Trump wins Pennsylvania, leaving him 3 electoral votes shy of clinching the White House
Howard University students watch live election results during a watch party near an election night event for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris at Howard University in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2023. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump won Pennsylvania early Wednesday, putting him just four electoral votes shy of defeating Kamala Harris to win the White House.
A win in Alaska or any of the outstanding battleground states — Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona or Nevada — would send the Republican former president back to the Oval Office.
Pennsylvania, a part of the once-reliable Democratic stronghold known as the “blue wall” with Michigan and Wisconsin, was carried by Trump when he first won the White House in 2016 and then flipped back to Democrats in 2020. Trump also flipped Georgia, which had voted for Democrats four years ago, and retained the closely contested state of North Carolina.
Trump’s gains sharply curtailed Harris’ path to victory.
The crowd at Harris’ watch party at her alma mater, Howard University in Washington, began to file out after midnight after a top Harris ally sent supporters home, with no plans for the Democratic vice president to speak.
“We will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted. That every voice has spoken,” Cedric Richmond, co-chair of the Harris campaign said. “So you won’t hear from the vice president tonight, but you will hear from her tomorrow. She will be back here tomorrow.”
Trump was set to address supporters early Wednesday from his campaign’s watch party in Florida.
Trump also won Florida, a one-time battleground that has shifted heavily to Republicans in recent elections. He also notched early wins in reliably Republican states such as Texas, South Carolina and Indiana. Harris won Virginia, a state Trump visited in the final days of the campaign, and took Democratic strongholds like New York, New Mexico and California. Harris also won New Hampshire and an Electoral College vote in Nebraska that was contested by Republicans.
The Trump campaign bet that it would cut into Democrats' traditional strength with Black and Latino voters, with the former president going on male-centric podcasts and making explicit racial appeals to both groups. Nationally, Black and Latino voters appeared slightly less likely to support Harris than they were to back Joe Biden four years ago, and Trump’s support among those voters appeared to rise slightly compared to 2020, according to AP VoteCast.
The fate of democracy appeared to be a primary driver for Harris’ supporters, a sign that the Democratic nominee’s persistent messaging in her campaign’s closing days accusing Trump of being a fascist may have broken through, according to the expansive survey of more than 110,000 voters nationwide. It also found a country mired in negativity and desperate for change. Trump’s supporters were largely focused on immigration and inflation — two issues that the former Republican president has been hammering since the start of his campaign.
In his recent visits to North Carolina, Trump seized on the heavy damage caused Hurricane Helene, spreading false claims about the federal government’s response and using GoFundMe to collect millions in donations for impacted residents. Trump initially trumpeted the Republican nominee for governor, Mark Robinson, and hailed him as “Martin Luther King on steroids,” but distanced himself after a CNN report that alleged Robinson had made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago.