New Delhi: Republican Donald Trump is projected to win two swing states, Georgia and North Carolina, in the battle for the American presidency with Vice President Kamala Harris falling behind in the race to the White House.
The Republicans also won control of the US Senate with victories in West Virginia and Ohio, ensuring Trump’s party will control at least one chamber of Congress next year. They also posted early gains as they battled to retain control of the House of Representatives.
It is still too early to call the other swing states of Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada.
Trump is projected to win 16 votes from North Carolina and 16 from Georgia in the Electoral College, easing his path towards 270–the majority required to become the next president of the US. He now only needs to win Pennsylvania to reclaim the White House.
Trump snatches Georgia from Democrats
In 2020, President Joe Biden flipped Georgia blue, winning the state by about 12,000 votes, which triggered a deluge of conspiracy theories from Trump after the elections.
However, in this campaign, the former US President focused on his economic message and will likely carry the state by a larger margin than his loss in 2020.
In the last 40 years, former presidents Bill Clinton and Biden were the only Democratic candidates to win Georgia. Clinton, who picked up the state in 1992, lost it to the Republican candidate Bob Dole in 1996 during his reelection bid.
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North Carolina loyal to Trump once again
Trump has carried North Carolina in all three of his presidential bids. The state, which has been solidly Republican in the last 50 years, was one where Harris’ presidential operation invested significantly, hoping to flip the state.
The last Democratic presidential candidate to win North Carolina, was former president Barack Obama, who won by less than one percentage point in 2008.
Other Democratic candidates to have won the state were Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and Jimmy Carter in 1976.
The state faced the brunt of Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in the US in September end. Trump and his team allegedly spread misinformation about the efforts of both the federal and state governments after the storm devastated the state.
Trump is projected to improve his vote tally from 2020, where he carried the state by less than 100,000 votes. As of 12.15 pm IST, Trump was projected to win 248 out of the 538 electoral votes, to Harris’s 214.
For Harris, the loss in North Carolina narrows her path to 270. Except Nevada, Trump holds a slight lead in the other five battleground states.
The former US President has also maintained a lead of around four million votes in the popular vote, through the early counting.
Democrats retain North Carolina governor mansion
In a repeat of the previous two election cycles, the Democratic Party has retained the governorship of North Carolina. Josh Stein, the state’s attorney general is projected to beat his Republican opponent Mark Robinson comfortably.
Stein will be the first Jewish governor of the state. He replaces Roy Cooper, the term-limited Democratic governor, who won both the 2016 and 2020 elections, despite Trump carrying the state in the presidential polls.
The Republican candidate Mark Robinson, who was endorsed by Trump, faced several controversies in recent weeks–he called himself a “Black Nazi” and made inflammatory and racist comments on a pornography forum.
Robinson denied the claims but is set to lose the state by around 14 percentage points.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)