US election results: Trump nears presidency amid lead in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia
WASHINGTON: Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump is leading his rival Vice President Kamala Harris in the US election 2024 held on Tuesday.
According to the US media, Trump has been leading by 230 electoral votes to Harris’ 187.
Any candidate winning 270 out of 538 electoral votes will become the US president.
VOTE COUNT CONTINUES
The initial results of the 2024 US presidential election have been announced by CNN and the Associated Press. According to their projections, Vice President Kamala Harris, representing the Democratic Party, has secured Vermont, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Illinois. Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, has claimed victories in Florida, Ohio, Texas, Kentucky, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Indiana.
Vermont contributes three electoral votes to Harris’s tally. On the other hand, Kentucky and Indiana add a total of 19 electoral votes to Trump’s count—eight from Kentucky and eleven from Indiana. In the previous election in 2020, Joe Biden won Vermont, while Trump emerged victorious in both Kentucky and Indiana.
The massive early voting turnout before Tuesday — slightly more than half the total number of votes in the presidential election four years earlier — was driven partly by Republican voters, who cast early ballots at a higher rate than in recent previous elections after a campaign by Trump and the Republican National Committee to counter the Democrats’ longstanding advantage in the early vote.
The early voting period faced minimal problems, even in western North Carolina, which was hammered last month by Hurricane Helene. State and local election officials, benefiting from changes made by the Republican-controlled legislature, pulled off a herculean effort to ensure residents could cast their ballots as they dealt with power outages, lack of water and washed out roads. That appeared to continue on Tuesday, with the North Carolina Board of Elections reporting no voting issues.
Besides the hurricanes in North Carolina and Florida, the most worrisome disruptions to the election season so far were arson attacks that damaged ballots in two drop boxes near the Oregon-Washington border. Authorities there were still searching for the person responsible.
The absence of any significant, widespread problems has not stopped Trump, the Republican nominee, or the RNC, which is now under his sway, from making numerous claims of fraud or election interference during the early voting period, a possible prelude to challenges after Election Day.
Senate
The Republicans require just 3 more members to claim majority in the Senate as they have already won 48 out of 100 Senate electoral.
The Democrats are trailing with 36 seats in the Senate.
