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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Trump won North Carolina and is projected to win Georgia, narrowing Harris' path.
• Trump gained support from Hispanic voters and those concerned about the economy.
• Control of Congress remains uncertain, with significant voter turnout and polarization evident.

ATLANTA — Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Kamala Harris in the battleground state of North Carolina in Tuesday's U.S. presidential election, Edison Research projected, moving him one step closer to completing an improbable political comeback.

The outcome remained uncertain in six other states expected to determine the winner.

But Trump was showing strength across broad swaths of the country. He had won 227 Electoral College votes to Harris' 165 as of 11:30 p.m. ET. A candidate needs a total of at least 270 votes in the state-by-state Electoral College to claim the presidency.

Decision Desk HQ projected Trump would also win Georgia, narrowing Harris' path to victory through the Rust Belt trio of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, though she was behind in all three states.

Trump picked up more support from Hispanics, traditionally Democratic voters, and among lower-income households that have keenly felt the sting of price rises since the last presidential election in 2020, according to exit polls from Edison.

Trump won 45% of Hispanic voters nationwide, trailing Harris with 53% but up 13 percentage points from 2020.

Voters whose top issue was the economy voted overwhelmingly for Trump, especially if they felt they were worse off financially than they were four years ago.

About 31% of voters said the economy was their top issue, and they voted for Trump by a 79%-to-20% margin, according to exit polls. Some 45% of voters across the country said their family's financial situation was worse off today than four years ago, and they favored Trump 80% to 17% for Harris.

U.S. stock futures and the dollar pushed higher while Treasury yields climbed and bitcoin rose, a sign that investors were reading early results as favoring Trump. Still, investors said it was too early, and the trades lacked conviction.

"Everyone's trying to take the few inches of data we've got right now and turn it into a mile," said Alex Morris, president and chief information officer of F/M Investments in Washington.

Trump outperforms 2020

Trump was earning a bigger share of the vote than he did four years ago in nearly every corner of the country, from suburban Georgia to rural Pennsylvania.

By 11 p.m. ET, officials had nearly completed their count of ballots in more than 1,200 counties – about a third of the country – and Trump's share was up about 2 percentage points compared to 2020, reflecting a broad if not especially deep shift in Americans' support for the president they ousted four years ago. He had improved his numbers in suburban counties, rural regions and even some large cities that are historically bastions of Democratic support.

Control of both chambers of Congress is also up for grabs. Democrats had only a narrow path to defend their Senate majority after Republican Jim Justice flipped a West Virginia seat on Tuesday. The House of Representatives looked like a toss-up.

Nearly three-quarters of voters say American democracy is under threat, according to the exit polls, underscoring the depth of polarization in a nation where divisions have only grown starker during a fiercely competitive race.

Trump, whose supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after he claimed the 2020 election was rigged, voted earlier near his home in Palm Beach, Florida.

"If I lose an election, if it's a fair election, I'm gonna be the first one to acknowledge it," Trump told reporters.

Millions of Americans waited in orderly lines to cast ballots, with only sporadic disruptions reported across a handful of states, including several non-credible bomb threats that the FBI said appeared to originate from Russian email domains.

Trump was watching the results at his Mar-a-Lago club before speaking to supporters at a nearby convention center, according to sources familiar with the planning. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a prominent Trump backer, said he would watch the results at Mar-a-Lago with Trump.

Trump attended a morning meeting about turnout but appeared bored by the data talk, according to one source briefed on the meeting. All Trump wanted to know, the source said, was: "Am I going to win?"

Harris, who had previously mailed her ballot to her home state of California, spent some of Tuesday in radio interviews encouraging listeners to vote. Later, she was due to address students at Howard University, a historically Black college in Washington where Harris was an undergraduate.

"To go back tonight to Howard University, my beloved alma mater, and be able to hopefully recognize this day for what it is, is really full circle for me," Harris said in a radio interview.

Tuesday's vote capped a dizzying race churned by unprecedented events, including two assassination attempts against Trump, President Joe Biden's surprise withdrawal and Harris' rapid rise.

No matter who wins, history will be made.

Harris, 60, the first female vice president, would become the first woman, Black woman and South Asian American to win the presidency. Trump, 78, the only president to be impeached twice and the first former president to be criminally convicted, would also become the first president to win nonconsecutive terms in more than a century.

Contributing: Andrea Shalal, Gabriella Borter, Helen Coster, Stephanie Kelly, Steve Holland, Tim Reid, Bianca Flowers, Rich McKay, Brad Brooks, Nathan Layne, Timothy Aeppel and Trevor Hunnicutt

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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U.S. electionsPoliticsU.S.
Joseph Ax and Jonathan Allen