Trump takes early electoral lead as race with Harris takes shape

Polls have now closed across more than half of the US — including four of the seven critical battlegrounds — and early results are beginning to be tallied as the nation watches for signs of how voters broke in the hard-fought battle between Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump.

In widely expected results, Trump was declared the winner in more than a half dozen states, including electoral vote-rich Florida and West Virginia, where Republicans also picked up a Senate seat. Harris took heavily Democratic states including New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Polls have closed in the key swing states of Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Polls close in two others, Arizona and Wisconsin, in half-an-hour. The seventh remaining battleground state is Nevada.

Democracy, economy top issues

Voters said democracy and the economy mattered the most when deciding their presidential vote in exit polls released Tuesday afternoon by a consortium of networks that included NBC News, Fox News, and CNN.

Around 35% of voters — including a plurality of both men and women — said democracy was their top issue and 31% said the economy, while 14% picked abortion. Immigration was the top issue for 11% of voters. Abortion was the top issue for 19% of women versus just 8% of men. Only 4% of voters said foreign policy was their biggest concern.

On the economy, 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%.

The surveys offered insight into actual voters in one of the most tumultuous elections in US history, after polls for weeks have shown a deadlocked contest likely to come down to the wire. Exit polls are notoriously poor predictors of the final outcome of elections, but do offer a glimpse into the composition of and top issues facing the electorate.

While Harris has campaigned on maintaining democratic norms, Trump has focused the bulk of his messaging on criticizing the state of the economy. Democrats are hoping that female voters motivated by the US Supreme Court decision overturning federal abortion rights will help counteract Trump’s polling lead among male voters.

About a half hour after polls closed in six states, futures on the S&P 500 were up almost half a percentage point, 10-year Treasury yields rose and Bitcoin rallied, moves that together bore the imprint of trades linked to a Trump victory. The ex-president’s odds of election were climbing on betting markets and on national forecasting sites such as Decision Desk HQ.

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.

Final election tally may take several days to be known

The final tally election tally may not be known for days as some key battlegrounds work their way through large numbers of early ballots. That expected delay in what is expected to be a razor-close race has raised the prospect of legal challenges and potential unrest. 

Democrats have warned that Trump may prematurely seek to declare victory or claim without evidence that states still processing vote counts are engaging in fraud, a feared repeat of the 2020 election that saw the Republican’s allies mount a slew of legal challenges culminating in his supporters attacking the US Capitol to block certification of Biden’s victory.

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.

The Harris campaign said they saw high turnout among the Puerto Rican community in Pennsylvania. Democrats have seized on a comedian’s denigrating remarks about the territory during a Trump rally last month to reach out to Hispanic voters. But the campaign conceded seeing high Republican turnout in Florida, one of the first states that will report results.

Voter turnout

Some prominent Democrats have expressed optimism about turnout, with Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona telling Fox News he was encouraged by high turnout.

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 two parties are also fighting for control of Congress with huge implications for the incoming president to achieve their policy goals and with a handful of races for the House of Representatives and the Senate expected to help determine that outcome. Polls indicate the odds of a sweep — where one party captures the White House and both chambers of Congress, as happened in 2016 and 2020 — are low, curtailing the power of the next president.

Independent Senator Bernie Sanders won reelection in Vermont, while Republican Jim Justice flipped the West Virginia Senate seat being held by outgoing Democrat-turned-independent Joe Manchin.

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. 

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.

Trump has repeatedly sketched out plans for a second term that would dramatically test the limits of executive power, including promises to deport millions of migrants and reshape the federal government with the help of billionaire backer Elon Musk. He’s also to renew expiring tax cuts, lower the corporate tax rate and enact wide-ranging tariffs on US allies and adversaries alike. 

Trump has dismissed warnings from economists that his policies threaten to explode the national debt, raise prices for consumers as well as upend supply chains and divert or reduce trade flows.

Harris has sought to chip away at Trump’s edge on the economy by promising measures to bolster working families such as aid for parents and first-time homeowners as well tax credits for small businesses. While she’s seeking to raise the corporate tax rate and taxes on the wealthy to pay for that agenda, Harris who ran as a progressive in the 2020 cycle has sought to cast herself as a capitalist who will work with business leaders and has veered to the center on some issues.

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 is expected to join Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home in south Florida.

The election is expected to hinge on seven key battlegrounds: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. 

Harris is slated to watch the election-night returns roll in from her alma mater Howard University in Washington, DC., while the Trump campaign is holding its watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center.

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