Trump wins North Carolina and appears favored across remaining battleground states

WASHINGTON

The race for president of the United States is too close to call, but former President Donald Trump appears favored in battleground states across the country over his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, and has won the critical state of North Carolina.

Results streaming in from four critical battleground states — Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan — appear to show a highly competitive race, with both candidates battling for a path to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency.

Yet, as of 11:30 pm Eastern Time, Trump has won North Carolina and maintains a lead in Georgia — a historically conservative state where President Joe Biden managed to beat him during the last election in 2020.

He also has a slight lead across the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, a state Harris must win to take the White House.

Harris can still catch up in these states, with millions of votes still to be counted. But losses for Harris in the South will severely limit her different paths to the presidency. Victories across all five battlegrounds would reconstitute Trump’s definitive victory in his 2016 race against Hillary Clinton.

Public surveys leading up to Election Day showed an historically tight race in the national popular vote and across the seven key battlegrounds. Exit polls released Tuesday night reflect an electorate divided by gender and education, and is focused on the economy, immigration, reproductive rights, and the future of American democracy — issues that drove the 2024 campaign.

READ MORE: Will we know the next president on election night? It’s more likely than you think

Throughout the day, as the dueling campaigns monitored voter turnout across the swing states, officials from both camps expressed cautious optimism that their voters were turning out in the numbers they need to secure victory.

Voting went smoothly across the country, with few exceptions. Local and federal authorities said that Russian actors attempted to call in fake bomb threats to polling stations in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin, and in Black-majority precincts in Georgia, in a ploy to disrupt or slow down voting.

Trump, the Republican nominee and former president, is watching the returns from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, with a tight circle of close friends, family members and one of his most generous financial supporters, Elon Musk. His Democratic opponent, Vice President Harris, is in Washington, D.C., where she told reporters she would have a private dinner with her family before holding an election-night event at Howard University, her alma mater.

READ MORE: Kamala Harris makes final case to voters before fateful Election Night

If victorious, Harris would become the first woman ever elected to the presidency, as well as the first Asian American and woman of color. She is also the first candidate in modern U.S. history to become her party’s nominee without winning a primary, taking the Democratic mantle from President Joe Biden after he dropped out of the race in July.

A Trump victory would make him only the second president to serve two non-consecutive terms, returning him to the White House after he lost to Biden in 2020, and the first convicted felon elected to the nation’s highest office. Trump has campaigned on plans of “retribution” against his political enemies and has vowed to organize mass deportations of undocumented immigrants across the United States.

This story was originally published November 5, 2024, 4:00 PM.