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So let's see what's happening in Pennsylvania with the female voters. 53% of those, again, this is preliminary, 53% of those voters say that they are women, and they are breaking in favor of Kamala Harris by 55% compared to Donald Trump. This is roughly about the same with where women were for Joe Biden in 2020. White women in particular, white women make up 42%, again, based on these preliminary polls, and 48% of the white women voting Kamala Harris. Donald Trump is beating her out when it comes to white women.
Now, what makes this election potentially different from the past is that this is the first presidential election since Roe v. Wade was overturned. You have abortion on 10 states, and abortion on the ballot in 10 states. Two of them, Nevada and Arizona, are battleground states. So, will abortion make a difference in this election? Do you have a metric there that compares white women from Biden four years ago and how she's? It's roughly the same. We don't actually have it in a graph form, but she's running about the same as Biden so far, 2% better than where Biden was in 2020. 2%. And in a very tight race, though, that could make all the difference.
And Martha, there has been significant outreach, particularly to suburban white women in Pennsylvania. Absolutely. She absolutely needs those suburban white women in Pennsylvania, across all of the battleground states, of course, but particularly there. And those women, the women I've talked to in Pennsylvania, in those battleground states, all over the place, it is Donald Trump's language that is turning them off, and Kamala Harris is taking full advantage of that. She's reminding voters the kinds of things Donald Trump has said, like, "I want to protect women whether they like it or not." He talks, he calls her names, he calls her, he calls her names that are very offensive to female voters. But they are also a voting block that gets out there. And when you look at those long lines that we've been talking about tonight, women are very, very motivated and very angry. Women I've talked to in these states about what Donald Trump has said, they may stay in those lines. Those low-propensity male voters that Donald Trump has gone after, those younger voters who don't usually vote, will they stay in those lines? But we have just seen that massive gender gap.
Yeah, really interesting. And you heard the warning, Mary Bruce, from Nikki Haley in recent days, particularly after Madison Square Garden, that the sort of, the sort of bromance or the bro presentation at some of these rallies. She reminded, she was sending out a message to the Trump campaign that, "Remember, women vote." Absolutely. And that is what the Kamala Harris campaign is banking on, that women will come out and vote, especially Republican women, especially in Pennsylvania. They have made a huge push for those hidden Harris voters that we had been talking about, for those dissatisfied Republican voters. I think back to an event in Bucks County just a couple weeks ago where Harris was standing there on stage with over a hundred Republican officials and aides to former Republican presidents, making the argument, echoing the argument that Liz Cheney has made to Republican women, that you can come out, put country above party, and you don't have to tell anyone, and you don't have to tell anyone about your vote. And also, one other thing that Terry was pointing on, you know, the ground operation in Pennsylvania is just massive, and it is something that the Harris campaign is eager to tout tonight.
Now, 11:00 p.m. in the East, 8:00 p.m. in the West. Polls are now closed in 48 states, including California, with the biggest prize of the night. It's 54 electoral votes. At this hour, as you can see in Georgia, we're also following these key battleground states. Kamala Harris, behind Donald Trump by about two points in Georgia. 89% of the vote in. 16 electoral votes on the line right there. North Carolina tonight, still, we can't call this race. Either a close race. 85% of the vote in, as you can see, a margin of just about 150,000 votes between them. In Pennsylvania, perhaps the biggest battleground state prize of the night, 67% of the vote in. Donald Trump taking a slight lead over Kamala Harris. There's still significant outstanding vote in the Philadelphia area and other Democratic strongholds. The question is, is it enough to help catch her back up, and how tight will this race be in the end? And in Wisconsin, four out of the last six presidential elections, Wisconsin decided by less than a point. 59% of the vote in. 10 electoral votes on the line. And you can see a very close race, about 30,000 votes in between the two candidates. Let's look at Arizona at this hour. Look at that, 49.5, 49.6 in Arizona. Obviously, can't call that race. Nevada tonight, the numbers have not come in yet. Another battleground, though, obviously, where the polls have closed. It's extraordinarily close.
Our coverage of the 2024 presidential election, it could last for weeks. I'm not sure. I'm just making sure you're all still here with me. It continues right now. The Harris campaign, and basically you've got your hands on a memo that went out to internal staff saying, "This is going to buckle up. This is going to be a long election." This email reads like a reality check from the Harris campaign manager to her staff. We've obtained this by ABC News, and she says, "What we have all been talking about, that they knew this race was going to be razor-thin." She says, "This is exactly what they prepared for, and that their clearest path to 270 remains to be through the blue wall that we've been talking about all night." She says, "We feel good about what we are seeing." That said, she is cautioning that this is going to take some time. She runs through those blue wall states, saying in Pennsylvania, they overperformed. Saying in Pennsylvania, they overperformed turnout expectations in Philadelphia. She says they're seeing especially high turnout with large non-white and student populations. And then in Michigan and Wisconsin, she notes, you know, they are still awaiting a significant amount of the vote to come in in Michigan, pointing to Detroit, also saying other results in Michigan are harder to parse. In Wisconsin, she points to remaining vote in Dane and Milwaukee counties. And then what she says, David, is, "What we do know is this race is not going to come into focus until the early morning hours." David, she urges their team to quote, "Get some sleep and get ready to close out strong tomorrow."
John, but but can I, I say that is absolutely the message that we're hearing tonight from the Kamala Harris campaign. But I am also talking to Democrats, not precisely on the Kamala Harris campaign, but with very much a vested interest in what's happening here, who are feeling that this is looking very bad for her, feeling that this is looking very bad for her, who are very concerned about the trends they're seeing, both in those Sun Belt states, concerns about what they're seeing in Wisconsin, and seeing a path. Sure, this is not over, it's certainly not over, but seeing it as a very steep and narrow path for Kamala Harris. And do they recognize in a lot of these Republican counties, it's sort of like Donald Trump performing just over the threshold of where he needed to be, and the numbers adding up in each one of these battleground states? It's not necessarily sort of the urban centers where they thought Kamala Harris would do well, as Rick has shown us, she has done well in a lot of those areas. It's in the Republican counties where he's done better than he did four years ago, and in some cases, is doing better than he did in 2016, which is astounding, because he did far better than anybody anticipated in both of those presidential cycles in those rural, deep red Republican areas. So yes, that's the primary factor here. Trump really appears to be turning out his voters, and turning them out at a level perhaps even exceeding what they expected. But there are pockets where she's not doing as well. You know, you look in Wisconsin, that area around Madison, Dane County, she's done very well. She has to do very well, but she's fallen short of where Joe Biden was. Milwaukee, again, a lot of votes still to be counted in Milwaukee, but so far, what's coming in, not as well as Joe Biden did. Same thing we're seeing in the area around Charlotte, in Mecklenburg County, in North Carolina. So a lot of, like, a lot of deep, deep concerns among Democrats, very vested in this campaign, although to be sure, as you've heard from Mary, the campaign, the Harris campaign, still very much sees a path and says this is going to be long, and we need to be patient. And I think when they say long, they don't mean a long night, they mean a long week.
Yeah, all right. Well, that's sobering. John Carl, appreciate it. Take no offense. We appreciate the reporting and the analysis. And you're right, because you point to Madison, you point to Charlotte, and some of these other cities where she has performed, but not to the level that they hoped that she would in order to pull this off. Donna Brazil, you are a veteran of these campaigns. And when you hear what the campaign chair is saying within the campaign, you've actually heard that before. Oh, I just opened up when I heard Mary said, I said, "Oh, I got a memo finally." Look, I've worked on too many Democratic campaigns to throw in the towel. This is when it gets really good if you're a good Democrat. You know, you got to step past midnight to find some joy. There are some outstanding ballots, and of course, Philly. We talked about Milwaukee. I'm still waiting for Detroit to come in, because for the first time, Wayne County allowed people to vote on the same day. It's going to be close. We're not going to win all seven battleground states. The blue wall is clearly more important than ever. I don't want to feel like 2016. By 11:20 at night, we were calling into Milwaukee, they say there's nothing left. Well, if you call into Milwaukee now, there's still a lot of votes left. Philadelphia, a lot of votes. So be patient, Democrats. Don't go running for the refrigerator and finding a beer. Just be patient. We're not there yet. Democrats, don't go running for the refrigerator and finding a beer.
