Trump wins crucial battleground states in US presidential race

Republican Donald Trump has defeated Democrat Kamala Harris in Georgia, his second battleground state of the election, moving him one step closer to completing an improbable political comeback.

The outcome remains uncertain in five other states expected to determine the winner.

But Trump was showing strength across broad swaths of the country. He had won 247 Electoral College votes to Harris' 214 as of 7pm NZ time. A candidate needs a total of at least 270 votes in the state-by-state Electoral College to claim the presidency.

Trump's projected victory in Georgia leaves Harris with a narrow path to victory through the Rust Belt trio of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, though she remains behind in all three states.

Republicans won a US Senate majority after flipping Democratic seats in West Virginia and Ohio. Neither party appeared to have an edge in the fight for control of the House of Representatives where Republicans currently hold a narrow majority.

Trump picked up more support from Hispanics, traditionally Democratic voters, and among lower-income households that have keenly felt the sting of price rises since the last presidential election in 2020, according to exit polls from Edison.

Trump won 45% of Hispanic voters nationwide, trailing Harris with 53% but up 13 percentage points from 2020.

Voters whose top issue was the economy voted overwhelmingly for Trump, especially if they felt they were worse off financially than they were four years ago.

About 31% of voters said the economy was their top issue, and they voted for Trump by a 79%-to-20% margin, according to exit polls. Some 45% of voters across the country said their family's financial situation was worse off today than four years ago, and they favoured Trump 80% to 17% for Harris.

Global investors were increasingly pricing in a Trump win late on Tuesday. US stock futures and the dollar pushed higher, while Treasury yields climbed and bitcoin rose - all flagged by analysts and investors as trades that favour a Trump victory.

"Our county-by-county analysis in key states suggests that Harris is lagging vs 2020, and on this basis it is logical that the market is starting to price a Trump win, as seen in bonds, and the dollar," said Jens Nordvig, CEO at analytical firm Exante.

TRUMP OUTPERFORMS 2020

Trump was earning a bigger share of the vote than he did four years ago in nearly every corner of the country, from suburban Georgia to rural Pennsylvania.

By 11pm ET, officials had nearly completed their count of ballots in more than 1,200 counties – about a third of the country – and Trump's share was up about 2 percentage points compared to 2020, reflecting a broad if not especially deep shift in Americans' support for the president they ousted four years ago. He had improved his numbers in suburban counties, rural regions and even some large cities that are historically bastions of Democratic support.

In Florida, a ballot measure that would have guaranteed abortion rights failed to reach the 60% threshold needed to pass, according to Edison, leaving a six-week ban in place. Nine other states have abortion-related measures on the ballot.

Nearly three-quarters of voters say American democracy is under threat, according to the exit polls, underscoring the depth of polarization in a nation where divisions have only grown starker during a fiercely competitive race.

Trump employed increasingly apocalyptic rhetoric while stoking unfounded fears that the election system cannot be trusted. Harris warned that a second Trump term would threaten the underpinnings of American democracy.

Hours before polls closed, Trump claimed on his Truth Social site without evidence that there was "a lot of talk about massive CHEATING" in Philadelphia, echoing his false claims in 2020 that fraud had occurred in large, Democratic-dominated cities. In a subsequent post, he also asserted there was fraud in Detroit.

"I don't respond to nonsense," Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey told Reuters.

A Philadelphia city commissioner, Seth Bluestein, replied on X, "There is absolutely no truth to this allegation."

'AM I GOING TO WIN?'

Trump, whose supporters attacked the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after he claimed the 2020 election was rigged, voted earlier near his home in Palm Beach, Florida.

"If I lose an election, if it's a fair election, I'm gonna be the first one to acknowledge it," Trump told reporters.

Millions of Americans waited in orderly lines to cast ballots, with only sporadic disruptions reported across a handful of states, including several non-credible bomb threats that the FBI said appeared to originate from Russian email domains.

Trump was watching the results at his Mar-a-Lago club before speaking to supporters at a nearby convention centre, according to sources familiar with the planning. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a prominent Trump backer, said he would watch the results at Mar-a-Lago with Trump.

