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PremiumUS Election 2024 Key Highlights: Donald Trump on Wednesday claimed victory in the US Presidential elections after Fox News projected him as the winner. Other outlets have yet to call the race for Trump, but they note that he is far ahead in the race.
Addressing his supporters from West Palm Beach, Florida, Donald Trump said, “America has given us an unprecedented mandate" and “we have created history". Most of the important people in Trump’s personal and political life joined him on stage as he addressed his supporters in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump pushed closer to victory over Kamala Harris on Wednesday, leaving the Democrat the narrowest of remaining paths to stop him scoring a stunning political comeback in America's brutally tense presidential election. In a significant political shift, Republicans have won US Senate majority and seized control of the chamber for the first time in four years, a report by Associated Press stated.
Vice President Kamala Harris is the Democratic candidate in the 2024 U.S. Presidential election, with the goal of making history as the first woman and the first person of Indian descent to become President of the United States.
On the Republican side, Donald Trump, the former President, is seeking a historic comeback to the White House after his contentious loss in 2020. If Trump wins, it would mark the first time in over a century that a president has served two non-consecutive terms.
In the 2016 election, Trump won the presidency by securing 304 electoral votes to 227 against Hillary Clinton, even though he trailed Clinton by more than 2 percentage points and about 2.8 million votes in the popular vote.
However, in the 2020 election, Trump was defeated by Joe Biden, who won with 306 electoral votes to 232 and led Trump by over 700,000 votes in the popular vote. Trump has continued to deny the 2020 election results, claiming widespread voter fraud, a stance that sparked protests by his supporters and culminated in the January 6 Capitol Riots.
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Voters who supported Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in Tuesday's presidential election had fundamentally different motivations, highlighting a deep national divide over the issues facing the United States.
According to AP VoteCast, an extensive survey of more than 115,000 voters nationwide, the future of democracy was a key concern for Harris’ supporters. This suggests that the Democratic nominee's campaign messaging, particularly her closing argument labelling Trump as a fascist, resonated with many voters. (AP)
Democratic U.S. Representative Andy Kim was elected to the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, defeating Republican businessman Curtis Bashaw. Kim will fill the seat vacated by Bob Menendez, who resigned earlier this year following his federal conviction on bribery charges. (AP)
Angela Alsobrooks and Lisa Blunt Rochester, two Black women, have made history by winning U.S. Senate seats for Maryland and Delaware, respectively, breaking new ground in a 235-year-old institution traditionally dominated by White men.
With only 11 Black individuals having served in the Senate, and just three of them women, this marks the first time two Black women have held Senate seats simultaneously. (Bloomberg)
Voters in Florida rejected a measure to include abortion rights in the state constitution on Tuesday, but supported abortion-rights advocates in ballot measures in Maryland and New York. Results were still pending in seven other states with abortion-related measures on the ballot. (AP)
Vice President Kamala Harris won the District of Columbia on Tuesday, capturing the capital's three electoral votes. Harris' victory in DC was expected, as the district has long been a Democratic stronghold and frequently clashed with former President Donald Trump during his tenure. (AP)
The dollar gained approximately 1.5% against both the yen and the euro on Wednesday as traders considered the budgetary impact of a Donald Trump victory in the U.S. presidential election.
At around 0245 GMT, the greenback surged 1.51% against the yen, reaching 153.89 yen, and climbed 1.41% to nearly 0.93 euros. (AFP)
In Wisconsin, a crucial battleground state, with 42.3% of the vote counted, Harris leads Trump with 50% to his 48.4%, according to Edison Research. (Reuters)
In Pennsylvania, a key battleground state, with 50.2% of the estimated vote counted, Trump holds 50.4% while Harris has 48.6%, according to Edison Research. (Reuters)
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris secured easy wins in their respective strongholds, while attention now turns to the battleground states, where the results remain too close to call. (AP)
Donald Trump won Utah and its six electoral votes on Tuesday. The Mountain West state is a reliable Republican stronghold, though it has historically shown some ambivalence toward Trump. His bold style and controversial remarks about immigrants have not always resonated with certain members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, who make up roughly half of Utah's 3.4 million residents.
Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris scored early victories in states that reliably lean Republican and Democratic, respectively, as voters across a divided America cast their ballots in what is shaping up to be a decisive contest for the nation's future. Polls have closed in six of the seven key battleground states—Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, and North Carolina—but results from these states are still too close to call at this stage.
Preliminary results from the Nevada exit poll show that Donald Trump has won 52% of voters aged 65 and older, while Kamala Harris has secured 45%. Trump's share is down by 1 percentage point compared to the 2020 election, according to Edison Research.
Former President Donald Trump won Montana for the third consecutive election on Tuesday, adding four electoral votes to his tally. Montana has one more electoral vote this cycle than it did in the previous two, as the state received an additional congressional seat following the 2020 census. (AP)
Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent beloved by progressives, won reelection Tuesday to a fourth six-year term in the U.S. Senate.
Sanders defeated Republican Gerald Malloy, a U.S. Army veteran and businessman. Also on the ballot were independent candidate Steve Berry, as well as minor party candidates Mark Stewart Greenstein, Matt Hill and Justin Schoville.
The 83-year-old senator is a self-described democratic socialist who caucuses with the Democrats and twice came close to winning the presidential nomination. More recently, he has worked closely with the Biden administration to craft its domestic policy goals on health care, education, child care and workers’ rights. He is the longest serving independent in Congress. (AP)
Republican Mike Braun won the Indiana governor’s race Tuesday, defeating Democrat Jennifer McCormick, a former Republican who split with the party after serving as the state’s schools superintendent.
The victory by Braun, a U.S. senator who’s the wealthy founder of a national auto parts distribution business, extends the GOP’s 20-year-hold on the state’s top office in deep red Indiana.
Braun, 70, will succeed outgoing Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb, who could not seek a third term because of term limits. Braun opted not to seek reelection to a second term in the Senate so he could run for governor. He won the GOP’s six-way May primary election to succeed Holcomb with about 40% of the vote. (AP)
Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris notched early wins in reliably Republican and Democratic states, respectively, as a divided America made its decision in a stark choice for the nation's future Tuesday.
Polls closed in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and North Carolina, six of the seven closely fought battlegrounds expected to decide the election, but the results there were too early to call. (AP)
Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former president Donald Trump are battling it out for the White House, with polls gradually closing across the United States Tuesday and a long night of waiting for results expected.
Results are tumbling in, with US media projecting wins for Trump so far in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming.
Harris has so far captured Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and the US capital Washington, DC.
So far, that gives Harris 81 electoral votes and Trump 168. (AFP)
Florida voters Tuesday rejected creating a constitutional right to abortion, a political win for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis that will keep in place the state’s ban on most abortions after the first six weeks of pregnancy.
It’s the first ballot measure victory for abortion opponents in any state since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, a decision that ended the nationwide right to abortion and opened the door to bans in most GOP-controlled states, protections in Democrat-dominated ones and new political and legal battles across the country. (AP)
Former President Donald Trump won Texas for the third consecutive election on Tuesday, adding 40 electoral votes to his tally.
Texas gained two more electoral votes this cycle after the 2020 census. The Republican nominee for president has won Texas for nearly 50 years since Democrat Jimmy Carter carried the state in 1976. The Associated Press declared Trump the winner at 9:12 p.m. EST. (PTI)
The first results are coming in for the US presidential election with Republican leader Donald Trump projected to notch up wins in Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Florida, Arkansas and Vice President Kamala Harris set to emerge victorious in Vermont, Delaware and New Jersey.
As per latest trends, Harris is winning 27 electoral college votes and Trump 105. 270 electoral college votes are required to win the race.
Trump is also projected to win Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma and Tennessee while Harris is racing to emerge victorious in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Massachusetts.