Donna Brazil asking the country to be patient tonight. We do have some news coming in here. The Decision Desk here at ABC News has not projected Georgia, but we can report that Georgia's Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, has now said at a press conference moments ago that Donald Trump has a quote, "insurmountable lead" with the number of votes outstanding in the state of Georgia. He said it looks like this is pretty much done. I think the results are pretty well baked in. And of course, you all at home remember our reporting on Raffensperger, the Republican who famously stood firm during that key phone call when Donald Trump asked him to just find me the 11,000 votes when he lost to Joe Biden. So this is not someone who's necessarily obviously very friendly with Donald Trump. He stands by the process, he stands by the hard work in that state to make sure that this election was safe. And tonight, moments ago, again, we haven't projected this at ABC News, but the Secretary of State in Georgia saying this is insurmountable, that Donald Trump has won there.
Much Ryan, what do you make of this? Well, it's not where you want to be if you're the Harris campaign. On one hand, on the other hand, there was never, the Trump campaign was always planning on winning Georgia and North Carolina. But clearly, Kamala Harris's team decided that maybe they could get lucky and pick one of these two off. It's not over yet, but the fact that they spent so much time there thinking that they might get lucky there, it doesn't look like they will. And now all their eggs are going to be in that blue wall. There's more to come, and there's more blue votes to come in as well. So a long way to go, but I'd rather be Donald Trump here than Kamala Harris.
In Wisconsin, Harris, say that again, Donna. I would rather be Kamala Harris. I would rather be Kamala Harris. You know the state better than I know it, but I also know how difficult it is to get all of the votes counted in Milwaukee and also Dane. I mean, Dane had not only a significant early vote, but also a great turnout today with the same-day registration, as well as some of the young people in line. So I still believe the verdict is still out. We may not know Milwaukee, the final verdict until sometime tomorrow morning. Could be too early. You could be right. Well, you owe me a beer. I don't think you're going to be right, but you could be. I'm not saying I'll take Milwaukee. Best I'd rather be where we're spotted cow. But but but Dane County, they've already counted 94% of the vote, and she seems to have fallen short. That's a, John, these are races of thin margin. I mean, come on, let's not try to win by a blowout. I mean, she's getting there. Let's look at the, let's look at the map that shows the outstanding vote, Rick. Yeah, by party here. Yeah, I mean, that's Milwaukee. That's exactly what Ryan is talking about. It's a huge, huge amount of vote that is Milwaukee. That's why 43,000 is not necessarily a safe lead. Madison, a little bit of a smaller do, but there's some red spots on the map as well. You go out to the west to St. Croix. I mean, we don't really have any vote there. But Ryan is right. I mean, as with all three of these Midwestern cities, we're not really going to know until we have a complete portrait of what's going on inside Philadelphia, where there's still, according to our numbers, about 120,000 votes that are outstanding. That's just Philadelphia, not even counting its suburbs.
Donald Trump has handpicked two of the Ohio state senators, of course, the other one being Senator JD Vance, his running mate. His running mate. All right, Rachel, thanks. We do have a state to call. This is a big one. It's North Carolina. 16 electoral votes. Good for former President Donald Trump. He has won the state of North Carolina tonight. Pennsylvania is an absolute must-win at this point, no question about it. She needs to win that state. But she could win Wisconsin in addition to Arizona and Nevada and get 270 electoral votes. She could also trade Wisconsin for Michigan and end up in the same place. But this does change very significantly where things stand. Just by our 538 calculations, Donald Trump already had around a 70% chance of winning, just based on the North Carolina call, not even taking into account the other trends that we've been talking about, of the kind of redward shift, red shift that we've seen across so many communities in this country. So let's drill down on Pennsylvania at this hour, because this number, the Donald Trump lead has grown, and is this a surmountable lead for the Harris campaign? There's definitely still votes on the table where it can be made up, but it gets harder as the night goes on. It's not over. A lot of votes still to count, but the trend lines are clear. And what you are seeing is potentially Donald Trump on the precipice of the greatest comeback in American political history. I mean, we've never seen anything like this. Potentially Donald Trump on the precipice of the greatest comeback in American political history. I mean, we've never seen anything like this. A president who left the White House the way he left, impeached for the second time, seven members of his own party voting to convict him in the Senate, facing multiple criminal trials, indictments in four separate cases, convictions in the case in New York, and to face all of that, come back, recapture the Republican nomination, and be on the precipice of potentially getting back into the White House is something unlike anything we have ever seen in American history. Even with Donald Trump, we've just never seen something like this. And to see the Republicans in these, in these races, we don't know where the House is yet. The House, we're probably going to have to wait a while. But on the precipice of potentially not just retaking the Senate, but retaking it comfortably. It gets to the question that Donald Trump would ask in the closing days, at the beginning of every one of his rallies, "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?" And as we've seen in our polling, as we've seen in the exit polls today, the resounding answer from most Americans is no.
