More states called for Trump and Harris as election results roll in

WASHINGTON

The Associated Press called additional states for Republican candidate Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger Kamala Harris on Tuesday as election results continued to come in.

Trump secured early victories in the Midwestern states of Indiana and Kentucky, while Harris picked up Vermont.

With polls now closed in key swing states including Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and over two dozen others, Trump has amassed 95 Electoral College votes to Harris' 35.

The agency further reported that Trump won Oklahoma, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, and Tennessee, while Harris won Maryland, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.

Later, Trump won Arkansas and Harris New Jersey, Delaware and Illinois.

The agency also reported that the Republican candidate laid claims to North Dakota, South Dakota, Louisiana, Wyoming and Nebraska, while Harris wins New York.

Poll closures will continue at half-hour or hour intervals, with the final closures in Hawaii at midnight Eastern Time (0500GMT), followed by Alaska at 1 a.m. (0600GMT).

The race is all but certain to come down to seven key battleground states -- Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Wisconsin -- where the nominees are facing similarly narrow contests with spreads well within the polls' margins of error.

Both candidates spent the final week before the election campaigning hard in those states, with Harris visiting Pennsylvania for a series of rallies in multiple cities Monday. Trump spent the day there before a late-night rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

It is highly unlikely that major media organizations will declare a victor Tuesday night, as had been the norm up until 2020, due to the closeness of the races in the battleground states.

Battleground states are pivotal because the US does not directly elect its presidents. Instead, the process plays out via the Electoral College, where 538 representatives cast ballots in line with their states’ outcomes.

Either candidate needs to secure 270 Electoral College votes to claim victory. Electors are allocated to states based on their population, and most states give all of their electors to whichever candidate wins the state in the general vote.

The winner-take-all model is not followed in Nebraska and Maine, however, which instead allocate their votes based on the outcome in congressional districts, as well as the state’s popular vote winner.

Control of Congress up for grabs

Further down the ballot, voters will determine the composition of the next US Congress.

In the Senate, 34 seats are up for election. Senators are elected to six-year terms and one-third are elected every two years. Roughly four of the races are considered toss-ups, including contests in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which are currently held by Democrats.

Republicans are slightly favored to win control of the Senate, but whoever emerges victorious will be left to navigate a precarious razor-thin majority. In the 100-seat chamber, due to procedural rules, parties often need 60 rather than just 50 votes to pass legislation.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for election, and as in the Senate, most forecasts have the chamber near-evenly split. A couple dozen competitive elections will determine if Republicans or Democrats will control the House.

At the state and local levels, voters will decide on a range of initiatives and races, from school boards to state-level ballot measures that can hold the weight of law. A total of 11 governor’s races are also being contested.