Interestingly, Harris is ahead with 68.4 per cent of the votes counted in the battleground state of Pennsylvania with Trump trailing at 30.7 per cent. (PTI)
Former President Donald Trump beat Vice President Kamala Harris in deep-red Wyoming to win the least-populated state's three electoral votes on Tuesday. One of the most Republican states by almost any measure, Wyoming gave Trump his widest margins of victory in any state in the 2020 and 2016 elections. (AP)
With first results of the US presidential elections trickling in the CNN exit poll has projected a win for former President and Republican candidate Donald Trump in Florida, while Democratic candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris has picked up Massachusetts, Maryland and Vermont.
Harris and Trump each need at least 270 electoral votes to win the presidency in an election that is seen as one of the most significant in recent US history.
Trump, who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, is seeking a return to the White House after losing to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Harris has been serving as vice president since January 2021. (ANI)
CNN projects that Donald Trump will win the key Florida race, while Kamala Harris has secured victories in Massachusetts and Maryland. Races in battleground states are still too close to call at this point.
According to Edison Research, Donald Trump has secured 42% of the vote among those aged 18-29, while Kamala Harris has received 55%. Trump's share has increased by 6 percentage points compared to the 2020 election. (Reuters)
Trump 101
Harris 49
(Credit: AP)
Former President Donald Trump won Mississippi on Tuesday, claiming the state's six electoral votes and continuing a long winning streak for Republicans. The last Democratic presidential nominee to win Mississippi was Jimmy Carter in 1976. (AP)
Republican U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn won her reelection bid Tuesday, securing a victory in GOP-dominant Tennessee after largely avoiding her Democratic opponent.
Blackburn defeated state Rep. Gloria Johnson, who shot to fame last year after she was nearly expelled from the Statehouse for her participation in a gun control protest from the House floor. Johnson had hoped the national attention on her gun control reform efforts and support for reproductive rights would appeal to Tennessee voters used to electing Republicans in statewide positions.
However, even though she ran a much more subdued campaign compared to the grueling victory she secured six years ago, Blackburn easily snagged another win. (AP)
Republicans flipped a US Senate seat from the Democrats in the deeply conservative state of West Virginia Tuesday as they fought for control of Congress in elections that will determine how much of the next president's agenda gets enacted.
Jim Justice, the sitting governor of the Mountain State, had been widely expected to best former mayor Glenn Elliott in the race to replace retiring moderate Joe Manchin, an independent who voted with the Democrats.
Justice was elected governor as a Democrat in 2016 but switched soon after entering office.
In parallel with the presidential election, voters in hundreds of congressional districts were deciding if Democrats or Republicans will hold the gavel in both chambers come January. (AFP)
The FBI said on Tuesday fake bomb threats have been made to polling locations in several states, many of which appear to originate from Russian email domains.
"None of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far," it said in a statement. It did not identify the states. (Reuters)
Donald Trump projected as winner in:
Alabama
Tennessee
Oklahoma
Missouri
Kamala Harris projected as winner in:
District of Columbia
Massachusetts
(Credit: CNN)
Donald Trump: 95
Kamala Harris: 35
Credit: AP Projections
Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna won reelection to a U.S. House seat representing Florida on Tuesday. Luna, a first-term congresswoman and Freedom Caucus member, has been a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump, who carried this Gulf Coast district in 2020.
She defeated Democrat Whitney Fox, who formerly worked in marketing and communications at the Pinellas County transit authority. (AP)
Democratic U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez is seeking a second term in New Mexico’s swing district along the U.S.-Mexico border, in a rematch against the Republican he ousted in 2022.
GOP challenger Yvette Herrell waged her fourth consecutive campaign for Congress in the majority-Latino district that stretches from the border to Albuquerque.
In 2021, Democratic state lawmakers redrew congressional boundaries to divvy up a politically conservative, oil-producing region among three districts.
