Four years after he was voted out of the White House, according to projections.
The outcome defied polls that showed a very close race ahead of Tuesday's election day.
Trump prevailed in at least five of the seven battleground states, pushing him over the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency, and led in the remaining two, Arizona and Nevada, where votes were still being counted .
We explore how the Democrats lost the presidency and how Trump made a comeback.
The economy
The American Psychological Association reports that about 73 percent of Americans view the economy as a significant stressor in their lives.
According to exit polls, voters thought Republican candidate Trump could manage the economy better than Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
The latest Edison Research poll found that 51 percent favored Trump on the economy, compared to 47 percent who favored Harris.
Bruce Wolpe, a senior fellow at the University of Sydney's United States Studies Centre, said examining Trump's presidency (2017-2021) provides insight into why this is the case.
“There is a nostalgia effect,” he told SBS News.
“People now remember before COVID-19, the economy had high employment, low inflation and low interest rates.
“When Biden was elected in 2020, if you look at the inflation over the last 3.5 years, the prices of household goods, supermarket items, gasoline, insurance and things like that have gone up 10 to 40 percent, and that's been the experience that we have experienced.
“Voters don't like that.”
Edison Research exit polls show that 45 percent of voters feel that their family's economic situation has worsened over the past four years.
'Sleepy Joe'
President Joe Biden's attempt to run for a second term became untenable when he stumbled in the presidential debate against Trump.
Brendon O'Connor, a professor of American politics at the University of Sydney, said that even before Biden, who often calls Trump “sleepy Joe,” became a liability for Democrats, the party faced significant challenges.”
“The idea that Biden was qualified to run for a second term was, I think, kind of nonsense to most Americans, and his performance in that debate confirmed for many people what they had been thinking for more than a year :' said O'Connor.
“So it was extremely arrogant of Biden and foolish to think he should run for a second term. He should have made it very clear that he was only running for one term.”
O'Connor said Democrats were hurting their own chances by not holding a primary earlier this year.
“They should have had some kind of open process where they debated which issues should be front and center in their campaign and put their candidates to the test,” he said.
“Harris may have lost the primary, but the party would have entered the election with an even stronger candidate.”
O'Connor also said Harris only talked about a limited number of policy ideas on the campaign trail and should have been more willing to criticize and distance himself from the Biden administration.
Trump's success among minority groups
Rodrigo Praino, professor of politics and public policy at Flinders University, said an incumbent government tends to lose power when voters worry about the economy, even if all indicators are actually good.
Praino said economic concerns tend to disproportionately affect minority communities.
Dennis Altman, emeritus professor of politics and director of the Institute for Human Security at La Trobe University, said there had been clear movement in the polls of those communities as a result.
“What Trump did in this election was win over a much larger number of Latino and black voters than I think any Republican this century,” he said.
But Praino said it's not just a story about the economy.
'There is of course the gender issue. Trump has pitted one gender against another – men against women – in a way that I don't think has ever been done before,” he said.
“There's also the problem that many note that it seems like Americans just don't like voting for a woman.”
Dr. Denise Goodwin, a senior research fellow at Monash University's BehaviorWorks Australia, said other deeply held cultural values also played a role in Trump's return to the White House.
She said racial concerns and prejudices were highlighted and amplified by social media, diluting the concerns people had about what Trump said and the way he said it.
“We call that social identity bias — where we tend to believe things or people that fit within our group,” Goodman said.
Political analyst and pollster Michael O'Neil said Trump's message on migrants was ultimately compelling.
“Immigration has been a big problem, and the Democrats' problem is that they've been in power for years and they feel like they're doing nothing,” he said.
“One thing people want when they see a problem is they want someone to do something. Even if it might not be the right thing, they certainly want action.”
Harris lost Michigan, a state that Biden had sent to the Democrats in 2020.
Ahead of the election, SBS World News spoke to voters who planned to support Trump, citing their disappointment with the Democrats' Middle East policy.
expressed concern for their relatives in Gaza and Lebanon, shocked by the images they see on TV every night.
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