U.S. Election 2024: Trump wins swing states Georgia, North Carolina; leads Harris in electoral votes

Former President Donald Trump has won the first two battleground states of North Carolina and Georgia as he continues to lead Vice President Kamala Harris in the electoral college and the popular vote.

Polls have closed across most of the country with just Hawaii and Alaska left to close at midnight.

Five swing states have yet to be called: Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Those battleground states are still too close to call and these states are likely to deliver the Electoral College votes needed for the winning candidate to get a majority of 270.

Trump has collected 246 electoral votes while Harris sits at 182 votes. He also leads the popular vote with over 63 million votes compares to over 58 million for Harris.

As midnight approached on the East Coast, the Harris campaign had turned off its projected broadcasts of CNN at its election night watch party at Howard University. Instead, various high-energy remixes blared from speakers alongside floodlights flickering in tempo to hype the crowd.

The cheers in the crowd had become less frequent as more results came in from battleground states showing a tight race or victories for Trump.

Some attendees began leaving the event though the vast majority of rallygoers remained. It is unclear if Harris will make an appearance at her alma mater.

Voters electing new House of Representatives

Outside of the race between Harris and Trump, most will likely be waiting to see what the new House of Representatives will look like as it could hugely impact the incoming president’s ability to implement their agenda.

As of Monday, there were 220 Republicans and 212 Democrats in the chamber. There were three vacancies after two Democratic representatives died and a Republican representative resigned. In order to form a majority in the upcoming 119th Congress, a party must have 218 of the 435 seats.

Non-credible bomb threats reported at polling locations

The Federal Bureau of Investigations has been investigating bomb threats to polling locations in several states, but none have been determined to be credible thus far, “many of which appear to originate from Russian email domains.”

Other than the threats, Election Day voting has so far unfolded largely smoothly across the nation Tuesday with only scattered reports of delays from extreme weather, ballot printing errors and technical problems.

Helping voting run relatively smoothly on Election Day was the fact that tens of millions of Americans had already cast their ballots. Those included record numbers of voters in Georgia, North Carolina and other battleground states that could decide the winner.

As of Tuesday, Associated Press tracking of advance voting nationwide showed more than 82 million ballots already cast — slightly more than half the total number of votes in the presidential election four years earlier.