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Latest: Trump claims election win after taking Pennsylvania

Updated Nov 6, 2024, 3:56am EST
politicsNorth America
File photos of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
Evelyn Hockstein and Octavio Jones/File Photo/Reuters
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The News

Former US President Donald Trump declared victory after he was projected to win the critical swing state of Pennsylvania, putting him on the brink of securing a majority of electoral college votes.

Opinion polls had reflected the closest presidential race in modern American history. Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and Republican Trump vied for victory in seven key swing states.

Follow this page for key updates and analysis from the campaigns, pollsters, pundits, lawmakers, and voters throughout Election Day. You can also read our hour-by-hour guide on how to watch the election results, as well as the key bellwethers to keep an eye on, as well as updates with reaction from around the world.

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The View From The Campaigns

Trump declared victory in the election, marking a remarkable return to power for the former president. “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” Trump said during an address in West Palm Beach, Florida. “I will govern by a simple motto: Promises made, promises kept,” Trump said shortly after he vowed to crack down on migration and stop conflicts across the globe.

After casting his vote in Palm Beach, the former president said he felt “confident” about the election, and that if he lost, he believed there would be no violence, because his supporters “are not violent people.” He later posted on social media that there were rumors of “massive cheating” in Pennsylvania without providing evidence amid reports of high turnout in a typically Democratic area of Philadelphia. The city’s District Attorney Larry Krasner immediately pushed back, saying there is “no factual basis whatsoever within law enforcement to support this wild allegation.”

Supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris left the Democratic Party’s election watch-party at Howard University after her speech was canceled, and she has not yet conceded the election. The win has not yet been officially confirmed by all US networks or The Associated Press

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Harris campaign chief Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote in a staff memo late Tuesday that the election seemed likely to come down to the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and that a final result could take until the early morning on Wednesday.

Reporters at the Harris headquarters in Washington, DC, said that there was “silence” among supporters watching the votes trickle in. The vice president had spent the day doing interviews with local radio stations urging people to vote, according to the campaign.

Cedric Richmond, the Harris campaign co-chair, confirmed that the Vice President would address the nation in the morning.

“Thank you for believing in the promise of America,” Richmond said. “We still have votes to count… We still have states that have not been called yet.”

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The View From Abroad

World leaders began congratulating Donald Trump after the former president declared victory..

French President Emmanuel Macron said he was ready to work alongside Trump with “respect and ambition” as they “managed to do for four years,” while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he appreciated Trump’s “peace through strength.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated Trump on “history’s greatest comeback,” saying it heralded “a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America.”

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The View From Congress

House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson congratulated Trump. “We have saved America,” Johnson wrote on X. Meanwhile Trump, in his victory speech, said Johnson was doing “a great job,” adding that the GOP looked likely to secure a majority in the lower chamber.

House Republicans — including Majority Leader Steve Scalise, House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, and Speaker Mike Johnson — were reportedly traveling to Mar-a-Lago Tuesday to support Trump.

Early in the night, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Suzan DelBene sounded optimistic that her party would be able to flip the House, telling NBC News that voters “are tired of the chaos and dysfunction and extremism from Republicans.”

Minnesota’s Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar told MSNBC that she had been surprised to hear from women in Republican-leaning states that they’d be voting for Harris. Klobuchar said that she’d heard from the business community that they didn’t want “to see the chaos in the economy” that some of Trump’s proposed tariff and tax plans would bring.

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The View from The States

North Carolina

Democrat Josh Stein, the state’s current attorney general, won the gubernatorial race, multiple outlets reported, defeating scandal-plagued Mark Robinson, the state’s current lieutenant governor.

CNN’s exit poll found North Carolina voters were “close to evenly split” on whether federal hurricane aid was delivered to people who needed it in the wake of Hurricane Helene. About 7 in 10 voters were dissatisfied or angry with the direction of the country, while their top issue showed more of a split, with about 33% identifying the state of democracy and 36% the economy.

Florida

Florida’s abortion referendum fell short of the supermajority needed to pass, leaving the state’s six-week abortion ban in place and leaving abortion virtually illegal across the southeast.

Roughly 57% of voters voted in favor of amending the constitution to ensure abortion access before fetal viability; Florida law requires referendums to 60% in favor to pass, the highest threshold in the country.

A measure to legalize recreational marijuana also appeared to have failed, receiving only 56% of voters in support of the initiative.

Delaware

Delaware state Sen. Sarah McBride won the state’s only House race, several outlets reported, making the Democrat the first transgender person ever elected to the US House of Representatives.

In an interview with Reuters, McBride said she was more focused on the issues that matter to voters rather than the history-defining nature of her candidacy, but acknowledged that it came with “added responsibilities.”

“Whenever you are first, you often have to try to be the best version that you can,” she said.

Maryland

Democrat Angela Alsobrooks defeated former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan — a fierce critic of Trump — in Maryland’s Senate race, multiple outlets reported, keeping a Democratic seat in the party’s hands.

Arizona

A judge ordered polling places to stay open an extra two hours across nine precincts in an eastern Arizona county. The county saw a troubled start to Election Day, with malfunctioning equipment and a shortage of printed ballots, the Associated Press reported.

Wisconsin

In Milwaukee, a tabulator issue means that roughly 31,000 votes will need to be recounted, city officials said.

Doors to the machines were not closed properly, officials said, with both absentee and in-person ballots that will be recounted “out of an abundance of caution,” said the Milwaukee Election Commission.

Pennsylvania

In Fayette County, a judge blocked a local judge of elections who indicated that they would do a hand count audit of votes, ordering the official to follow Pennsylvania law, the Associated Press reported. If the official does not comply, voting materials will be moved to the Fayette County Election Bureau to ensure they counted according to law.

