With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency.

US media have declared Trump the winner in more than half of the 50 US states, including four key battlegrounds Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, three of which voted Democratic in the last election.

That gives him 276 electoral votes. Major networks have called the election in his favor, after an early call from Fox News.

Harris has so far captured 223 electoral votes.

The polarizing Republican's victory, following one of the most hostile campaigns in modern US history, was all the more remarkable given an unprecedented criminal conviction, a near-miss assassination attempt.

"It's a political victory that our country has never seen before," Trump told a victory party in Florida.

Vice President Harris, who only entered the race in July after President Joe Biden dropped out, ran a centrist campaign that highlighted Trump's inflammatory messaging and use of openly racist and sexist tropes.

But his apocalyptic warnings about immigration and championing of isolationism found their mark with voters battered by the post-Covid economy and eager for a change from the Biden years, AFP said.

The campaign pointed to a nail-bitingly close contest, but the results came surprisingly fast, delivering a crushing victory that included wins in the swing states of Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

Trump is the first president in more than a century to win a non-consecutive second term.

He is also the only person to be elected as a convicted felon -- he will face sentencing in a New York court for fraud on November 26.

Already 78, Trump is on course to break another record as the oldest-ever sitting president during his four-year term. He will surpass Biden who is set to step down in January at the age of 82.

 Since his first successful White House bid in 2016, Trump has reshaped the GOP in his image and holds an iron grip over a party that once appeared ready to move on from him after the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021