US election: Trump wins first three battleground states

   

Trump invited his vice presidential candidate to address the crowd.

Vance said, "We just witnessed the greatest political comeback in American history."

Trump then joked "I made a good choice," about Vance. He then added "I took a like heat in the beginning" for choosing Vance, but now he knew that the former venture capitalist had the right "brain" for the job.

Surrounded by members of his family, Donald Trump greeted supporters at his campaign watch party in Florida.

The crowd was jubilant and chanted "USA" as he began to speak.

"Frankly, this was, I believe, this was the greatest political movement of all time. There's never been anything like this in the history in this country and maybe the earth," he began.

He then promised to "help heal our country" by, for example, "fixing our borders."

"I would like to thank the American people for being elected your 47th president," he added, vowing to fight for "every citizen."

"I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe, and prosperous America that our children deserve," he said, claiming that the future would be a "golden age" for the United States.

Trump then said he won the popular vote, which cannot yet be determined with certainty. 

He thanked his family and praised vice presidential nominee JD Vance, before calling media organizations like CNN "the enemy camp."

With Pennsylvania's 19 electoral votes, Trump is now just three electoral votes short of reentering the White House 

Pennsylvania was a hotly contested state, and both candidates campaigned there vigorously.

Most of the state's urban centers went to Harris, while rural voters leaned toward Trump.

The Kamala Harris watch party is pretty much over. 

Harris's path to victory is growing narrower though, with Trump in the lead in all the swing states that are still counting votes.

The result from Georgia was especially sad to Harris supporters here at Howard University. Georgia was one of those states the Democrats were pinning their hopes on. Democrats spent $130 million on ads in Georgia. There was also a lot of hope that reproductive rights could be a galvanizing force for Democratic support in Georgia, given that the state has a near-total abortion ban.

That, of course, did not happen. Instead, Georgia went to Trump — and that is something that supporters here have taken quite hard.

Björn Höcke of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany party sent his congratulations to Trump on Wednesday morning.

Höcke, who a German court ruled could be legally labeled a fascist, said Trump would prove to be "the most important President of the United States in modern history."

Höcke joins Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in congratulating Trump. A long-time Trump fan, Orban was the first EU leader to comment on the US election.

"Good morning Hungary! On the way to a beautiful victory," Orban wrote on Facebook early.

Harris won the New England state of New Hampshire, continuing the state's two-decade-long streak of awarding its four electoral votes to Democrats.

New Hampshire has backed Democrats in seven of the last eight presidential elections. 

As voting has now closed in Alaska, all polling places across the United States are closed.

With vote counting continuing, key states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Nevada remain too close to call.

The state of Delaware has seen a historic win on Tuesday night. Democrat Sarah McBride, who won Delaware's only seat in the House of Representatives, will be the first openly transgender person in the US Congress.

McBride is currently a Delaware state senator and took almost 58% of the vote Tuesday night.

"Thank you, Delaware! Because of your votes and your values, I am proud to be your next member of Congress," McBride wrote in a post on social media platform X.

She won in an election cycle that has seen a number of anti-transgender ads, with Trump's campaign attacking Harris over supporting transgender rights.

"This historic victory reflects not only increasing acceptance of transgender people in our society, ushered in by the courage of visible leaders like Sarah, but also her dogged work in demonstrating that she is an effective lawmaker who will deliver real results," said Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ+ advocacy organization in the US.

Following North Carolina, a second battleground state has gone to Trump.

Georgia had been solidly Republican for two decades before unexpectedly going to President Joe Biden in 2020.

Early figures show that the victory was a close one, with Harris at about 48.4% and Trump at 50.7%.

The win puts Trump 23 electoral votes away from victory in the presidential election.

The victory left Harris heavily dependent on the "blue wall" states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to have a credible path to the White House. 

An exit poll conducted by US broadcaster NBC has found that Trump is more popular with young voters than any Republican nominee since John McCain ran against Barack Obama in 2008.

Although Harris still wins that demographic with 55% to 42%, Trump's numbers are up from 36% in the last two elections.

While young women largely prefer Democratics, young men are more split. According to the poll, 49% of young men preferred Harris and 47% preferred Trump.

Harris campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond has announced that Harris will not speak tonight, saying the campaign was waiting for all the votes to be counted.

Some 75 million Americans cast their votes early this year. In 2020, counting the early and absentee ballots took weeks.

"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," Richmond told the crowd at her campaign's party at Howard University in DC.

The US Senate will have a Republican majority as of next year as the West Virginia and Ohio races go to the GOP.

Republican Jim Justice was able to take over the West Virginia seat formally held by Democrat-turned-independent Joe Manchin.

Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown lost his reelection to Republican Bernie Moreno, a wealthy Trump-era newcomer.

The House of Representatives remains up for grabs as vote counting continues in the western US.

Voting has now officially closed in Hawaii, and the state's four electoral votes will go to Harris. 

It's the 10th straight presidential election in which Hawaii has selected the Democratic Party candidate.

Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono has also won reelection in the state.

 

The state of Nevada is facing a problem with a large number of mail-in ballots. More than 13,000 voters across Nevada need to verify their signatures or their votes will not be counted. A large part of the problem is young voters, who don't have a long history of voting and only have the signature on their voter registration form or the one on their driver's license on file. And there have been issues with their signatures in the first place.

"It's mostly the fact that young people don't have signatures these days," Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar told The New York Times.

Many schools in the US stopped teaching cursive over the past two decades, raising a generation unfamiliar with handwriting. Now the thousands of mail-in ballots that need confirmation from voters slow down the vote counting process. People whose signatures are in doubt need to have a phone number or email address on file in order to be notified by Nevada's county election departments. The ballots of those who cannot be reached will be tossed out.

Nearly 15,000 voters have already successfully confirmed their signatures. In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden won the state with 50.06% of the vote to Donald Trump's 47.67%.