Vasquez, a former Las Cruces city councilor, has invoked his knowledge of the border region and its economy as the U.S.-born son of immigrants from Mexico. His campaign has proposed safeguards against cartels that smuggle drugs or migrants, a humanitarian approach to asylum-seekers and support for abortion rights. (AP)
Donald Trump doubled down Sunday on his baseless predictions of voter fraud in battleground states as he and rival Kamala Harris launched their frantic final 48 hours of campaigning to court the last holdouts in a bitterly contested US election.
The presidential race is going down to the wire, with more states functionally tied in polls at this point than in any comparable election.
Over 77.3 million people have now voted ahead of Election Day on Tuesday, just over half of the total ballots cast in 2020.
With the hours ticking away, 78-year-old Trump again indicated he may not accept a defeat and he added to his increasingly dark rhetoric by musing to supporters that he wouldn't mind if journalists were shot.
Republicans pick up West Virginia's Senate seat, CNN projects
A divided America weighed a stark choice for the nation’s future Tuesday as a presidential campaign marked by upheaval and rancor approached its finale.
Voters were deciding whether to send Republican Donald Trump back to the White House or make Vice President Kamala Harris the first female president. Polls closed Tuesday in Georgia and North Carolina, two of the closely fought battlegrounds that could decide the election, as well as a half-dozen other states. On Election Day, tens of millions of Americans added their ballots to the 84 million cast early as they chose between two candidates with drastically different temperaments and visions for the country.
Trump and Harris each notched early wins in reliably Republican and Democratic states, respectively. Trump won Kentucky, West Virginia and Indiana, and Harris took Vermont. (AP)
Democrat Josh Stein won the North Carolina governor's race on Tuesday, Fox News projected, defeating Republican Mark Robinson, whose candidacy imploded following a CNN report that he had called himself a "Black Nazi" and made other offensive remarks on a pornographic website.
Robinson, the Southern state's lieutenant governor, has denied the allegations and filed a defamation lawsuit against CNN.
Robinson was endorsed by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who previously praised him as "Martin Luther King on steroids" but whose campaign distanced itself after the scandal broke in September. (Reuters)
The United States is likely to become more isolationist regardless of who becomes its next president, India's foreign minister said on Wednesday.
Speaking at an event in Canberra as Americans were still casting votes, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said the election was unlikely to reverse what he called he called a long-term trend in U.S. policy.
"Probably starting from (President Barack) Obama the U.S. has become much more cautious about its global commitments," he said, pointing to a U.S. reluctance to deploy troops and its withdrawal from Afghanistan under President Joe Biden.
"President Trump may be more articulate and expressive in that regard," he said during a panel discussion with the foreign ministers of Australia and New Zealand. (Reuters)
Two poll workers in Missouri died during extreme flooding early Tuesday, ABC News reported.
Donald Trump wins Kentucky as Kamala Harris takes Vermont, CNN projects. The first projections of the night in the presidential race mark reliable gains for both candidates.
Republican Mike Braun won the Indiana governor’s race Tuesday, defeating Democrat Jennifer McCormick, a former Republican who split with the party after serving as the state’s schools superintendent.
The victory by Braun, a U.S. senator who’s the wealthy founder of a national auto parts distribution business, extends the GOP’s 20-year-hold on the state’s top office in deep red Indiana.
Braun, 70, will succeed outgoing Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb, who could not seek a third term because of term limits. Braun opted not to seek reelection to a second term in the Senate so he could run for governor. He won the GOP’s six-way May primary election to succeed Holcomb with about 40% of the vote. (AP)
A pathway for Republicans to keep the U.S. House or for Democrats to take control of it may partially hinge on who is victorious in North Carolina's only toss-up congressional district.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Don Davis, who is in his first term, and GOP opponent Laurie Buckhout are engaged in a fierce battle to win North Carolina's 1st Congressional District, one of the few competitive districts across the Southeast. The race has attracted millions of dollars from both parties to either flip or maintain the district, which spans from Currituck County to a small portion of Granville County in the state's northeast.
