Supporters attend an election night watch party for Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump on Nov. 6, in West Palm Beach, Florida.Evan Vucci/The Associated Press
This is Tuesday’s late file. Read today’s more recent story.
Donald Trump is closing in on winning the U.S. presidential race, picking up at least two swing states as his Republican Party was set to take control of the Senate.
By early Wednesday morning, Mr. Trump had already won the key battleground states of Georgia and North Carolina and he led in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Victories in those states would put him over the 270 electoral college votes needed to win.
Republicans win Senate majority after flipping seats in Ohio, West Virginia
Mr. Trump’s Republicans were also projected to win back the Senate from the Democrats, which would give Mr. Trump a largely free hand to govern. Control of the House of Representatives remained undecided and could take days to resolve.
Results from several key states showed that Kamala Harris, 60, had underperformed in several regions – such as major urban centers – that President Joe Biden had relied on to eke out a victory over Mr. Trump in 2020. Mr. Trump also picked up more votes in many rural areas than he won in 2020.
Unlike his victory in 2016, Mr. Trump is also expected to win the national popular vote, and he could sweep the seven swing states – Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and North Carolina.
Mr. Trump addressed supporters early Wednesday and declared victory.
“This was I believe the greatest political movement of all time,” Mr. Trump told a cheering crowd in Florida.
“And now it’s going to reach a new level of importance because we’re going to help our country heal ... we made history for a reason tonight and that reason is going to be just right.”
“It’s now clear that we’ve achieved the most incredible political thing – look what happened, isn’t this crazy?”
World leaders began offering their congratulations to Mr. Trump early Wednesday morning even as votes were still being counted. “Congratulations President-elect Trump on your historic election victory,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a statement. “I look forward to working with you in the years ahead.”
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared a photograph on X of him and his wife with Mr. Trump. “Dear Donald and Melania Trump, Congratulations on history’s greatest comeback! Your historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America. This is a huge victory!,” Mr. Netanyahu said.
“Good Morning Hungary! On the road to a beautiful victory, it’s in the bag,” said Hungarian President Viktor Orban, who has been one of Mr. Trump’s biggest supporters in Europe.
French President Emmanuel Macron offered his congratulations and added on X: “Ready to work together as we did for four years. With your convictions and mine. With respect and ambition. For more peace and prosperity.”
The Republicans picked up Senate seats in Ohio and West Virginia. Bernie Moreno’s defeat of incumbent Sherrod Brown in Ohio continued the Republican ascendency in the state at the heart of the U.S. Midwest’s manufacturing belt.
The West Virginia seat, held by Joe Manchin, a former Democrat who left the party this term to sit as an independent and who did not run for re-election in the deep-red state, was less of a surprise and the Democrats had done little to defend it. By early Wednesday, the Republicans still had another pickup opportunity outstanding in Montana, where incumbent Democrat Jon Tester had been polling behind.
Out of 10 states voting in referendums to enshrine abortion access in their constitutions, Maryland, Colorado, Missouri and New York were all on track to approve the measures. Florida’s ballot measure, however, fell short despite a majority voting in favour: Florida required a 60-per-cent threshold for passage rather than the simple majority required in other states. Results were not yet clear in five other states.
In the presidential race, the result appeared likely to be determined by each campaign’s efforts to shift small, specific demographics of voters.
Live updates about the U.S. election
Ms. Harris, the Democratic Vice-President, was vying to become the first woman and South-Asian American elected to the White House. She ran on promises of a child tax credit, expanded subsidies for health insurance, controlling costs of housing and prescription drugs, and subsidies for manufacturing companies.
Mr. Trump, the 78-year-old Republican former president, is hoping to return to office on promises to round up and deport undocumented immigrants, fire civil servants and replace them with political loyalists and erect trade barriers around the U.S. economy.
While Ms. Harris has accused Mr. Trump of planning an authoritarian takeover and hit him hard over his role in ending Roe v. Wade’s abortion-rights protections, Mr. Trump has made hay over inflation and the flow of migrants at the border with Mexico.
Much of the election turned on Mr. Trump’s increasingly dark rhetoric. He has accused migrants of “poisoning the blood of the country” and vowed to take revenge against his political opponents, whom he dubs “the enemy within.”
From a global perspective, the election marks an inflection point in the battle over nationalism that is roiling the democratic world.
A supporter holds a flag during an event held by Democratic presidential nominee U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris at Howard University, in Washington, on Nov. 6.Daniel Cole/Reuters
Mr. Trump has suggested that he would stop U.S. military aid to Ukraine in its war against Russia and may pull back from NATO and other multilateral bodies. Ms. Harris, meanwhile, was expected to continue President Joe Biden’s policy of international engagement.
Canada, meanwhile, has been bracing to either persuade Mr. Trump to exempt it from his promised global trade war or match Ms. Harris’s pricey industry subsidies. A Trump victory could also trigger fraught discussions over NATO, in which Canada has long failed to spend as much on defence as it has promised, and have implications for asylum demand in this country if Mr. Trump makes good on his mass deportation promises.
