Former U.S. President Donald Trump secured victories in Georgia and North Carolina on Wednesday, placing him ahead with 246 electoral college votes to Vice President Kamala Harris’s 210, as the nation awaited results from crucial swing states.
With 90 per cent of votes counted in Pennsylvania – a state Harris must win to maintain a path to victory – Trump held the lead. The vice president’s campaign confirmed she would not address supporters on Tuesday evening.
“We still have votes to count. We still have states that have not been called yet,” said campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond at Harris’s election night gathering. “We will continue, overnight, to fight to make sure that every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken.”
The final state-wide polls closed in Alaska, where Trump was favoured to win its three electoral votes.
In a significant development for reproductive rights, Missouri voters approved a constitutional amendment protecting abortion access, becoming the first state to overturn its near-total ban since the Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade decision. Similar measures passed in Colorado, New York and Maryland, whilst Florida voters rejected an attempt to overturn a six-week ban.
Republicans regained control of the Senate for the first time in four years, the Associated Press reported, after winning seats in Ohio and West Virginia whilst maintaining their positions in Texas and Nebraska.
The election marked historic victories for diversity in Congress. Delaware’s Lisa Blunt Rochester and Maryland’s Angela Alsobrooks became the first two Black women to serve simultaneously in the Senate. In another milestone, Delaware state senator Sarah McBride defeated Republican John Whalen III to become the first openly transgender person elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Trump’s victory in Iowa contradicted a late poll by respected pollster Ann Selzer that had shown Harris with a slight lead within the margin of error. The Trump campaign had dismissed the poll as an outlier, a position that proved accurate.
