Trump nears presidency, Republicans grab simple majority in Senate
World
Donald Trump leads in 6 out of 7 swing states
WASHINGTON (Dunya News) – Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump is leading his rival Vice President Kamala Harris in the US election 2024 held on Tuesday.
According to the US media, Trump has been leading by 232 electoral votes to Harris’ 216.
Trump is leading in six out of the seven swing states including Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia.
Any candidate winning 270 out of 538 electoral votes will become the US president.
VOTE COUNT CONTINUES
The initial results of the 2024 US presidential election have been announced by CNN and the Associated Press. According to their projections, Vice President Kamala Harris, representing the Democratic Party, has secured Vermont, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Illinois. Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, has claimed victories in Florida, Ohio, Texas, Kentucky, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Indiana.
Vermont contributes three electoral votes to Harris's tally. On the other hand, Kentucky and Indiana add a total of 19 electoral votes to Trump's count—eight from Kentucky and eleven from Indiana. In the previous election in 2020, Joe Biden won Vermont, while Trump emerged victorious in both Kentucky and Indiana.
The massive early voting turnout before Tuesday — slightly more than half the total number of votes in the presidential election four years earlier — was driven partly by Republican voters, who cast early ballots at a higher rate than in recent previous elections after a campaign by Trump and the Republican National Committee to counter the Democrats’ longstanding advantage in the early vote.
The early voting period faced minimal problems, even in western North Carolina, which was hammered last month by Hurricane Helene. State and local election officials, benefiting from changes made by the Republican-controlled legislature, pulled off a herculean effort to ensure residents could cast their ballots as they dealt with power outages, lack of water and washed out roads. That appeared to continue on Tuesday, with the North Carolina Board of Elections reporting no voting issues.
Besides the hurricanes in North Carolina and Florida, the most worrisome disruptions to the election season so far were arson attacks that damaged ballots in two drop boxes near the Oregon-Washington border. Authorities there were still searching for the person responsible.
The absence of any significant, widespread problems has not stopped Trump, the Republican nominee, or the RNC, which is now under his sway, from making numerous claims of fraud or election interference during the early voting period, a possible prelude to challenges after Election Day.
Senate
The Republicans have gained simple majority in the Senate after winning 51 seats out of 100, whereas The Democrats trail were trying to close the margin with 42 seats.
KAMALA HARRIS' HISTOTIC VICTORY IN CALIFORNIA
Kamala Harris has won her home state of California, Edison Research projects, gaining its 54 electoral votes - the most of any state.
California has voted overwhelmingly Democratic in presidential elections since the 1990s. Joe Biden defeated Trump in the state by 30 percentage points in 2020.
The outcome in the heavily Democratic state where Harris previously served as a U.S. senator and attorney general was expected.
A Republican candidate hasn’t won a presidential contest in the nation’s most populous state since 1988, and the GOP hasn’t seriously contested California in a presidential election since 2000.
Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in California by about 2-to-1, and the party holds every statewide office and dominates the Legislature and congressional delegation.
VIRGINIA
Harris won Virginia adding 13 electoral votes to her tally. Harris’ victory marks the third time Donald Trump has lost the Old Dominion state. The Democratic nominee for president has won Virginia in every election since 2008.
WASHINGTON
Vice President Kamala Harris won Washington’s 12 electoral votes on Tuesday, besting former President Donald Trump in a state where he is not popular.
Washington has not gone for a Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984. President Joe Biden carried Washington in 2020 with 58% of the vote to Trump’s less than 39%.
Trump has described modern-day Washington as a crime-ridden dystopia, and Republican allies in Congress have threatened to strip D.C. of its limited autonomy.
COLORADO
Kamala Harris won Colorado on Tuesday, picking up the state’s 10 electoral votes. Colorado was once a purple state, flipping between Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, but it has shifted blue in the past two decades.
The last Republican presidential candidate to snag Colorado’s electoral votes was George W. Bush in 2004. Since then, it’s backed Democratic presidential candidates, with Joe Biden winning it handily in 2020. Colorado gained its 10th electoral vote after the 2020 census, attributed to population growth around Denver.
NEW MEXICO
Kamala Harris won New Mexico on Tuesday, adding five electoral votes to Democrats’ tally. The Democratic Party’s influence in New Mexico has only grown over the last two decades, with former President George W. Bush being the last Republican to win the state in 2004.
Harris never made any campaign stops in the state, but support in New Mexico’s more populous areas outweighed voters in conservative pockets as second-term Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and members of the state’s congressional delegation campaigned on the vice president’s behalf.
HAWAII
Harris won Hawaii and the state’s four electoral votes on Wednesday. It’s the 10th straight presidential election in which Hawaii has selected the Democratic Party candidate.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Kamala Harris won the District of Columbia on Tuesday, securing the capital’s three electoral votes. Harris’ win in D.C. is no surprise – the District is a longtime Democratic stronghold whose government repeatedly feuded with Republican Donald Trump when he was the president.
MAINE and NEBRASKA
Voters in Maine’s 1st Congressional District, which is comprised of wealthy coastal communities, delivered an electoral vote to Democrat Kamala Harris on Tuesday.
Harris won the vote in the state’s more liberal district. The rural, conservative 2nd District voted for Republican Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020.
Harris also won the electoral vote tied to Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District on Wednesday. The sitting vice president defeated Republican and former President Donald Trump in the district centered on Nebraska’s largest city of Omaha and its surrounding suburbs.
The district has earned the nickname of Nebraska’s “blue dot” after having supported two other Democrats for president in the last 16 years – former President Barack Obama in 2008 and President Joe Biden in 2020. Nebraska and Maine are the only two states that split their Electoral College votes based on the popular votes in individual congressional districts.
TRUMP'S VICTORY IN NORTH CAROLINA
Trump the winner, he was leading by over 130,000 votes with nearly 90% of the expected votes counted. Compared to the 2020 election, voter turnout was up in many areas that Trump was carrying, but down in many areas that Harris was winning. Trump beat Biden in North Carolina in 2020 by less than 2 percentage points.
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