Control of Congress is at stake Tuesday, with ever-tight races for the House and Senate that will determine which party holds the majority and the power to boost or block a president’s agenda, or if the White House confronts a divided Capitol Hill.
The key contests are playing out alongside the first presidential election since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but also in unexpected corners of the country after what has been one of the most chaotic congressional sessions in modern times.
In the end, just a handful of seats, or as little as one, could tip the balance in either chamber.
Abortion rights advocates have prevailed on all seven measures that have appeared since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the nationwide right to abortion. That decision opened the door to bans or restrictions in most GOP-controlled states — and protections of access in most of those controlled by Democrats.
The abortion rights campaigns have a big fundraising advantage this year. Their opponents' efforts are focused on portraying the amendments as too extreme rather than abortion as immoral.
Currently, 13 states are enforcing bans at all stages of pregnancy, with some exceptions. Four more bar abortion in most cases after about six weeks of pregnancy — before women often realize they’re pregnant. Despite the bans, the number of monthly abortions in the U.S. has risen slightly, because of the growing use of abortion pills and organized efforts to help women travel for abortion. Still, advocates say the bans have reduced access, especially for lower-income and minority residents of the states with bans. (AP)
Hoax bomb threats, many of which appeared to originate from Russian email domains, were directed at polling locations in four battleground states - Georgia, Michigan, Arizona and Wisconsin - as Election Day voting was underway, the FBI said on Tuesday.
"None of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far," the FBI said in a statement, adding that election integrity was among the bureau's highest priorities.
At least two polling sites targeted by the hoax bomb threats in Georgia were briefly evacuated on Tuesday. (Reuters)
Wisconsin’s hotly contested U.S. Senate race pits two-term Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin against Republican Eric Hovde, a millionaire businessman backed by former President Donald Trump who poured millions of his own money into the contest.
A win by Baldwin is crucial for Democrats to retain their 51-49 majority in the Senate. Democrats are defending 23 seats, including three held by independents who caucus with them. That’s compared with just 11 seats that Republicans hope to keep in their column. (AP)
Donald Trump is refusing to say how he voted on Florida's abortion measure — and getting testy about it.
The former president was asked twice after casting his ballot in Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday about a question that the state's voters are considering. If approved, it would prevent state lawmakers from passing any law that penalizes, prohibits, delays or restricts abortion until fetal viability — which doctors say is sometime after 21 weeks.
If it’s rejected, the state’s restrictive six-week abortion law would stand.
The first time he was asked, Trump avoided answering. He said instead of the issue that he did “a great job bringing it back to the states." That was a reference to the former president having appointed three conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who helped overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 2022. (AP)
Voters in nine states are deciding whether their state constitutions should guarantee a right to abortion, weighing ballot measures that are expected to spur turnout for a range of crucial races.
Passing certain amendments in Arizona, Florida, Missouri, Nebraska and South Dakota likely would lead to undoing bans or restrictions that currently block varying levels of abortion access to more than 7 million women of childbearing age who live in those states. (AP)
After an election season marked by concerns over disinformation, foreign influence and worrisome threats to election workers and voting systems, Election Day unfolded relatively smoothly nationwide with only scattered disruptions and delays.
Leading into Tuesday, more than 82 million Americans had already cast their ballots in a largely successful early voting period with high turnout despite some hiccups and frustrations in the presidential battleground of Pennsylvania.
And when the final day of voting came, the problems that cropped up were “largely expected routine and planned-for events," said Cait Conley, senior adviser to the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. She said the agency was not currently tracking any national, significant incidents impacting election security. (AP)
Wisconsin’s hotly contested U.S. Senate race pits two-term Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin against Republican Eric Hovde, a millionaire businessman backed by former President Donald Trump who poured millions of his own money into the contest.
A win by Baldwin is crucial for Democrats to retain their 51-49 majority in the Senate. Democrats are defending 23 seats, including three held by independents who caucus with them. That’s compared with just 11 seats that Republicans hope to keep in their column. (AP)
