Trump wins swing state of North Carolina, narrowing Harris’s path to victory

Donald Trump has won the battleground state of North Carolina.

The former US president fended off a challenge from Kamala Harris, who was looking to flip the state and expand her pathways to 270 electoral votes.

Mr Trump had made stops to the state in each of the last three days of the campaign to deprive Ms Harris of the win.

The Democratic vice president’s campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon told staff in a memo that the “blue wall” of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin was now the Democrat’s “clearest path” to victory, according to a copy obtained by The Associated Press.

Polls were closed in the other battlegrounds, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada, but the results there were too early to call. Voting continued in the West on Election Day, as 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.

Mr Trump won Florida, a one-time battleground that has shifted heavily to Republicans in recent elections. He also notched early wins in reliably Republican states such as Texas, South Carolina and Indiana, while Ms Harris won Virginia and took Democratic strongholds like New York, New Mexico and California. Harris also won an Electoral College vote in Nebraska that was contested by Republicans.

The crowd at Ms Harris’s watch party at her alma mater, Howard University in Washington DC, began to file out after midnight on Wednesday. Ms Harris did not speak at the party. Cedric Richmond, co-chairman of the Harris campaign, spoke instead, telling the crowd there were still votes to count and states to be called.

“We will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted. That every voice has spoken,” he said. “So you won’t hear from the vice president tonight, but you will hear from her tomorrow. She will be back here tomorrow.”

Mr Trump was expected to speak early on Wednesday from an event in Florida.

The Trump campaign bet that it would cut into Democrats’ traditional strength with black and Latino voters, with the former president going on male-centric podcasts and making explicit racial appeals to both groups. Nationally, black and Latino voters appeared slightly less likely to support Ms Harris than they were to back Joe Biden four years ago, and Mr Trump’s support among those voters appeared to rise slightly compared to 2020, according to AP VoteCast.

The fate of democracy appeared to be a primary driver for Ms Harris’s supporters, a sign that the Democratic nominee’s persistent messaging in her campaign’s closing days accusing Mr Trump of being a fascist may have broken through, according to the expansive survey of more than 110,000 voters nationwide. It also found a country mired in negativity and desperate for change.

Mr Trump’s supporters were largely focused on immigration and inflation – two issues that the former Republican president has been hammering since the start of his campaign.

In his recent visits to North Carolina, Mr Trump seized on the heavy damage caused by Hurricane Helene, spreading false claims about the federal government’s response and using GoFundMe to collect millions in donations for affected residents.

Mr Trump initially trumpeted the Republican nominee for governor, Mark Robinson, and hailed him as “Martin Luther King on steroids,” but distanced himself after a report by US news channel CNN that alleged Mr Robinson had made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago.

Mr Robinson, who lost his race on Tuesday, denied writing the messages and sued CNN for defamation last month.

The Republican also edged closer to winning control of the Senate, with Trump-backed Bernie Moreno flipping a seat in Ohio held by Democrat Sherrod Brown since 2007. They picked up another when Republican Jim Justice won a West Virginia seat that opened up with senator Joe Manchin’s retirement.

Those casting Election Day ballots mostly encountered a smooth process, with isolated reports of hiccups that regularly happen, including long queues, technical issues and ballot printing errors.

Ms Harris has promised to work across the aisle to tackle economic worries and other issues without radically departing from the course set by Mr Biden. Mr Trump has vowed to replace thousands of federal workers with loyalists, impose sweeping tariffs on allies and foes alike, and stage the largest deportation operation in US history.

Mr Trump voted in Palm Beach, Florida, near his Mar-a-Lago club. He called into a Wisconsin radio station on Tuesday night to say: “I’m watching these results. So far so good.”

Ms Harris, the Democratic vice president, did phone interviews with radio stations in the battleground states, then visited Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington carrying a box of Doritos — her go-to snack.

“This truly represents the best of who we are,” Ms Harris told a room of cheering staffers. She was handed a mobile phone by supporters doing phone banking, and when asked by reporters how she was feeling, the vice president held up a phone and responded, “Gotta talk to voters”.

The closeness of the race and the number of states in play raised the likelihood that, once again, a victor might not be known on election night.

Mr Trump said on Tuesday that he had no plans to tell his supporters to refrain from violence if Ms Harris wins, because they “are not violent people”. His angry supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, after Mr Trump tried to overturn his loss in 2020.

Asked on Tuesday about accepting the 2024 race’s results, he said, “If it’s a fair election, I’d be the first one to acknowledge it”. He visited a nearby campaign office to thank staffers before a party at a nearby convention centre.

After her DNC stop, Ms Harris planned to attend a party at her alma mater, Howard University in Washington.

Federal, state and local officials have expressed confidence in the integrity of the nation’s election systems. They nonetheless were braced to contend with what they say is an unprecedented level of foreign disinformation — particularly from Russia and Iran — as well as the possibility of physical violence or cyber attacks.

Both sides have armies of lawyers in anticipation of legal challenges on and after Election Day. And law enforcement agencies nationwide are on high alert for potential violence.

Ms Harris, 60, would be the first woman, black woman and person of South Asian descent to serve as president. She also would be the first sitting vice president to win the White House in 36 years.

Mr Trump, 78, would be the oldest president ever elected. He would also be the first defeated president in 132 years to win another term in the White House, and the first person convicted of a felony to take over the Oval Office.

He survived one assassination attempt by millimetres at a July rally. Secret Service agents foiled a second attempt in September.