Election Live Updates: Trump Declares Victory as He Wins Pennsylvania

Former President Donald J. Trump is closing in on the presidency. He claimed the crucial battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina, leaving Vice President Kamala Harris only the narrowest of paths to the White House.

Mr. Trump addressed his supporters in Florida. “We’ve achieved the most incredible political thing,” he said.

Republicans secured control of the Senate with crucial wins: Bernie Moreno in Ohio, Jim Justice in West Virginia and Deb Fischer, who held on to her seat in Nebraska.

Our veteran political correspondent Jonathan Weisman sums up this historic night:

Battleground victories are powering Trump.

Donald J. Trump has captured Pennsylvania, the biggest prize of the seven battleground states in one of the most consequential presidential elections in modern American history. It all but seals his return to the White House four years after voters turned him out.

Georgia, a state that Mr. Trump narrowly lost in 2020, and North Carolina, a state he narrowly won, had already moved into the win column for the former president. With Pennsylvania gone, Vice President Kamala Harris’s “blue wall” along the Great Lakes has cracked, and her path to becoming the first woman in the Oval Office has nearly disappeared.

Republicans also flipped control of the Senate with a string of key victories. In Ohio, Bernie Moreno defeated Senator Sherrod Brown, a resilient red-state Democrat. The retiring Senator Joseph Manchin, an independent, will be replaced by the state’s Republican governor, Jim Justice. And Senator Deb Fischer held off a dark-horse challenge in Nebraska from a blue-collar independent, Dan Osborn, eliminating any path Democrats had toward retaining control of the chamber.

Speaking to supporters in Palm Beach, Fla., in the early hours of the morning, Mr. Trump declared, “This will forever be remembered as the day the American people regained control of their country.”

Two hours before, the crowd at Ms. Harris’s election watch party at her alma mater, Howard University in Washington, D.C., had already thinned by midnight, and the mood was glum when Cedric Richmond, a co-chairman of the Harris campaign, told those who were left that the vice president would not be coming to campus. Her supporters streamed for the exits.

Mr. Trump showed his strength early, winning states like Texas and Florida easily and defying recent polls, such as one in Iowa, that seemed to show a surge of support for Ms Harris.

Republican-held Senate seats that Democrats had hoped to at least make competitive — such as Ted Cruz’s in Texas and Rick Scott’s in Florida — were not even close. And Republican leaders in Florida were also able to defeat ballot initiatives legalizing abortion and marijuana, both of which failed to reach the 60 percent they needed.

A largely peaceful Election Day was marred by bomb threats that roiled polling places in Democratic regions of Georgia, Arizona and Michigan. Officials said none of the threats appeared to be credible, but at least in Georgia and Arizona, some polling places stayed open later as a result. Election officials in those states attributed at least some of the threats to Russian actors.

Democrats did score some landmark wins. For the first time in history, the Senate will have two Black women, both Democrats, serving simultaneously: Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester won her Senate contest in Delaware, while Angela Alsobrooks defeated the moderate former governor Larry Hogan in Maryland. Sarah McBride, a Delaware Democrat, will also be the first transgender member of the House.

In the battle for the House, Republicans were holding their own in key races, leaving control up for grabs.

In every state that has counted most of its votes, Trump has improved on his performance from 2020. He has flipped Georgia and Pennsylvania and needs only one more state to win.

South Dakota voters reject an abortion rights amendment.

Image

The South Dakota Capitol in Pierre.Credit…Jack Dura/Associated Press

Voters in South Dakota rejected a ballot amendment that would have enshrined a right to abortion in the State Constitution, according to The Associated Press.

South Dakota has one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans, and the measure had been up against heavy spending by Republicans and national groups that oppose abortion rights. The state is one of a handful where polls show less than a majority saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

And abortion rights groups that backed similar amendments in other states declined to support the one in South Dakota, saying that the language was so broad that the Legislature could have still effectively made abortion unavailable in the state.

But the sponsors of the measure believed that it was in keeping with what the state’s relatively conservative electorate wanted. They said it would have restored the protections that existed — and that voters liked — under Roe v. Wade, the 1973 court decision that found a right to abortion in the federal Constitution.

And they argued that they had to do something to loosen South Dakota’s ban, which prohibits abortion except when it is necessary to save the life of the pregnant woman, and includes no exceptions for cases of rape, incest or for the health of the pregnant woman.

The amendment would have legalized abortion in the first trimester. The state could have restricted it in the second trimester if those restrictions were “reasonably” related to the physical health of the pregnant woman, and could have banned abortion in the third trimester except in cases where it is necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant woman.

Arizona voters approve an abortion rights amendment.

Image

Outside a room, several placards and signs are displayed. One of them reads: “We can end the ban” and “Yes Arizona Abortion Access 139.”

Signs at the Tucson, Ariz., headquarters of Arizona List, a group that supports female Democratic abortion rights advocates who are running for office. Credit…Olivier Touron/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Arizona voters approved a ballot amendment enshrining a right to abortion in the State Constitution, according to The Associated Press, joining other states that have pushed back against unpopular abortion bans passed in the two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

The state was one of 10 with abortion measures on the ballot this year — more than ever before.

Like those in other states, the Arizona measure essentially establishes the protections of Roe in the State Constitution, enshrining a “fundamental right” to abortion before fetal viability, when a fetus has a “significant likelihood” of surviving outside the uterus, generally around 24 weeks of pregnancy.

It allows the state to restrict abortion before viability if it has a “compelling reason,” and allows abortion after viability if, in the “good-faith judgment of a treating health care professional,” it is necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant woman.

State law currently allows abortion until 15 weeks of pregnancy. One in five voters signed the petitions to place the measure on the ballot.

The broad coalition of groups behind the measure argued that the ballot amendment would stop politicians from interfering with health care decisions that should be between women and their doctors.

A coalition of religious and anti-abortion groups had sued to keep the measure off the ballot, arguing that it opened up the potential for nearly unrestricted abortion and eliminated laws intended to protect women’s health and safety. Republicans who control the State Legislature and the State Supreme Court also opposed the measure. But the court rejected an effort by anti-abortion groups to strike the measure from the ballot, saying that it believed the abortion rights groups had met the requirements to place it there.

Scenes From Election Day ›