Supporters of Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump react as they watch early election results in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 6, 2024
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Former U.S. President Donald Trump won the swing state of Georgia on Wednesday (November 6, 2024), returning its 16 electoral votes to the Republican column.

Joe Biden narrowly carried Georgia in 2020, but Republicans have won every other Georgia presidential vote since 1996. Mr. Trump tried to overturn his 2020 loss in Georgia, setting off a political and legal struggle that led to his indictment in the state.

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While the State has two Democratic U.S. senators, Mr. Trump’s victory proves Georgia still has a Republican bent.

Six candidates appeared on Georgia ballots, but votes for Claudia De la Cruz and Cornel West weren’t counted.

The Associated Press declared Trump the winner at 12:58 a.m. EST.

Washington:

US Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump are hurtling toward their November 5 election showdown, one of the closest contests in modern American history.

And in the handful of critical states framing the 2024 race, there is little daylight between the rivals with barely a week before Election Day.

Under the US Constitution, America’s founding fathers established that each of the 50 states would hold its own vote for president. 

Under the complex Electoral College system, each state has a certain number of “electors,” based on population. Most states have a winner-take-all system that awards all electors to whoever wins the popular vote.

With candidates needing 270 of the 538 electoral votes to win, elections tend to be decided in the hotly contested “swing states” with a history of alternating between Republican and Democratic candidates.

This year, there are seven such battlegrounds, and every one is a toss-up within the margin of error. Here is a look:

– Pennsylvania (19 Electoral College votes) –
Pennsylvania was once reliably Democratic, but these days, they don’t come much tighter than the Keystone State.

Republican Trump won the most populous battleground, with 13 million residents, by 0.7 percentage points in 2016. Joe Biden claimed it by 1.2 percentage points in 2020.

Known for its “Rust Belt” cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has been blighted for decades by the steady decline of its industrial manufacturing base.

Trump and Harris have campaigned repeatedly in the eastern state, where the pair held their one and only presidential debate. Trump, who survived an assassination attempt at a July rally in Pennsylvania, is courting the rural white population and warning that migrants are overwhelming small towns.

Harris is touting recent infrastructure wins, and in Pittsburgh she outlined plans to invest $100 billion in manufacturing, a key issue for state residents.

– Georgia (16) –
This southeastern state was an election flashpoint at the end of Trump’s first term, and the controversy simmers.

Prosecutors in Georgia indicted Trump in an election interference case after he called state officials urging them to “find” enough votes to overturn Biden’s narrow 2020 victory. 

But in a boost for Trump, the case is paused until after the election.

Biden was the first Democrat to win the Peach State since 1992. Demographic changes are likely to benefit Harris, who has courted minority voters across Georgia.

– North Carolina (16) –
The southeastern state has voted Democratic only once since 1980, but Harris believes it’s back in play.

The population, now over 10 million, is expanding and growing more diverse, benefiting Democrats.

Complicating matters for Trump, a scandal involving the state’s Republican gubernatorial candidate has infuriated party officials who worry it could sink Trump in a close race.

As in neighboring Georgia, one wild card is how the devastation from storm Helene, which recently laid waste to towns in western North Carolina, might impact the vote. 

– Michigan (15) –
Trump flipped Michigan, a former Democratic stronghold, on his way to defeating Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Biden returned it to the blue column in 2020, buoyed by unionized workers and a large Black community.

But this time, Harris risks losing the support of a 200,000-strong Arab-American community that has denounced Biden’s — and by extension her — handling of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

– Arizona (11) –
The Grand Canyon state was among 2020’s tightest races, with Biden triumphing by just 10,457 votes.

Trump hopes frustrations over the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration policy will swing Arizona, which shares a border with Mexico, back in his favor.

Harris visited Arizona’s border in September vowing to crack down on migration and work on reviving last year’s bipartisan border bill, which she said Trump “tanked” for political purposes.

– Wisconsin (10) –
Clinton lost Wisconsin after giving the state a wide berth during the 2016 campaign.

As with Midwestern neighbor Michigan, it was a different story when Trump’s opponent was Biden, who turned a 23,000-vote deficit into a winning margin of 21,000 for Democrats.

Trump considers it winnable, and his party held its summer national convention there. 

While Trump led early against Biden, Harris has made the state race a nailbiter. 

– Nevada (6) –
The Silver State, with a population of 3.1 million, hasn’t voted Republican since 2004. Conservatives, buoyed by Trump’s headway with Hispanic voters, are convinced they can flip the script.

Trump held a significant lead here against Biden. 

But within weeks of becoming the Democratic nominee, Harris — promoting her economic plans to help small businesses and combat inflation — has erased that advantage in the western state, whose largest city Las Vegas is dominated by the hospitality industry.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Washington:

Donald Trump is taking a bold move in the final days of his presidential campaign by visiting New Mexico and Virginia, two states that have historically been difficult for Republican candidates to win.

The former president campaigned in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Thursday and was scheduled to visit Salem, Virginia, on Saturday, in an effort to gain momentum and potentially turn these states red.

Trump’s team is optimistic about his chances, citing early voting numbers and the possibility of sweeping swing states Nevada and Arizona. However, this strategy carries significant risk, as neither New Mexico nor Virginia has been carried by a GOP nominee since George W. Bush in 2004.

