Live election updates: Trump wins Georgia
Former President Donald Trump won the swing state of Georgia on Wednesday, returning its 16 electoral votes to the Republican column. Joe Biden narrowly carried Georgia in 2020, but Republicans have won every other Georgia presidential vote since 1996. Trump tried to overturn his 2020 loss in Georgia, setting off a political and legal struggle that led to his indictment in the state. While the state has two Democratic U.S. senators, Trump's victory proves Georgia still has a Republican bent. Six candidates appeared on Georgia ballots, but votes for Claudia De la Cruz and Cornel West weren't counted. The Associated Press declared Trump the winner at 12:58 a.m. EST.
Harris' campaign co-chair, Cedric Richmond, told the audience gathered at what was planned to be the Democratic nominee's election night party at Howard University that the vice president would not speak tonight, but that the campaign was not giving up the fight against Trump.
"We still have votes to count. We still have states that have not been called yet. We will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken," said Richmond. "So you won't hear from the vice president tonight but you will hear from her tomorrow."
Richmond said Harris would return to Howard "not only to address her supporters but to address the nation."
The event, which began as a jubilant celebration of Harris and the prospect of a new presidency, began to sour as the Democrat's path to victory narrowed.
Elon Musk appeared gleeful about the prospect of gaining influence over the federal government during a potential Donald Trump presidency.
He posted a photoshopped image of himself carrying a sink into the Oval Office, adding, "Let that sink in." It's a reference to when he took over Twitter, now X, and began shaking up operations at the social media company.
Trump has said Musk, the world's richest man, would help him streamline government.
Democrat Kamala Harris won the electoral vote tied to Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District on Wednesday. The sitting vice president defeated Republican and former President Donald Trump in the district centered on Nebraska's largest city of Omaha and its surrounding suburbs. The district has earned the nickname of Nebraska's "blue dot" after having supported two other Democrats for president in the last 16 years – former President Barack Obama in 2008 and President Joe Biden in 2020. Nebraska and Maine are the only two states that split their Electoral College votes based on the popular votes in individual congressional districts. The Associated Press declared Harris the winner at 12:08 a.m. EST.
As midnight approached on the East Coast, the Harris campaign turned off its projected broadcasts of CNN at its election night watch party at Howard University. Instead, various high-energy remixes blared from speakers alongside floodlights flickering in tempo to hype the crowd.
The cheers in the crowd had become less frequent as more results came in from battleground states showing a tight race or victories for Trump.
Some attendees began leaving the event though the vast majority of rallygoers remained. It is unclear if Harris will make an appearance at her alma mater.
Vice President Kamala Harris won Hawaii and the state's four electoral votes on Wednesday. It's the 10th straight presidential election in which Hawaii has selected the Democratic Party candidate. The state last picked a Republican for the nation's top office 40 years ago, when Ronald Reagan emerged victorious in 1984. Hawaii is a solidly blue state, with Democrats controlling all statewide elected offices and the state's two U.S. House seats. Democrats have also long controlled more than three-quarters of the seats in both the state House and Senate. The Associated Press declared Harris the winner at 12:00 a.m. EST.
The head of the U.S. government's cybersecurity agency says that though bomb threat emails sent to multiple states came from Russian email domains, it's not clear that the culprits were actually Russian.
Jen Easterly, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told reporters Tuesday night that the matter was still being investigated and that the identity of the senders remains unknown.
The FBI said earlier in the day that the email threats sent to Georgia and other states were all judged to be noncredible and were from a Russian email domain. Easterly said the emails did not affect the ability of the voters to cast ballots.
Out of 177 polling places in Georgia's Fulton County, 32 faced bomb threats on Election Day. Police Chief W. Wade Yates confirmed only five locations had brief evacuations before safely resuming voting.
Jen Easterly, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure and Security Agency, told reporters late Tuesday night that the election process endured "minor disruptive activity throughout the day" but that that activity was anticipated and planned for.
"At this time, we've seen no evidence of malicious activity impacting the integrity ... of election infrastructure," she said.
Easterly also said the bomb threats reported in multiple states were all deemed noncredible and did not affect the ability of voters to cast ballots.
Forty-eight states and Washington, D.C., award all their presidential electoral votes to the candidate who wins statewide. And then there's Nebraska and Maine.
The two states each award two electoral votes to the winner of the statewide vote, as well as one electoral vote to the popular vote winner in each congressional district. Nebraska has three congressional districts and five total electoral votes, while Maine has two congressional districts and four total electoral votes. This means that, although Nebraska is reliably Republican in statewide elections, a Democratic candidate could poach one electoral vote from the 2nd Congressional District, which includes the Democratic-friendly population center of Omaha.
Meanwhile, Maine votes reliably Democratic in statewide elections, but Republicans are competitive in the more conservative 2nd Congressional District.
Trump and Vance made attacks on transgender rights a central part of their closing argument , and findings from AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 115,000 voters nationwide, suggest that those arguments may have resonated with some voters.
About half of voters overall said that support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far, according to VoteCast, while about one-quarter said support has been about right and about 2 in 10 said support has not gone far enough.
The vast majority — around 8 in 10 — Trump voters said that support for transgender rights has gone too far, while Harris voters were more divided.
Kamala Harris won New Mexico on Tuesday, adding five electoral votes to Democrats' tally. The Democratic Party's influence in New Mexico has only grown over the last two decades, with former President George W. Bush being the last Republican to win the state in 2004. Harris never made any campaign stops in the state, but support in New Mexico's more populous areas outweighed voters in conservative pockets as second-term Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and members of the state's congressional delegation campaigned on the vice president's behalf. The Associated Press declared Harris the winner at 11:33 p.m. EST.
