The US Senate has voted to confirm judge Brett Kavanaugh to the supreme court, handing Donald Trump a major victory and America a bench expected to tilt to the right for the next generation.

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The president will hold a ceremony for Kavanaugh at the White House on Monday evening and he is expected to take his place on the court on Tuesday.

After a bitter fight on Capitol Hill dominated by partisan entrenchment and the allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh, the 53-year-old federal judge was sworn in by supreme court chief justice John Roberts on Saturday evening just a few hours after Republicans won the confirmation vote 50 to 48.

Furious protesters hammered on the huge front doors beneath the white columns of the majestic court building on Capitol Hill as Kavanaugh was being sworn in, following a day of demonstrations that saw many arrested but were more muted than days earlier, as it became clear the ultra-conservative’s confirmation was all but inevitable.

Trump watched the vote on a TV feed aboard Air Force One on his way to a rally in Topeka, Kansas, where he told the ecstatic crowd the senate decision was a “tremendous victory” for conservatives. He later tweeted, calling opponents “an angry, left-wing mob”, saying Democrats had become “too extreme and too dangerous to govern”.

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) You don’t hand matches to an arsonist, and you don’t give power to an angry left-wing mob. Democrats have become too EXTREME and TOO DANGEROUS to govern. Republicans believe in the rule of law - not the rule of the mob. VOTE REPUBLICAN!

At the rally, Trump said he was “100% certain” that it was not Kavanaugh who had attacked his accuser, Dr Christine Blasey Ford. That echoed the painful “he said, she said” testimony before the senate judiciary committee last month where Ford said she was 100% certain it was Kavanaugh who attempted to rape her at a party in high school, and the judge said he was 100% certain that it was not him.

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The vote was almost a foregone conclusion after the dominant Republican party secured majority support during a procedural vote on Friday.

But the final vote was still a monumental development in a sharply divided America. It came down to stark political loyalties in the face of multiple accusations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh from his past, which brought up current questions about his honesty, temperament and partisanship during testimony.

Kavanaugh has strongly denied all allegations of such misconduct. Votes fell almost entirely along party lines and the result was one of the narrowest in history. Voting was interrupted at least four times by protesters in the gallery.

The vice-president, Mike Pence, who was presiding over the 100-seat Senate chamber, repeatedly banged his gavel down and called out: “The sergeant at arms will restore order in the gallery”, as protesters screamed“I am a patriot” and “shame, shame”.

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Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said “Brett Kavanaugh does not deserve to be on the bench” and said he had “repeatedly misled the Senate”.

Kavanaugh, Schumer said, is against “environmental protections, women’s rights, civil rights, LGBT rights, Native American rights, healthcare protections and workers’ rights”.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, said many across the political spectrum describe Kavanaugh as “a superstar and a legendary scholar” and described him as being of “excellent” temperament and judicial philosophy.

The conservative victory capped a triumphant week for the president. Trump strong-armed a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico, which the markets loved, marked the lowest unemployment rate in the US since 1969, at just 3.7%, and secured the second ultra-conservative supreme court nomination of his administration, after putting Neil Gorsuch on the bench last year. Although, in another roller coaster week for the White House, Trump was hit by a huge investigation by the New York Times that described dubious aspects of his past financial background and prompted the New York tax authorities to begin an investigation.

In the procedural, or cloture, vote on Friday moderate Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was the lone Republican to oppose Kavanaugh’s nomination. Joe Manchin, a red state Democrat facing a touch re-election battle in West Virginia, was the only Democrat to break from his party and back the judge.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protesters demonstrate in Washington on Saturday. Photograph: Erik S Lesser/EPA

But two closely watched Republican moderate senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Jeff Flake of Arizona, who had been confronted by furious protesters in a Senate building elevator, ultimately gave Kavanaugh their stamp of approval.

The drama unfolded a week after Christine Blasey Ford, a research psychologist and university professor in northern California, delivered emotional testimony before the Senate judiciary committee accusing Kavanaugh of attempted rape when the two were teenagers in the early 1980s. Kavanaugh vehemently denied the claims in his own appearance before the panel, blasting the controversy as a coordinated smear campaign by Democrats.

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The judge’s aggressive turn raised fresh concerns over his impartiality and prompted the American Bar Association, the largest legal organization in the US, to reopen its evaluation of Kavanaugh. In a highly unusual step, retired supreme court justice John Paul Stevens, a lifelong Republican, said Kavanaugh’s performance at the hearing was disqualifying.

Kavanaugh sought to repair his reputation in an opinion article published late Thursday in the conservative editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal.

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“I might have been too emotional at times. I know that my tone was sharp, and I said a few things I should not have said,” he wrote. Kavanaugh survived an eleventh-hour FBI investigation into the allegations against him, which Republicans called “thorough” and Democrats called “incomplete” and a “cover up”.

The controversy over Kavanaugh’s nomination became the most polarizing supreme court battle since 1991, when Clarence Thomas was confirmed after being accused of sexual harassment by his former employee, Anita Hill. Ford’s allegation came in an era of increasing political tribalism and the #MeToo movement against sexual violence and harassment.

The confirmation process earned bipartisan condemnation as a “sham,” a “three-ring circus” and, perhaps most colorfully, an “intergalactic freak show”.

• This article was corrected on 8 October 2018. Dr Ford is a research psychologist, not a research psychiatrist.