The Democratic Party now finds itself grappling with how it lost so definitively, and how it so thoroughly misunderstood the American electorate.

US President Joe Biden has been blamed for the Democrats' comprehensive defeat in the US elections earlier this week. Donald Trump, now the President-elect, won the popular vote and seized control of both the Senate and likely the House as the Democrats haemorrhaged votes that they had won four years ago.

In his first speech since Kamala Harris lost the presidential race to Donald Trump, President Joe Biden vowed a peaceful transition of power and said that many of his administration’s accomplishments would be felt over the next decade.