Voters in Missouri — the first state to make abortion illegal after Roe v. Wade — approved a constitutional amendment that protects abortion in state law. The citizen-led initiative petition will legalize abortion up to 24 weeks, handing Democrats a crucial win on a top campaign priority.
Harris has promised to codify Roe v. Wade if she were to become president but that would depend on control of Congress, which remains unclear. But the measure also opens the door to legal challenges of a ban on most abortions that took effect immediately after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Elon Musk said he would seek to reduce the number of federal agencies if Trump wins the White House and gives the billionaire businessman a role in his administration.
Speaking on Tucker Carlson's online show from Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, Musk said he wanted to help Trump make government more efficient. Musk, a key Trump supporter, is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the owner of X, formerly Twitter.
"We've got a gigantic bureaucracy, we've got overregulation," Musk told Carlson. "We need to let the builders of America build."
Harris' campaign chair stressed patience and resolve in a message to all campaign staff obtained by The Associated Press, arguing that the "closeness of the race is exactly what we prepared for" and predicting the race won't "come into focus until the early morning hours."
The message from campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon was meant for an audience beyond campaign staff, too, as nervous Democrats nationwide watch the race between Harris and Trump narrow to a handful of key battleground states.
"As we have known all along, this is a razor thin race," wrote O'Malley Dillon, citing turnout in Philadelphia and early vote totals in suburban Bucks County, Pennsylvania; outstanding votes in Detroit; and uncounted vote in Dane and Milwaukee counties in Wisconsin, two Democratic strongholds.
While the longtime Democratic operative noted forthcoming counting in Nevada and Arizona, the memo highlighted how central the so-called "blue wall" states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania are to Harris' path to victory.
"We've been saying for weeks that this race might not be called tonight," she wrote, adding later, "This is what we've been built for, so let's finish up what we have in front of us tonight, get some sleep, and get ready to close out strong tomorrow."
Voters were of two different minds about the importance of the legal cases involving Trump.
Roughly half described the cases as important in how they cast their ballots, and nearly half said they were a minor or unimportant factor, according to AP VoteCast.
Not surprisingly, among those who saw them as important, about 7 in 10 backed Harris. And among those who saw them as minor, three-quarters went with Trump.
Voters were more likely to place greater importance on other issues, such as the situation on the U.S.-Mexico border, abortion, the future of free speech, the fate of democracy and the prices of gasoline, groceries and other goods.
The Associated Press called North Carolina for Trump at 11:18 p.m. eastern time after it became clear that there weren't enough outstanding votes left in Democratic leaning areas of North Carolina for Harris to overtake his lead.
Former President Donald Trump won the battleground state of North Carolina on Tuesday. Trump receives the state's 16 electoral votes after defeating Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Trump also won the state in 2016 and 2020, but Democrats had been optimistic they could reverse previous outcomes with campaign spending, canvassing and Harris rallies. They also tried to link Trump to embattled Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson. But Trump and running mate JD Vance visited North Carolina often during the fall campaign, pushing a more protectionist economic agenda and promises to crack down on illegal immigration and the southern border. The Associated Press declared Trump the winner at 11:18 p.m. EST.
Trump turned the Colorado suburb of Aurora into part of his message against illegal immigration. In the end, he failed to capture the Mountain State, which has become increasingly Democratic in recent years.
Trump likened Aurora to a "war zone" overrun by a Venezuelan gang that had taken over multiple buildings. Authorities pushed back against that characterization, saying it was a single block and the area was once again safe.
Colorado is one of the several states Trump visited down the stretch outside the seven most competitive states. In recent weeks, he also campaigned in California, New Mexico and, memorably, in New York for the rally at Madison Square Garden.
Former President Donald Trump won Idaho for the third consecutive election on Tuesday, adding four electoral votes to his tally. Idaho is deeply red, and the Republican presidential nominee has carried the state with more than 60% of the vote for the last several elections. The last time a Democratic presidential nominee won Idaho was 60 years ago, when Lyndon Johnson beat Republican Barry Goldwater by a narrow margin of just over 5,300 votes. The Associated Press declared Trump the winner at 11:00 p.m. EST.
Kamala Harris won California on Tuesday, giving her the largest prize in the presidential election - 54 electoral votes. The outcome in the heavily Democratic state where Harris previously served as a U.S. senator and attorney general was expected. A Republican candidate hasn't won a presidential contest in the nation's most populous state since 1988, and the GOP hasn't seriously contested California in a presidential election since 2000. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in California by about 2-to-1, and the party holds every statewide office and dominates the Legislature and congressional delegation. The Associated Press declared Harris the winner at 11:00 p.m. EST.
Another shift that has emerged in AP VoteCast data is among Black and Latino voters, who appeared slightly less likely to support Harris than they were to support Biden four years ago. About 8 in 10 Black voters backed Harris, down from the roughly 9 in 10 who backed Biden in 2020. More than half of Hispanic voters supported Harris, but that was down slightly from the roughly 6 in 10 who voted for Biden. Trump's support among those groups appeared to rise slightly compared to 2020.
The son of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and anti-immigration U.K. politician Nigel Farage are some of the foreign figures who are special guests at Mar-a-Lago, where Trump is watching the results come in during election night.
Bolsonaro's son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, posted on X a photo with Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., saying he was rooting for Trump "in good company."
Meanwhile, Nigel Farage, leader of the British party Reform U.K. and a friend of Trump, has also been sharing updates from Mar-a-Lago.
Other election night guests at Mar-a-Lago are billionaire Elon Musk and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
