Trump closes in on victory in U.S. presidential race with leads in remaining swing states
THE LATEST:
- Donald Trump declares victory, though most major networks and other media outlets have not called the presidency.
- Trump won the biggest battleground prize in Pennsylvania, putting victory in arm’s reach.
- Harris holds onto solidly blue states but trails in all of the swing states.
- The vice-president is expected to speak Wednesday.
- The current electoral vote tally is 266 for Trump and 219 for Harris.
- Republicans have reclaimed majority control of the U.S. Senate.
- Voters went against ballot measures that would’ve guaranteed abortion rights in some states, but were supportive in others.
Republican candidate Donald Trump has declared victory in Tuesday’s contentious U.S. presidential election, though most major networks and other media outlets have not yet called the presidency.
“It is now clear that we’ve achieved the most incredible political thing. Look what happened. Isn’t this crazy?” he told cheering supporters at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., just before 2:30 a.m. ET.
“I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honour of being elected your 47th president.”
Trump, 78, spoke after reclaiming the largest of the swing state prizes back from Democrats in Pennsylvania, which left him just four electoral votes shy of the 270 needed to win the presidency.
He has won or is leading in the other six battlegrounds.
Republican Donald Trump claims a ‘magnificent victory’ after winning several key battleground states, including Pennsylvania, and tells supporters they are a part of the ‘greatest political movement of all time.’
Harris, 60, will not be addressing the nation until Wednesday.
“We still have votes to count. We still have states that have not been called yet,” Harris campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond told supporters gathered for a watch party at Howard University in Washington around 1 a.m.
“We will continue overnight to fight to make sure every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken. So you won’t hear from the vice-president tonight, but you will hear from her tomorrow.”
Kamala Harris won’t address the election night crowd of supporters gathered at her alma mater, Howard University. Her campaign co-chair, Cedric Richmond, said Harris and her team are waiting for all votes to be counted and that she would speak to the nation on Wednesday.
CBC News has called Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming for Trump.
Harris will hold the reliably blue states of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, New York, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and the District of Columbia.
But as of early Wednesday, she had lost two states that Biden had won last time — Georgia and Pennsylvania, which both flipped from blue to red — and was on a path to lose Arizona and Nevada, which Biden narrowly won in 2020.
Trump was also ahead in the popular vote, with 51.2 per cent to Harris’s 47.4 per cent.
The mood at Harris’s election night party at Howard University — the candidate’s alma mater — shifted from electric to anxious as races were called and her supporters could see how close the race would be.
In another blow to Democrats, Republicans seized control of the Senate after flipping blue seats and holding onto others — taking the majority for the first time in four years.
Trump’s campaign promises
The next U.S. president will be consequential for Canada: The countries are top allies, side-by-side on the world stage and exchanging billions of dollars annually in trade.
After Trump’s declaration of victory, the American dollar surged and U.S. stock futures hit record highs as investors bet on lower taxes and higher interest rates.
During the campaign, the Republican candidate made immigration a top issue. He has promised mass deportations, said he would end birthright citizenship and vowed to expand a travel ban on people from certain countries.
He took credit for the U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, saying abortion laws should be left to the states.
On the economy, Trump said he would impose sweeping tariffs on imported goods and on specific companies and countries. He pledged to end taxes on tips and overtime, to make emergency generators tax-deductible in states hit by natural disasters, to lower corporate tax rates and to open federal lands to foreign companies and housing.
He also vowed to undo much of Biden’s climate change work.
On foreign policy, Trump pledged to fundamentally alter the U.S. relationship with NATO and to resolve the Ukraine war with possible peace talks that might require Kyiv to cede territory. He has said Hamas must be “crushed” and vowed to be tougher on Iran, but has given few details or policy proposals around the crisis in the Middle East.
Unlike Canadians, Americans voted directly for who they want to see as president — though it is the electoral college that ultimately elects the winner. More than 84 million voters cast their ballots early, either by mail or in person.
Voting largely went smoothly, but the FBI said hoax bomb threats on Tuesday, many of which appeared to originate from Russian email domains, were directed at polling locations in three U.S. battleground states: Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin.
The bureau said the threats were not credible but at least two polling sites in Georgia were briefly evacuated.
Published at Fri, 01 Nov 2024 08:11:21 +0000
Phoney bomb threats reported on Election Day in 5 U.S. battleground states
Hoax bomb threats, many of which appeared to originate from Russian email domains, were directed at polling locations in five U.S. battleground states — Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — as election day voting was underway, the FBI said on Tuesday.
“None of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far,” the FBI said in a statement, adding that election integrity was among the bureau’s highest priorities.
At least two polling sites targeted by the fake bomb threats in Georgia were briefly evacuated.
The two locations, in Fulton County, both reopened after about 30 minutes, officials said, and the county was seeking a court order to extend the location’s voting hours past the statewide deadline of 7 p.m. local time.
Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, blamed Russian interference for the election day bomb hoaxes.
“They’re up to mischief, it seems. They don’t want us to have a smooth, fair and accurate election, and if they can get us to fight among ourselves, they can count that as a victory,” Raffensperger told reporters.
The Russian embassy in Washington said insinuations about Russian interference were “malicious slander.”
“We would like to emphasize that Russia has not interfered and does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, including the United States,” the embassy said in a statement. “As [Russian] President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stressed, we respect the will of the American people.”
State officials confirm hoax threats
Ann Jacobs, head of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said fake bomb threats were sent to two polling locations in the state capital of Madison, but they did not disrupt voting.
A spokesperson for Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s Democratic state secretary, told Reuters there had been reports of bomb threats at several polling locations, but none were credible.
Benson’s office had been notified that the threats may be tied to Russia, the spokesperson said.
An FBI official said Georgia alone received more than two dozen, most of which occurred in Fulton County, which encompasses much of Atlanta, a Democratic stronghold.
Police in DeKalb County, Ga. — another Democratic stronghold — later responded to bomb threats at eight locations, according to a county press release. Six of the locations were polling places and were evacuated. County officials were seeking an emergency order extending opening times at the voting sites.
DeKalb County police later said no bombs were found at the six voting sites.
A senior official in Raffensperger’s office, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Georgia bomb hoaxes were sent from email addresses that had been used by Russians trying to interfere in previous U.S. elections.
The threats were sent to U.S. media and polling locations, the official said, adding, “It’s a likelihood it’s Russia.”
Adrian Fontes, the Arizona secretary of state, a Democrat who is the chief election official in the swing state, said four fake bomb threats had been delivered to polling sites in Navajo County, located in the northeastern part of the state and which includes three Indigenous tribes.
U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, and Republican candidate Donald Trump, a former U.S. president, are locked in a tight race for the White House. Opinion polls suggest the contest is too close to call.
A judge in Clearfield County, Pa., extended voting hours to 9:00 p.m. local time after a bomb threat at a vote-counting site disrupted the process.
Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, said on Tuesday night multiple bomb threats had been investigated and none were found to be credible. He did not mention Russia.
The phoney bomb threats mark the latest in a string of examples of alleged interference by the Russians in the 2024 election.
On Nov. 1, U.S. intelligence officials warned that Russian actors manufactured a video that falsely depicted Haitians illegally casting ballots in Georgia. Intelligence officials also found that the Russians created a separate phoney video that falsely accused someone associated with the Harris presidential ticket of taking a bribe from an entertainer.
U.S. intelligence officials have also accused Russia of interfering in previous presidential elections, especially the 2016 race that Trump won against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Published at Tue, 05 Nov 2024 22:26:13 +0000
