🔒 FT: Donald Trump closes in on election victory after winning southern battlegrounds

06 Nov 2024, 08:09 by Editor BizNews · BizNews

Donald Trump has won Georgia and North Carolina, critical battleground states, giving him a strong lead in the electoral college and positioning him for a potential White House return. Trump’s performance has energized global markets, boosting the dollar and bitcoin. Harris remains hopeful in Blue Wall states, but early victories for Republicans hint at an uphill battle.

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By James Politi and Lauren Fedor in Washington, Alex Rogers in Palm Beach and Aime Williams in Raleigh

Republican wins in swing states of Georgia and North Carolina help clear path for his return to White House ___STEADY_PAYWALL___

Donald Trump has won the southern battleground states of Georgia and North Carolina, giving the former president a commanding lead in the electoral college and helping clear his path for a return to the White House.

The Associated Press projected Trump beating Kamala Harris in Georgia just before 1am ET, handing him a state that Joe Biden had won in his victory over Trump in the 2020 election.

In a sign the result had shifted the candidates’ political calculus, 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 Georgia call followed a similar victory for Trump in North Carolina, ending Harris’s hopes of winning two states Democrats had believed were viable targets in the fast-growing “new south”.

Initial counts in the remaining five battlegrounds — Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona — showed Trump performing well in crucial regions that Harris needed to maintain a path to victory.

Earlier, Trump handily won his home state of Florida and several conservative-leaning states across the south and Midwest, including Texas and Iowa, where a closely watched poll at the weekend had suggested Harris could record an upset.

Harris notched up wins in reliably Democratic states, including New York and California, leaving Trump with a lead in the electoral college of 248 to 214. The winning candidate must secure 270 electoral college votes.

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.

Harris’s campaign chair, Jen O’ Malley Dillon, sent a note to staff on Tuesday night saying that she still saw a path to victory in the presidential election. The race might not “come into focus into the early morning hours”, she said.

“We have known all along that our clearest path to 270 electoral votes lies through the Blue Wall states. And we feel good about what we’re seeing,” she wrote, citing high turnout in Democratic cities in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

At a party in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, Democrats’ early exuberance at winning the governor’s race had fizzled out by 11.30pm, when the state was called for Trump. Party-goers who remained watched the results in silence as upbeat pop hits played over the sound system.

Global investors, meanwhile, regarded Trump’s strong showing so far as a sign that he was favoured to win the White House, sending the dollar and bitcoin sharply higher even as votes continued 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.

Trump voted in his adopted hometown of Palm Beach, Florida, and was expected to address supporters at an election-night party near his Mar-a-Lago residence.

His campaign will have been buoyed by the wide margin of his win in Florida, which was far greater than his edge there in 2020. Overall, Trump has been performing strongly in rural areas, while Harris is leading in most urban and suburban areas.

Harris was watching the returns at the vice-president’s residence in Washington.

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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