Donald Trump has won Pennsylvania, the 2024 presidential election’s crucial battleground state, putting him on the brink of a commanding victory over Kamala Harris to reclaim the White House.
The AP called the race in Pennsylvania at 2.24am, giving Trump his third battleground state after earlier victories in Georgia and North Carolina.
Addressing supporters at his Mar-a-Lago club soon after, Trump predicted a “golden age” for the US. “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” the Republican told the crowd in Florida.
JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, told the crowd that the country had “just witnessed the greatest political comeback in the history of the United States of America”.
The victory in Pennsylvania, a state Joe Biden won on his way to winning the White House in 2020, gave Trump 267 votes in the electoral college, just three shy of the threshold needed to seal the presidency.
Counts in other battleground states also showed Trump with a strong lead, making a full sweep of the seven swing states increasingly likely.
In one of the earliest foreign reactions, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed what he described as “history’s greatest comeback” and a “huge victory” in a post on X. France’s president Emmanuel Macron posted that he was “ready to work” with Trump.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy congratulated Trump on his “impressive” victory, adding that he appreciated the US president-elect’s “peace through strength” approach to global affairs.
“This is exactly the principle that can practically bring just peace in Ukraine closer,” Zelenskyy said. “I am hopeful that we will put it into action together.”
UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer congratulated Trump on his “historic election victory”. “I look forward to working with you in the years ahead,” he added.
Earlier in the evening, Harris’s campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond announced that the vice-president would no longer appear at her election-night party in Washington, an indication Democrats were preparing for a defeat.
The swing state victories came after Trump cruised to wins earlier in the evening in his home state of Florida and across states in the south and Midwest, including Texas and Iowa.
Harris notched up wins in reliably Democratic states, including New York and California.
Republicans were also set to take control of the Senate for the first time in four years after winning seats from Democrats in West Virginia and Ohio. Control of the House of Representatives remained in the balance early on Wednesday morning.
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Global investors regarded Trump’s strong showing a sign that he was on the verge of clinching the White House, sending the dollar and bitcoin sharply higher even as the final swing state votes remained to be counted.
Exit polls conducted for the US broadcast networks and released at 5pm ET showed the fate of American democracy had been the top issue for 35 per cent of voters, followed by the economy on 31 per cent. Abortion was cited by 14 per cent and immigration by 11 per cent.
Harris was watching the returns at the vice-president’s residence in Washington.
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The presidential campaign has been marked by high tension and sudden, dramatic incidents, including two assassination attempts on Trump and Biden’s exit from the race and endorsement of Harris.
Election day was less dramatic, though the FBI warned in the early afternoon that it was investigating “bomb threats to polling locations in several states”, saying they appeared to “originate from Russian email domains”.
Several locations were temporarily closed in Georgia because of the threats, but a state judge extended voting in those Atlanta-area precincts to make up for the lost time. Just before polls closed, authorities in DeKalb county, which includes Atlanta, said seven voting sites had received threats.
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