Trump attended a morning meeting about turnout but appeared bored by the data talk, according to one source briefed on the meeting. All Trump wanted to know, the source said, was: "Am I going to win?"

Harris, who had previously mailed her ballot to her home state of California, spent some of Tuesday in radio interviews encouraging listeners to vote. Later, she was due to address students at Howard University, a historically Black college in Washington where Harris was an undergraduate.

"To go back tonight to Howard University, my beloved alma mater, and be able to hopefully recognize this day for what it is, is really full circle for me," Harris said in a radio interview.

HISTORY IN THE MAKING

After a dizzying campaign, the two rivals were hurtling toward an uncertain finish as millions of American voters waited in lines to choose between two sharply different visions for the country.

A race churned by unprecedented events – two assassination attempts against Trump, President Joe Biden's surprise withdrawal and Harris' rapid rise – remained too close to call after billions of dollars in spending and months of frenetic campaigning.

Opinion polls before the election showed the candidates running neck and neck in each of the seven states likely to determine the winner.

No matter who wins, history will be made.

Harris the first female vice president, would become the first woman, black woman and South Asian American to win the presidency.

Trump the only president to be impeached twice and the first former president to be criminally convicted, would also become the first president to win non-consecutive terms in more than a century.

Control of both chambers of Congress is also up for grabs. Republicans have an easier path in the US Senate, where Democrats are defending several seats in Republican-leaning states, while the House of Representatives looks like a toss-up.

In Dearborn, Michigan, Nakita Hogue, 50, was joined by her 18-year-old college student daughter, Niemah Hogue, to vote for Harris. The daughter said she takes birth control to help regulate her period, while her mother recalled needing surgery after she had a miscarriage in her 20s, and both feared Republican lawmakers would seek to restrict reproductive healthcare.

"For my daughter, who is going out into the world and making her own way, I want her to have that choice," Nakita Hogue said. "She should be able to make her own decisions."

At a library in Phoenix, Arizona, Felicia Navajo, 34, and her husband Jesse Miranda, 52, arrived with one of their three young kids to vote for Trump.

Miranda, a union plumber, immigrated to the US from Mexico when he was four years old, and said he believed Trump would do a better job of fighting inflation and controlling immigration.

"I want to see good people come to this town, people that are willing to work, people who are willing to just live the American dream," Miranda said.

DARK RHETORIC

During the campaign, Trump hammered first Biden and then Harris for their handling of the economy, which polls show is at the top of voters' concerns despite low unemployment and cooling inflation.

But he showed a characteristic inability to stay on message, at one point questioning Harris' black identity and vowing to protect women "whether they like it or not."

Even more than in 2016 and 2020, Trump has demonised immigrants who crossed the border illegally, falsely accusing them of fomenting a violent crime wave, and he has vowed to use the government to prosecute his political rivals.

Polls show he has made some gains among black and Latino voters. Trump has often warned that migrants are taking jobs away from those constituencies.

By contrast, Harris has tried to piece together a broader coalition of liberal Democrats, independents and disaffected moderate Republicans, describing Trump as too dangerous to elect. She campaigned on protecting reproductive rights, an issue that has galvanized women since the US Supreme Court in 2022 eliminated a nationwide right to abortion.

Harris has faced anger from many pro-Palestinian voters over the Biden administration's military and financial support for Israel's campaign in Gaza. While she has not previewed a shift in US policy, she has said she will do everything possible to end the conflict.

After Biden, 81, withdrew amid concerns about his age and mental ability, Harris sought to turn the tables on Trump, pointing to his rambling rallies as evidence he is unfit, and has tried to court young voters, seen as a critical voting bloc.

Trump countered the likes of Harris supporters Taylor Swift and Beyoncé with Elon Musk, the world's richest man, who played an increasingly visible role as a surrogate and a top donor to Trump's cause.

Tuesday's vote follows one of the most turbulent half-years in modern American politics.

In May, a New York jury found Trump guilty of falsifying business records to hide hush money payments to a porn star. Four weeks later, Trump and Biden met for their only debate, where the incumbent president delivered a disastrous performance that supercharged voters' existing concerns about his mental acuity.

In July, Trump narrowly escaped a would-be assassin's bullet at a Pennsylvania rally. Barely a week later, Biden exited the race.