The battleground states have received significant attention since the past few weeks, with billboards, smartphones, televisions bombarding them with political ads. The candidates – presidential and vice-presidential candidates have made 21 appearances in Pennsylvania, 17 in Michigan and 13 in North Carolina since the past two weeks.

Trump’s visit to Albuquerque brings attention to his immigration stance in a border state with the nation’s highest concentration of Latino voters. About 44% of New Mexico’s voting-age population identifies as Hispanic, and the state has been dealing with a surge in migrant deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“If we could bring God down from heaven, he could be the vote counter and we could win this,” Trump said. He also added that he’s visiting New Mexico because it’s “good for my credentials” with Latino voters.

Virginia was once considered a battleground state but has trended toward Democrats in recent years. Trump lost the state to Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020. Despite this, Trump believes he has a “real chance” of winning, and his visit may focus on the recent Supreme Court ruling on voter registrations.

Democratic strategist Bob Shrum questions Trump’s strategy, stating, “I don’t think there’s any strategy… I think he insisted on doing it. It makes no sense”. Meanwhile, Virginia’s Governor Glenn Youngkin believes the state is more competitive than expected.

Susan Swecker, Chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Virginia, holds the opinion that this visit will only make it harder for Trump to gain votes. “Kamala Harris will win Virginia convincingly, as he knows, and any visit from this deranged lunatic will only widen the margin,” she said.

Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Suburban Collection Showplace on October 26, 2024 in Novi, Michigan. Photo: Getty Images via AFP

The story so far:

Around 24.4 crore people are eligible to vote for the U.S. presidential election slated for November 5. In 2020, two-thirds of the eligible voters voted. The next President of the U.S. will be decided less by these national numbers than by a few thousand voters in some key places, which are called battleground or swing States, thanks to the unique features of the country’s electoral system.

What transpired in the last two elections?

The last two elections of 2016 and 2020 demonstrated the outsize impact of the swing factor in several States, even as the country became more polarised. In 2020, President Joe Biden had a national lead of around 70 lakh votes over Donald Trump, but what mattered more were the small margins with which he won key States. Of around 67 lakh votes cast in Pennsylvania, Mr. Biden led over Mr. Trump by 81,660; in Michigan, he had 1.54 lakh more, of the total 54 lakh polled; in Wisconsin, Mr. Biden led by just 20,682 votes in a total of more than 32 lakh votes.

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In 2016, Mr. Trump had trailed his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton by two percentage points, which was in excess of 20 lakh votes, but he could still emerge as the winner because he won key swing States. For instance, he won Pennsylvania by 44,292 votes of the total 61.7 lakh votes polled; Wisconsin by 22,748 of the 30 lakh votes; and Michigan, by 10,704 of the 48 lakh votes polled.

How is the winner chosen?

The winner of the U.S. presidential contest is selected not by a majority of national popular votes, but by a majority in the electoral college of 538, which is 270. Members of the electoral college are apportioned between the States. Most U.S. States have a “winner-takes-it-all” system that allots all electors to the candidate who gets more popular votes. So, whether a candidate has one or one million votes more than their opponent in California, for instance, all 54 electoral college votes of the State, will be awarded to him or her.

Similarly, all 19 electoral college votes of Pennsylvania will be awarded to the winner of the popular votes within that State, regardless of the margin. This system could create the anomaly of a candidate winning the election, without winning more popular votes than the opponent, nationally. That is also why the main opponents this time, Mr. Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris, are trying to turn the battleground States in their favour in the last lap of campaigning ahead of election day.

Which are the key States that will play a role in picking the winner?

Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, and North Carolina are the battleground States of 2024; and the contest between Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris is a dead heat, going by all opinion polls. The average polling error for more than five decades in the U.S. is 3.4%. In all the seven swing States, in nearly all the polls, the leading candidate has a lead well within this margin. Like the last two elections, the margins could be very narrow and these States will decide who will be the President for the next four years. It is also possible that most of these States could swing to either side, as it happened in the last two elections, rather than being evenly divided between the two.

Even a minor swing among significant voting blocs in these States could turn the tide either way. Both candidates are trying to tailor their messages, particularly targeting these States. For instance, Latinos make up nearly a quarter of Arizona’s voters. That possibly explains Mr. Trump’s recent attempts to portray his opponent as being disrespectful of the Catholic church. In Georgia, Black votes count considerably, and Mr. Trump has been trying to mobilise them behind his anti-immigration politics. Latest polling figures show Mr. Trump gaining more ground among Latinos and Blacks. Michigan, a State that turned Republican in 2016 and Democrat in 2020, has around two lakh Muslim voters. Democrats, and Ms. Harris, face a crisis of credibility among them, against the backdrop of the conflict in West Asia. They may not vote for Mr. Trump but could turn indifferent towards Ms. Harris. Mr. Trump had won North Carolina in 2016 and 2020, but Ms. Harris is making some new inroads, according to polls.

In the last stretch, there will be further concentration of firepower by both sides on the small numbers that count as big in the elections. Catching the swing voters in these States is what both candidates are focussing on now.