Trump expands lead, Republican Party captures Senate as Harris path narrows

Republican nominee Donald Trump inched closer to capturing the White House, projected as the winner in two battleground states, with his party set to control the Senate and markets swinging in expectation of his possible victory.

Trump won both North Carolina and Georgia, flipping the latter from four years ago. He holds a more tentative advantage across Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona, where vote counting continues.

The remaining five key swing states have not been called by major networks or the Associated Press, leaving open a narrow path for Harris to potentially close the gap as votes roll in.

But Republicans’ strength already delivered them the Senate, flipping seats in at least Ohio and West Virginia, while successfully fending off challenges in Texas and Nebraska, and the results showed Trump overperforming his 2020 results in several regions.

Markets were responding to the initial results favouring 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 co-chair Cedric Richmond told supporters at the vice-president’s watch party at Howard University in Washington that she would wait until later Wednesday to address them.

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“We still have votes to count, we still have states that have not been counted yet,” Richmond said. “We will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted.”

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.

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. 

Control of the House of Representatives remained too close to call.

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.

The US Presidential Election journey

The 2024 presidential campaign marked one of the most contentious and unpredictable contests in US history, with Biden becoming the first incumbent to forgo a reelection bid in over half a century, Trump surviving two failed assassination attempts — and managing to unify his party despite being the first former president convicted of a felony, one of a slew of legal challenges. 

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.

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 joined Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home in south Florida.

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