Americans are once again in a waiting game
The marathon contest has proved one of the most turbulent in U.S. history. Mr. Trump survived two assassination attempts, including one in which he was shot in the ear. Ms. Harris, meanwhile, ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket in July as a result of an unprecedented mid-campaign promotion after a disastrous debate performance forced Mr. Biden out of the race.
In Washington, authorities prepared for unrest Tuesday, installing anti-riot fencing around the White House, the Capitol and the Vice-President’s official residence. Both campaigns’ election-night headquarters – Howard University in the U.S. capital for the Democrats and a convention centre in West Palm Beach, Fla., for the GOP – were similarly fortified.
Mr. Trump mounted his campaign to return to the presidency after attempting to reverse his 2020 loss to Mr. Biden, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Earlier this year, he was convicted of 34 felonies related to a hush-money payment to a porn star before the 2016 election.
U.S. Army veteran, Doug Sherrill, 63, leaves a polling site on his bicycle after voting for the first time in his life, on Nov. 5, in Hamtramck, Mich. "Where we're at with the country right now with immigration and the war with Israel and Hamas, I hope that something changes for the better. Hopefully my vote makes a difference," said Sherrill.David Goldman/The Associated Press
Ms. Harris, the biracial daughter of immigrants to the U.S. from India and Jamaica, spent her adolescence in Montreal, which would make her the first president to have lived long term north of the border.
She has not, however, played up the historic nature of her campaign. Instead, she campaigned on not being Mr. Trump. She has called him a “wannabe dictator” and “petty tyrant,” and repeatedly raised his role in ending federal abortion protections. The end of those protections paved the way for Republican state governments to ban or strictly limit the procedure.
She has also tried to strike a personality contrast with Mr. Trump, playing up a laughing, smiling persona.
Democratic gains are turning once-red Arizona purple – and highlighting deep divides
Just under 40 per cent of registered voters cast early ballots, less than during the pandemic election of 2020 but significantly higher than in most elections. Republican voters were getting in on the action, unlike in 2020, when many of them stayed away because Mr. Trump had claimed the system was rife with fraud. In that election, Democrats outnumbered them in the early vote.
It was difficult, however, to draw many conclusions from the numbers. More registered Republicans than Democrats voted early in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina. In Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, however, registered Democrats have the advantage. But voter registration does not always correlate to actual voting choices. And a significant portion of the electorate still turned out on election day.
A man votes at the Fire and Rescue on Election Day in New Gloucester, Maine, U.S.Faith Ninivaggi/Reuters
Given the tight race, turnout was likely to be the pivotal factor. Ms. Harris was aiming to get out core Democratic constituencies, particularly Black and Latino voters, and university-educated urbanites of all races. She was also hoping to peel away suburban Republican women opposed to Mr. Trump’s anti-abortion stand and bombastic style.
Mr. Trump, meanwhile, was looking to both motivate his usual coalition – rural, small-town and suburban Republicans coupled with working-class voters who go Republican only for him – and make inroads with Black and Latino voters.
One wild card was Arab-American voters, particularly in Michigan and Pennsylvania, who usually vote Democratic but may have sat the election out in protest of Mr. Biden’s continuing to supply weapons to Israel amid its invasion of Gaza.
In battleground Michigan, shifting allegiances are upending both parties’ once-reliable voting blocs
While the Democrats relied on a classic get-out-the-vote apparatus, powered by thousands of staff members and a legion of volunteers, the Republicans outsourced theirs to third-party campaign groups, including a super PAC bankrolled by billionaire Elon Musk.
Mr. Trump’s campaign and allied groups have already filed nearly 100 lawsuits across the country to set the stage for a possible challenge to the election results. He has also claimed without evidence that voter fraud is taking place.
The election was also the first to be conducted under new voting rules adopted by some Republican states in response to Mr. Trump’s false claims of fraud in 2020.
People wait in line to vote one hour before polls close on Election Day, in Boston.Michael Dwyer/The Associated Press
In Georgia, for instance, new rules have made it harder to request a mail-in ballot and have given the state the power to take over the local boards that certify election results. The state also banned handing out food or water to people waiting in line to vote.
In Pennsylvania, meanwhile, Republican legislators have blocked efforts to have absentee ballots processed before election day, setting the stage for delays in getting the vote counted.
Women’s votes could decide swing state of Georgia, but their ballots are anything but predictable
For Mr. Trump, the election could decide his legal fate. In the case of a win, he was expected to force the Justice Department to end two prosecutions against him, one for trying to overturn the 2020 election and another for refusing to return classified documents after he left office.
On his felony convictions, he is expected to be sentenced later this month. He is also on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars related to civil court findings that he sexually abused a magazine writer and committed business fraud. Both cases are under appeal.
The former president has also listed a large number of people he has said should be prosecuted, imprisoned or, in some cases, executed, including his political rivals, prosecutors on his cases and elections workers. Mr. Trump has also threatened to take away the broadcasting licences of CBS and ABC, and prosecute Google, for carrying negative stories about him.
A supporter of Donald Trump waves a giant flag outside the White House in Washington, DC.DANIEL SLIM/AFP/Getty Images
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