By Joseph Ax, Andrea Shalal, Jarrett Renshaw and Helen Coster
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) -Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Kamala Harris in the battleground states of North Carolina and Georgia in Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election, Edison Research projected, taking him closer to completing a stunning political comeback four years after he left the White House.
The outcome remained uncertain in five other states expected to determine the winner.
But Trump was showing strength across broad swaths of the country. He had won 246 Electoral College votes to Harris’ 182. A candidate needs a total of at least 270 votes in the state-by-state Electoral College to claim the presidency.
Trump’s wins in North Carolina and Georgia left Harris with a narrow path to victory through the Rust Belt trio of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, though she was trailing in all three states. The former president was headed to a convention center near his home in Palm Beach, Florida, to address supporters, a campaign aide told Reuters.
Republicans won a U.S. Senate majority after flipping Democratic seats in West Virginia and Ohio. Neither party appeared to have an edge in the fight for control of the House of Representatives where Republicans currently hold a narrow majority.
Trump went into Election Day with a 50-50 chance of reclaiming the White House, a remarkable turnaround from Jan. 6, 2021, when many pundits pronounced his political career to be over. That day, a mob of his supporters stormed Congress in a violent attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
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.
Global investors were increasingly pricing in a Trump win late on Tuesday. U.S. stock futures and the dollar pushed higher, while Treasury yields climbed and bitcoin rose – all flagged by analysts and investors as trades that favor a Trump victory.
“Our county-by-county analysis in key states suggests that Harris is lagging vs 2020, and on this basis it is logical that the market is starting to price a Trump win, as seen in bonds, and the dollar,” said Jens Nordvig, CEO at analytical firm Exante.
At Howard University, where a large watch party was being held for Harris, supporters were leaving in droves, anticipating that the vice president would not address the crowd on Tuesday night.
Cedric Richmond, a co-chair of the Harris campaign, briefly addressed the crowd, and said Harris would not speak. “We still have votes to count,” he said. “We still have states that haven’t been called yet.”
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.
In Florida, a ballot measure that would have guaranteed abortion rights failed to reach the 60% threshold needed to pass, according to Edison, leaving a six-week ban in place. Nine other states have abortion-related measures on the ballot.
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 employed increasingly apocalyptic rhetoric while stoking unfounded fears that the election system cannot be trusted. Harris warned that a second Trump term would threaten the underpinnings of American democracy.
Hours before polls closed, Trump claimed on his Truth Social site without evidence that there was “a lot of talk about massive CHEATING” in Philadelphia, echoing his false claims in 2020 that fraud had occurred in large, Democratic-dominated cities. In a subsequent post, he also asserted there was fraud in Detroit.
“I don’t respond to nonsense,” Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey told Reuters.
A Philadelphia city commissioner, Seth Bluestein, replied on X, “There is absolutely no truth to this allegation.”
DIZZYING CAMPAIGN
Trump 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.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a prominent Trump backer, watched the results at Mar-a-Lago with Trump.
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.
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 non-consecutive terms in more than a century.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax, Nandita Bose and Brad Heath in Washington; Andrea Shalal in Dearborn, Michigan; Gram Slattery in Pittsburgh; Jarrett Renshaw in Philadelphia; Gabriella Borter and Alexandra Ulmer in Phoenix; Helen Coster in Raleigh, North Carolina; Stephanie Kelly in Asheville, North Carolina; Steve Holland in Palm Beach, Florida; Tim Reid, Bianca Flowers and Rich McKay in Atlanta; Brad Brooks in Las Vegas; Nathan Layne in Detroit; and Timothy Aeppel in Milwaukee; Writing by Joseph Ax and Jonathan Allen; Editing by Ross Colvin, Colleen Jenkins and Howard Goller)
