Donald Trump claims victory, Republicans take back the Senate and silence at Kamala Harris’ headquarters: The key takeaways from the US election

Donald Trump has secured victory in the United States election after winning the key battleground state of Pennsylvania. The count is not yet final.

Election Day went relatively smoothly for voters, despite bomb threats, false claims about a fake Melania at a Florida voting center and the spread of misinformation on social media.

Not long after the last poll closed, it became clear that Trump was leading in all widely watched swing states.

The Associated Press has not yet declared the election, but Trump is just three Electoral College votes away from reaching the magic number of 270.

In a victory speech to supporters in Florida, he promised to “fight for you, your family and your future.”

From a clear result in an election many thought was too close to call, to Republicans taking back the Senate, to a somber mood at Harris’ headquarters, these were the key moments of Election Day.

Donald Trump claims victory after defeating the battleground states

In an address to his supporters in Florida late Wednesday morning (local time), Trump claimed he had won and said it was “a political victory the likes of which our country has never seen before.”

“I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president,” he said.

He then thanked his wife Melania, his children and his vice president JD Vance, noting that he was initially a little annoyed about his choice of vice president.

In the hours before his address, all eyes were on seven battleground states that were widely seen as the deciders of the election.

Two of those states provided early signs of who might win: Georgia and North Carolina.

Both states are known for relatively quick counts, and both states were soon called for Trump.

Kamala Harris’ victory therefore depended on whether she could win Wisconsin (Michigan) and the actual victory (Pennsylvania).

The states are known as the “blue wall” and were once reliable Democratic strongholds, but have been known to collapse in favor of Republicans from time to time.

This was also true of Trump, who claimed Pennsylvania as his own just as he took the stage in Florida to the cheers of his supporters.

Kamala Harris’ evening went from a disappointing night to a funeral

Democratic candidate Kamala Harris held her election party at her alma mater Howard University in Washington DC.

It started as a happy dance party where young people said they were excited about the election of the first woman of color to the White House.

Harris always had a lot of work to do in this race.

She was catapulted to the forefront of the presidential nomination in July when her boss, President Joe Biden, resigned amid concerns about his mental capacity.

In order to have a chance of winning, everything had to be right in an extremely close race. But as soon as the polls closed, it quickly became clear that things weren’t going their way.

When CNN called the crucial swing state of Georgia for Trump, eyewitnesses said that the mood with Harris in Washington had become very dark indeed.

As the party emptied, Harris’ campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, sent an email to staffers urging them to “get some sleep.”

“As we always knew, this is a razor-thin race,” she wrote.

“This is what we were made for, so let’s finish what we have ahead of us tonight, get some sleep and prepare to finish strong tomorrow.”

Her chances of winning are currently almost zero, but we are not expected to hear from the vice president until tomorrow.

“As we always knew, this is a razor-thin race,” she wrote.

“This is what we were made for, so let’s finish what we have ahead of us tonight, get some sleep and prepare to finish strong tomorrow.”

The women choose

This election has taken center stage on the gender gap among voters, and there has been uncertainty about how that gap would play out on Election Day and what it would mean for each candidate.

Early polls showed a slight increase in the number of American women who voted on November 5th.

Data from AP’s VoteCast poll shows that 54 percent of voters will be women in 2024, up from 53 percent in 2020.

Republicans have long understood that female voters could determine Trump’s success. One of his closest advisers, Stephen Miller, even went so far as to urge men to vote to counteract this surge.

Why are American women so motivated to vote this year? Part of this is likely due to reproductive rights.

After Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee, the number of women who cited abortion as their top campaign issue increased, according to New York Times/Siena polls.

The Supreme Court threw out Roe vs. Wade in 2022, ending the constitutional right to abortion and sending the matter back to the states.

Trump’s appointment of three conservative justices to the court during his presidency paved the way for the decision that led to more than 20 states adopting abortion bans or restrictions.

Vice President Kamala Harris and her team have pushed hard on the issue, insisting that Trump cannot be trusted on reproductive access.

However, it appears that the much-discussed “gender gap” has not worked in Harris’s favor, even though Harris clearly dominated among younger voters, according to exit polls.

ABC America found that Harris and Trump were evenly represented among young men under 30, but the Democrat had a 26-point lead over women in the same age group.

There also appears to have been an increase in turnout among young voters.

AP’s VoteCast poll found that 16 percent of voters were between 18 and 29 years old. In 2020, they made up 13 percent of voters.

Surveys have already shown that the younger age group are irregular voters and are less associated with either party.

What about the House and Senate races?

While the focus for many is on the outcome of the presidential election campaign, the battles for the US House of Representatives and Senate are arguably even more important.

Republicans secured control of the Senate, retaking the chamber for the first time in four years.

Control of the House remains in doubt, however, with AP reporting that more than 100 races remain to be called.

Fake Melania, bomb threats and disinformation

Although the November 5 election process was largely calm, it betrayed a crushing sense of anxiety among voters awaiting the outcome of a knife-edge election campaign.

Locally, voters took part in their election day rituals and spent the time playing sports, meeting friends or joining pro-democracy parties.

But social media platforms quickly became a hotbed for conspiracy theories and misinformation, ranging from mild claims about a fake Melania Trump to more dangerous allegations of voter fraud and election manipulation in Pennsylvania.

When Trump showed up to cast his vote in a Florida precinct early on November 5, social media users were convinced that the woman photographed at his side was not his wife Melania but a body double.

People highlighted her decision to wear sunglasses indoors, lack of rings and her choice of dress as signs that the former first lady had been replaced by a doppelganger.

There’s no evidence that Melania used a body double, but that wasn’t the only sign that something went wrong on election day.

Bomb threats to counties in four states caused disruption as some were forced to temporarily close.

The FBI said many of the threats “appear to come from Russian email domains” and “none of the threats have been determined to be credible to date.”

Georgia’s Republican secretary of state was one of many officials to speak out against the threats.

Meanwhile, allegations of voter fraud and voter fraud were a common thread in Pennsylvania, a key state for both parties.

Thousands of accounts on the social media platform -Terms.

Reuters previously reported that the video actually shows a “routine process for installing memory cards into voter devices.”

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