I want to bring in the team at 538. Gayen, Dro, Elliot Morris, do we have a camera at 538, guys? I wanted to ask them. I know they're crunching the numbers there. They are. See if we can find them in their cubicle back there. Hey guys, are you back there? Are you still awake? Hey, I know you guys have been crunching the numbers here. We got you. Indeed, we are still awake. Gayen, Elliot, tell us what you're seeing in Pennsylvania at this hour. We're watching the Donald Trump lead grow. Is that a, is that something that Kamala Harris can catch up to mathematically at this point? Yeah, I just want to lay out the math as it stands for one second. So here on this tool behind me, we're showing the probability of Harris or Donald Trump winning the presidency. If you consider all the projections ABC has made so far tonight, except for North Carolina, that first battleground state. But I want you to see when we assign North Carolina to Trump, for example, you see that shifts the likelihood of Trump winning the presidency to 76 out of 100 times. We also heard, of course, from the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, that he expects Trump to win Georgia. You know, we have not made that projection yet, but I just want to give you some sense of how the scenarios play out. If Georgia also ends up in Trump's column, we see that things there look quite good for him. Now, look, if Pennsylvania were in that case to then go to Kamala Harris, as you asked about, things suddenly do start to change a bit. We get closer back to 55 out of 100 scenarios Harris can win. But then Trump just needs to pick up any of these other battleground states in order to derail Harris on the path to 270. So right now, as you can see from our projections here, the scenarios that we are running, it looks quite good for Donald Trump at this point in the night. And my colleague Elliot, I think, can talk a little bit more about the outstanding vote in Pennsylvania. Yeah, David, this might be thought of as a best-case scenario for Kamala Harris at this point. One thing that this model, you see here, doesn't know about is the outstanding votes in Philadelphia. And what we've been seeing there, and what Rick's been telling you on his great big board, looking at our benchmarks, is that Democrats just aren't hitting the turnout they need in Philadelphia to catch up to Donald Trump with this kind of lead in Pennsylvania. Though the Harris campaign certainly isn't even acknowledging that, they've already said this is going to be a very long night or nights.
To Kamala Harris, with 86% of the vote in, we do take note that this is later in the evening than we thought it would be to actually project Virginia and its 13 electoral votes for Kamala Harris, which does signal tonight, Rick Klein, what we're seeing across the board. Yeah, to think about about the fact that that Harris is only going to win, well, we'll see what the final number is, but the fact that it took this long to get to it is significant. And it is worth noting right now, Donald Trump is up in all three states of the blue wall: Pennsylvania, it's a 200,000 vote margin; Michigan, it's about 100,000; and Wisconsin, it's 82,000. Now, we've also been saying throughout the night tonight and for the last couple years that sometimes there's more on the map because of the type of vote that's in and where it's from. And there is the possibility for this in all three states, and for similar reasons, it's because we have a large number of votes that are left in urban areas that tend to be bluer.
It is now midnight in the East, 9:00 p.m. in the West. Polls are now closed in Hawaii. 49 states in all. Alaska, the only state left. The race for president, as advertised, incredibly close tonight. And at this hour, let's take a look at the battleground states we're tracking every hour here. Pennsylvania, 9 electoral votes. It is a must-win state, really, for both of these campaigns. It becomes very difficult without Pennsylvania. Donald Trump, with the lead at this hour, as you can see, leading by 215,000 votes in Pennsylvania. It's our understanding that the Philadelphia area could be having some votes coming in very shortly. In Georgia, we have not called Georgia yet, though the Secretary of State in Georgia came out, held a press conference. We are not projecting this race, but he believes, given the numbers in that state, that it's insurmountable for Kamala Harris at this point. Donald Trump leading by 118,000 votes or so. Virginia, for example, it took us a long time to call that tonight. What do you make of this sort of red, redder shift at this election? Well, it's a red shift. It's really a Trump shift. You know, it's a, it's a remarkable thing he's accomplished, win or lose. And it certainly looks at this hour like he's going to win. What he's done is he has continually expanded that movement, that populist movement that he ignited the moment he came down that escalator in 2015. He got more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016. He's getting more votes now, and he is diversifying this coalition. Our exit polling data says that Hispanic voters nationally are going 53-45% Harris. That is the best showing for a Republican president among Hispanic voters, 45%, since 1976. Right, he's young men, it's almost a 50-50 split. That is one of the targets that he had. He is making converts to this anti-establishment populist movement that he launched. And yes, 70% wrong track is part of it. And yes, the economy is part of it. But it's something he's done. He's realigned our politics in a way that no one has done since at least Ronald Reagan. Kamala Harris's campaign believes it still has a pathway through those three states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, though it is very tight and mathematically challenging at this point.
