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Trump Expands Lead, GOP Captures Senate as Harris Path Narrows
Republican nominee Donald Trump has jumped out to a lead over Democrat Kamala Harris in the race for the presidency and his party is projected to control the Senate, with markets swinging in expectation of his possible victory even as vote counting continues.
Trump won his first battleground state, holding North Carolina, and leads Georgia with over 90% of votes counted. He holds a more tentative advantage across Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona, where tabulation was in much earlier stages.
None of those four states have been called by major networks or the Associated Press, leaving open a path for Harris to close the gap as votes roll in from densely populated cities and suburbs that are Democratic strongholds.
But Republicans’ strength delivered them the Senate, flipping seats in Ohio and West Virginia while successfully fending off challenges in Texas and Nebraska. Several other races could still grow that majority.
Markets were responding to the initial results favoring Trump with trades linked to a Republican victory. S&P 500 futures were up 1.2%, US 10-year yields surged 17 basis points to a four-month high of 4.44% as traders speculated his policies would keep interest rates elevated. Bitcoin spiked 6.9% to a record.
Harris campaign chairwoman Jennifer O’Malley Dillon in an email to staff as polls closed across the continental US acknowledged that their “clearest path to 270 electoral votes lies through the Blue Wall states.” While the memo didn’t explicitly preclude a Harris comeback in Georgia, it made clear that Democrats were narrowing their hopes.
Control of the House of Representatives remained too close to call.
Trump easily won his home state of Florida, including some key heavily Hispanic counties. Harris took Democratic strongholds including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
As of 10:30 pm ET, Donald Trump is leading Kamala Harris in the electoral college vote count by a score of 204 to 112. Harris needs to pick up wins in the “rust belt.” Trump has already won in Texas, Florida, Ohio, Alabama, Missouri, and Utah. Pennsylvania will be the key tonight. Kailey Leinz reports.
Polls have closed in all of the battlegrounds, comprising Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada, though voting hours were extended in small pockets where irregularities were reported.
Republican Jim Justice flipped the West Virginia Senate seat being held by outgoing Democrat-turned-independent Joe Manchin, while Bernie Moreno unseated Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown.
Angela Alsobrooks was named the winner of the Maryland Senate race, defeating the state’s Republican former governor, Larry Hogan, in a Democratic-leaning state. Fox News projected that Texas Senator Ted Cruz had won reelection, snuffing out what some Democrats had hoped was a longshot pickup opportunity.
Independent Senator Bernie Sanders won reelection in Vermont. In North Carolina, Democrat Josh Stein defeated Republican Mark Robinson, who gained national notoriety after a report that he had posted racially inflammatory comments online, in the governor’s race.
Kamala Harris made a surprise visit to the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, DC, Tuesday afternoon where she thanked volunteers and made calls to voters herself. “We are all doing this together,” the vice president told one voter on the phone, thanking them for their time. Source: Bloomberg
Exit polls suggested voters remained frustrated with the state of the economy in exit polls released Tuesday afternoon by a consortium of networks that included NBC News, Fox News, and CNN.
Almost half of all surveyed voters — 48% — said they are very concerned about the cost of gas and 51% said they’re concerned about housing costs. Only 26% of voters said they were enthusiastic or satisfied with the way things are going, while 72% were dissatisfied or angry. President Joe Biden’s approval rating sits at 41%.
Trump cast his own ballot at a recreation center in Palm Beach, Florida, alongside former first lady Melania Trump, before stopping by his campaign headquarters to thank staff. The former president expressed confidence to reporters but asked his supporters to remain in line and ensure they could cast their ballots.
Harris earlier this week said she had voted by mail in her home state of California. On Tuesday, she sat for a series of radio interviews with stations across key battleground states and visited Democratic National Committee headquarters to aid in phone banking efforts.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Trump lamented it could be days until a winner is clear in Pennsylvania, the most populous of the swing states. And he addressed concerns about unrest, saying there would not be violence from his supporters.
Long lines were reported in several states and there were no signs of major issues. Bogus bomb threats briefly delayed voting at some locations in Georgia. Those threats will extend voting hours at some precincts.
“Georgia’s not going to be intimidated,” the state’s top election official, Brad Raffensperger, said. The FBI attributed the threats to Russian email domains.
Trump on social media has urged supporters on stay in line and wait out any disruptions to voting.
In Las Vegas, the Allegiant Stadium was turned into the “largest polling location in the history” of the state, said Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar.
“Nevada’s experienced some of the largest turnout they’ve seen, especially among our youth voters,” he said in an interview outside of the stadium.
Harris for her part is embarking on a historic bid to become the first Black woman and first Asian American president in a truncated campaign she only launched in late July after Biden’s exit from the race. The vice president, despite being in the incumbent administration, has sought to cast herself as an agent of change, and urging voters to turn the page on Trump, who she has called a danger to freedoms and to US democracy itself.
A Trump victory would mark a defiant return to the Oval Office after he left Washington in disgrace following the attack on the US Capitol by supporters seeking to block certification of the 2020 election. He’s running as the first former US president convicted of a felony following a Manhattan trial over hush-money payments and faces other indictments.
Blomberg’s Anna Edgerton reports on the latest from North Carolina as the early results start to be counted. Source: Bloomberg
More than $14.8 billion has been spent on this election, on track to top the levels spent in 2020 as everyone from small-dollar donors to billionaires like Musk, have poured money into the contest. Musk was expected to join Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home in south Florida.
(Updates with details on GOP taking Senate control)
