After winning the key battleground states of North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania, Donald Trump was on the brink of making a shock return to the White House in a race where US democracy was on the line.
The Associated Press called North Carolina for Trump at 11.18pm ET, as results showed him leading Democrat Kamala Harris by about three points. The former US president maintained a narrower lead in Georgia – which the AP called for him just before 1am.
Then in the early hours of Wednesday, Pennsylvania was also called for Trump, delivering a brutal blow to Harris’s hopes of making history as America’s first female president.
As votes continued to be counted across the US, Harris’s path to victory seemed to be narrowing sharply and despondency gripped many of her supporters gathered at watch parties across the US.
The Harris campaign was left focusing on the remaining two crucial swing states in the rust belt that are expected to decide the race: Michigan and Wisconsin. But the loss of Pennsylvania had punctured a hole in the so-called “blue wall” trio of states that Joe Biden had won in 2020.
At Howard University in Washington, Harris’s alma mater, Cedric Richmond, a former congressman and campaign co-chair, told gathered supporters they would not hear from Harris that night.
“All of the Harris campaign, the campaign family, thank you for all that you have done,” Richmond said. “Thank you for being here. Thank you for being believing in the promise of America. We still have votes to count. We still have states that have not been called yet. We will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken.
“So you won’t hear from the vice-president tonight, but you will hear from her tomorrow. She will be back here tomorrow to address not only the [Howard] family, not only to address her supporters, but to address the nation.”
Trump’s adopted home state of Florida gave him his first major victory of the night, with the AP calling it early. Democrats had hoped to make Florida more competitive this year but Trump led the vice-president by 13 points with 97% of expected ballots counted.
Trump’s aides projected confidence after analyzing the early results, pointing to the former president’s performance in the former Democratic stronghold of Miami-Dade county as evidence of his prospects. Some senior advisers indicated that they thought Trump could win Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to people familiar with the matter.
“We’ve got this,” Steve Bannon, the former Trump White House strategist turned rightwing podcaster, told the Guardian as more supporters trickled into the former president’s watch party in Florida.
At Harris’s election night event in Washington DC, the crowd turned quiet when televisions showed Trump winning North Carolina. A few attendees appeared to be leaving, as it remained uncertain whether Harris would address the crowd. After Richmond spoke, many turned to leave.
In the battle for Congress, Republicans regained a majority in the Senate after flipping seats in West Virginia and Ohio. The race for the House, where Republicans hold a narrow majority, remained a toss-up.
source:theguardian.com
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