By James Oliphant
(Reuters) -The fight between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump remained tight as results rolled in Tuesday night, with a victor in the U.S. presidential election unlikely to emerge until Wednesday or even later in the week.
Here are some takeaways as polls close across the country and votes are tabulated:
TREND LINESAs the evening progressed, Harris and Trump each prevailed in the early states they had been projected to win. Trump had the early lead in electoral votes.
The Associated Press and Edison Research projected Trump would win the battleground state of North Carolina, while Decision Desk HQ said Trump would win Georgia as well as North Carolina. Edison Research had yet to call the two races, or any of the other swing states that will decide the election.
While it was still too early to suggest which candidate might be in the best position to win the contest, there were some emerging trends that could prove determinative.
Though many blocs of voters were supporting the Democratic or Republican candidate in surprisingly similar numbers to 2020, according to exit polls conducted by Edison, Trump was showing greater strength with male voters of color and with voters under 45 compared to four years ago.
He also was possibly holding onto enough women supporters in America’s suburbs to prevail despite Harris’ best attempts to pull them away. The national exit poll showed Trump with a 51% to 47% edge with suburban white women voters.
VOTERS OF COLOR
The Trump campaign put a great deal of effort into persuading Black and Latino voters to defect from the Democratic Party – and there were some early indications those efforts were paying off.
In North Carolina, exit polls showed Trump boosting his share of the Black vote to 12%, from 5% in 2020. He garnered the support of 20% of Black male voters, the poll said.
According to the Edison national poll, Trump’s support among Latino male voters jumped 18 percentage points from four years ago.
Trump was up 11 percentage points with Latino voters in Nevada, according to the poll, and up 4 points in Arizona from four years ago.
In North Carolina, Trump was projected to win despite exit polls showing a five-point slide in support among white voters compared to four years ago.
In Pennsylvania, perhaps the most coveted state by both sides, Trump’s support among white voters dropped three percentage points compared to four years ago, Edison said – and his support was down four points among white male voters.
Even so, white voters were on pace to comprise a larger share of the electorate than four years ago.
According to preliminary results from the national exit poll conducted by Edison, 71% of voters nationwide were white, compared with 67% in Edison’s 2020 exit poll.
A GENDER GAP?
Harris’ campaign was looking to exploit a large gender gap in the electorate, with the hope that legions of women voters would flock to the vice president because of issues such as abortion rights.
But so far, Trump seemed to be holding onto the support of at least white women voters, according to exit polls. Black women overwhelmingly supported Harris.
In Pennsylvania, Trump was maintaining close to the same level of support among white women voters that he enjoyed in 2020. That was also true in Georgia.
North Carolina, on the other hand, showed some real potential erosion for Trump. He dropped eight points among white women compared with four years ago, Edison said.
Trump’s campaign, conversely, paid significant attention to pulling in male voters, particularly young men, through social media, sports, podcasts and online gaming.
Early national exits (with many polling places across the country still open) showed Harris picking up less support among women – 54% – than Biden did in 2020 when he gained 57%.
AN AGE GAP
The national exit poll showed Trump slightly edging Harris among men between the ages of 18 and 44 and beating her solidly with men 45 and up.
In Michigan and Wisconsin, Trump was up five percentage points with overall voters under 45 compared with four years ago. In Nevada, he jumped six points with those voters.
But at the same time, Trump appeared to be losing ground with older voters.
In Wisconsin, Trump’s share of voters 65 and older fell 11 points from 2020. In Michigan, he fell six points.
Trump won the 65-and-over vote over Biden in 2020 by three percentage points. In the Edison national poll for 2024, Harris and Trump were essentially tied.
(Reporting by James Oliphant; Editing by Colleen Jenkins, Daniel Wallis and Deepa Babington)
