2024 US election: Trump starts celebration as a dejected Harris camp goes silent

The mood in the Democratic arena turned somber as Donald Trump picked up two battleground states — North Carolina and Georgia — to give himself a big lead in the race for the White House against Kamala Harris. Trump took the lead as soon as the polls closed and the counting of votes began. Democrats said initial expectations were as expected, but as the night wore on and more results came in, their hopes began to fade.

Harris canceled her speech at Howard University in Washington, D.C., as Trump began driving from Mar-a-Lago to his watch party. Thousands of her supporters, who until minutes earlier had only been dancing and cheering, scattered. The scene became completely silent.

In the race for 270 seats to book a victory, Trump was always in the lead, but Harris managed to catch up a little later. However, she always lagged behind. According to current figures, Trump has won or is in the lead in 247 states, while the number for Harris is 213. The race was always predicted to be a close contest, with national polls showing Harris with a slight lead.

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The seven key swing states – North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada – were expected to decide who would become the next US president and the fate of the country. North Carolina was the first to go, and the Associated Press called it Trump.

The Republican camp cheered as the mood in the Harris arena deteriorated.

Georgia was next, the state that took the spotlight during the 2020 election. It became the first state to withdraw from the 2020 results. At that time, Trump lost Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden by 11,779 votes. He begged Georgia election officials to find one more vote that could help him win.

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It is now a historic case in which Trump has been embroiled for years. He was criminally charged in Georgia in a sweeping racketeering indictment.

Other battlegrounds are still too close to call, so results are still awaited. Polls in Nevada close quite late and the state doesn’t announce anything until the last person has voted. Mail-in ballots would be added later and have largely favored Democrats in the past.

However, Nevada is known to have announced final results quite late and has historically added more than 15 percent of its votes after Election Day. AP reported that Trump led in initial returns by about three points.

Meanwhile, Trump appears to be all set to become the next president of the United States, with a number of votes still to be counted. But his supporters, and Trump himself, are already celebrating and gathering at the convention center in West Palm Beach.