.
In the years that followed, prosecutors at the federal level and in the states of Georgia and New York brought felony charges against him, and earlier this year, he was convicted in Manhattan on 34 counts of business fraud, while the other cases have stalled. He was also found liable in a civil court case of sexual abuse.
Trump is bound by term limits, and cannot seek re-election. The only other president to serve two non-consecutive terms was Democrat Grover Cleveland, who was in office from 1885 to 1889, and again from 1893 to 1897.
