Vice President Kamala Harris called Donald Trump Wednesday afternoon to congratulate him on winning the 2024 U.S. election, a senior Harris aide told reporters.

Harris also emphasized the importance of unity and a peaceful transfer of power to the president-elect, the aide said.

Trump defeated Harris in Tuesday night’s election, sweeping the "blue wall" states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The Associated Press called the race at 5:35 a.m. ET.

Four years ago, Trump refused to accept his loss to President Joe Biden, inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump is just the second president to lose re-election and come back to win a second term. 

In his victory speech, Trump praised his third political campaign.

"This was a movement like nobody's ever seen before, and frankly, this was, I believe, the greatest political movement of all time," Trump told a crowd of supporters. "There's never been anything like this in this country, and now it's going to reach a new level of importance because we're going to help our country heal."

Biden is also expected to call Trump, as well as speak publicly on Trump’s failure to enact a peaceful transfer of power in 2020, a White House official told NBC. 

The 2024 presidential race was projected to be one of the closest in history. Harris’ team was expecting the results to be uncertain up to days after the polls closed, the aides told reporters. She spent most of Tuesday preparing a speech that would encourage Americans to “hold on” while waiting for results. 

Harris, who has not appeared publicly since Tuesday, is scheduled to give a concession speech at 4 p.m. ET at her alma mater, Howard University.

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