In Cambria County, poll stations were ordered to stay open later than usual after issues were found with some of the machines used to scan ballots. Election officials said that “there is a process in place for issues of this nature,” and the malfunction “should not discourage voters from voting at their voting precincts,” CNN reported. Other polling stations in the state also reported some machines that experienced issues, however election officials assured that all votes would be counted. In Luzerne County, polling stations will stay open an hour and a half longer than in the rest of the state after they experienced delays in opening this morning.

Georgia

Two polling stations in Fulton County reportedly closed temporarily early this morning after receiving threatening calls that were investigated by local law enforcement. They have both reopened, and a Fulton County judge has ordered the five polling stations to stay open later than the statewide 7 pm Eastern closing time, according to local reports.

Speaking later on Tuesday, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger said that Russian actors appeared to be behind several non-credible threats made on polling stations, while the FBI said they had also detected “non-credible” threats of apparent Russian origin.

Michigan

Michigan’s Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson told CNN that she is investigating text messages circulating among some voters from a local Republican representative Tuesday that incorrectly suggested voters should cast their ballots on Wednesday, the day after Election Day.

Nevada

Nevada’s Secretary of State warned Tuesday that there appear to be several thousand rejected ballots in two of the state’s largest counties, Clark and Washoe, with many showing signatures that don’t match driving license records — “It’s mostly the fact that young people don’t have signatures these days.” The state allows voters to fix (“cure”) their ballots through Nov. 12, which could delay a final call on which candidate wins the state.

Iowa

Some voting machines in central Iowa’s Story County malfunctioned Tuesday, according to state officials, which could mean delays in reporting results. The machines were unable to read “certain ballot styles,” the county’s auditor said. The cause of the technical difficulties was unknown.


Washington, DC

US Capitol police officers arrested a man who allegedly smelled like fuel, and was carrying a torch and a flare gun while entering the Capitol Visitor Center. The incident is being investigated.

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The View From Pundits

How accurate were polls?

As the final polls closed, the race was shaping up to be just as close as opinion polls predicted. “Pretty much exactly the race we expected,” The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta wrote. As Republicans have grown their support in rural areas, Democrats have hoped to make up the difference among suburban women. “Can Harris outrun Biden by 4-5 points in those big metro counties? That’s your ballgame.”

Early, and very limited, voting results, including in Georgia and Indiana, signaled some patterns, analysts said: Trump appeared to be performing better than in 2020 in some rural areas, while Harris was doing better in the suburbs. In counties that have mostly reported results, “Trump is holding or improving upon his 2020 margins in rural areas,” pollster Adam Carlson said.

Predictions:

Nate Silver’s election model published early Nov. 5 forecast Harris winning 50.015% of the time, with the remainder a Trump win or a tie — a scenario that would likely also result in a Trump win, given that the Republican-controlled House would vote to decide the winner. “So if you offered me a bet on the election, who would I pick? Well, I wouldn’t,” Silver wrote.

The Economist’s final election forecast saw Harris’ chance of winning rise from 50% to 56%. The lead was “small enough to barely be called a lead at all,” the outlet cautioned, but noted it likely reflected what voters saw as a stronger end to Harris’ campaign.

As more results came in on Tuesday, The New York Times pollster Nate Cohn said they predicted that Trump was most likely to win the Presidency, pointing to his early advantages in the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. “There is still a lot of vote left, but in the voting so far, Trump is narrowly but discernibly ahead.”

The Economy Election:

The economy is “the third candidate” in this election, Justin Lahart of The Wall Street Journal wrote — though exactly how it will influence voters is “less than straightforward.” Despite the economy being strong by many measures, prices are still higher than before the pandemic, and “voters appear to have a longer memory for inflation than they do for economic growth,” Lahart noted.


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The View From Voters

Exit polls highlight democracy, candidate favorability:

According to ABC News exit polling, voters seem generally negative about the future of the country, with 72% of voters surveyed reporting dissatisfaction or anger. Almost three quarters of voters said democracy is under threat. Meanwhile, about three in four voters are at least somewhat confident that their ballots would be accurately counted, according to an Associated Press poll.

A CNN exit poll found voters had a slightly more positive view of Vice President Kamala Harris than of Donald Trump. Approximately half of voters said they’d be optimistic or excited if Harris wins, while Trump also roughly split voters evenly between being optimistic or concerned if he returns to the White House.

Swing state voters express concern:

Ahead of Election Day, voters in battleground states expressed a sense that “their nation was coming undone,” The New York Times reported, with many expressing fears over the potential for violence both during and after the election. Others said they were relieved the campaign was coming to an end. Voters in swing state Georgia told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution also expressed concern about what might happen after the election. One, an 18 year old man — a key demographic the Trump campaign has sought to reach but which doesn’t usually turn out to vote, said he was voting because “everyone should participate in this.”

The first local results are in:

Voters in the New Hampshire town of Dixville Notch — of which there are six — cast their ballots shortly after midnight on Tuesday, resulting in a tie, a reflection of what opinion polls have suggested for months: “It’s really close,” Politico’s Lisa Kashinsky wrote. The tiny community unanimously voted for Joe Biden in 2020, and some were surprised by the result this time: “I didn’t see that coming,” Scott Maxwell told The New York Times.

Astronauts voted early from space:

NASA astronauts voted early from the International Space Station. They cast their vote in Texas’ Harris County. Space ballots get beamed to Earth through NASA’s constellation of satellites that communicate with antennas on Earth, according to CNN.


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