Former president Donald Trump has claimed the battleground states of North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania and increased his vote share in 88 per cent of counties nationwide.
Trump picked up more votes in every state apart from Utah and Washington. He was particularly strong in areas he had won in 2020, turning red states redder, in particular Florida and Texas. That put Trump on track to win a majority of the national popular vote for the first time.
In Florida, Trump flipped Miami-Dade, the state’s most populous county, clinching more than 55 per cent of votes. In 2020, Joe Biden won the county with 53.4 per cent. In Florida’s Latino-majority counties, Trump increased his vote share by almost eight points compared with four years earlier.
Pennsylvania, which awards 19 electoral votes and was paramount for Harris to win after her losses in Georgia and North Carolina, has been called for Trump, who leads with 51 per cent compared with 48 per cent for Harris. Some remaining swing states — Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin — are still in the balance but Trump has declared victory.
Across the US, the data suggests women, urban voters and the Latino vote did not come through for Harris, while rural areas came out strong for Trump.
Other long-shot goals for Harris went far by the wayside. A poll last weekend by “gold standard” pollster J Ann Selzer showed Harris leading by an unexpected three points in staunchly conservative Iowa, buoying Democratic hopes. On election night, Trump was more than 13 points ahead in the state with nearly all the votes counted.
In North Carolina, a state Republicans have won in every election since 2012 but with increasingly narrow margins, the former president increased his vote share in counties that he had won in 2020. He also managed to flip three — Nash, Pasquotank and Anson — from the Democrats.
Georgia, another state where the Harris campaign poured in resources, has also been called for Trump. He leads with 50.7 per cent of the vote compared with Harris’s 48.5 per cent.
Although several key “blue wall” swing states remain in the balance, the current vote count largely favours Trump.
There are also signs that Harris is underperforming in counties in battleground states compared with Biden in 2020.
In Wisconsin, Dane County is a reliably Democratic jurisdiction that has seen increasing vote share for Democratic candidates every presidential election since 1992 — except this year.
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