Rick, something you've noticed? Yeah, we just got a couple more votes, another big chunk of votes out of Delaware County, Delco. This is a heavily Harris county, and we're seeing her do fairly well there, getting but not quite at the 538 benchmark, which is problematic in a close one. We're down to 160,000 vote margin. And here's the thing, Joe Biden got out a year ago. This might be a totally different race. He's got to be thinking about that tonight. The beginning of a bigger conversation we're going to have probably right after this break. We'll be back with much more. ABC News live coverage continues here in a moment. And as we're told, the former president is on his way here to West Palm Beach.
David, all right. With Johnson in West Palm Beach tonight. As soon as he gets there, you'll let us know. Let's go over to Eva Pilgrim. She's in Washington D.C., Howard University. Eva, I gather the temperature of the evening has shifted there quite remarkably. Very different than what Whit is seeing there at the Trump campaign. You can see this was a very crowded area just a short time ago. The last time we came to you, the crowd is leaving. They have been leaving for some time now. And, you know, the campaign is telling us that they still think that there is a chance that they can hold that blue wall. But there are a lot of nerves and a lot of reservations that people are having. We heard Whit talking about the fact that the former president is on his way to his campaign event. At last check, just a moment ago, the Vice President is still at the Naval Observatory, which is the Vice President's residence here in D.C. is not on her way here. And as you watch that crowd there, shifting away, I mean, it has become dramatically smaller. People just waiting. We've heard repeatedly from the campaign to tell staffers to go home, that they are not anticipating a result tonight, to get some sleep. But a major vibe shift here. I had one Democratic source tell me that the vibe is not good, and this is brutal for them. David, the vibe is not good. And this is brutal for them. David, Eva Pilgrim at Howard University tonight in Washington D.C. Eva, thanks to you. That's the quiet as this room has been all night. We have another state to call, and this is a big one. Georgia. And as we heard from the Secretary of State earlier, forecasted this moment. 16 electoral votes going to former President Donald Trump. He wins the key state of Georgia. He lost it to President Biden four years ago by about 11,000 votes. He was determined to win that state back. He has done exactly that tonight, and a margin of about 100,000 votes or so between him and Kamala Harris. This is a big win.
Rick, yeah, it's huge. And it changes the electoral math in a very significant way. Now, in order to make up for what Donald Trump has been doing in the rural areas, that's a concern. Now that we're looking at the blue wall, nobody wants to go to bed at night thinking we just got the blue wall. We saw how it was cracked. It wasn't cracked because really Donald Trump didn't hit anything. Hillary kept the door open. And now we see that we have a situation where Philly is going to have to overperform, but there are red places that are still coming in in Pennsylvania. In Wisconsin, Milwaukee will have to overperform. So yeah, there may be a narrow path, but I don't know if I have my rosary beads on me.
Yeah, Ryan, this is so far, it continues to trend the wrong direction for Kamala Harris, the right direction for Donald Trump. Every one of these states is continuing to move in Donald Trump's column. This is shaping up to be a really big night, obviously for Donald Trump. It's not just a reset. I think it's more than that. It is a, it's a realignment. This isn't a victory because of better mechanics or, you know, Trump had a better ground game. This is a matter of people making a decision. Whether you're Black, white, Hispanic, Asian in this country, that you were tired of the open border, you were tired of hearing about how the economy is great when you didn't feel it, you were tired about the sanctuary cities, you're tired about all of these things that, you know, some of it's economic, some of it's cultural. And people are making a conscious decision in this country to say, "I've had enough of this stuff that I'm hearing from this other side of the aisle," and they are completely repudiating it and going the other direction. To be clear, but he's got a shot at hitting 50%. At hitting 50%. Rick, did you get a chance to reach out to the former president? I talked to him a few minutes ago. He's pretty obviously excited. Wanted to know how I felt about Wisconsin. I feel really good about it. And if you look at Wisconsin, what you'll see there is that the president is up over 95,000 votes. And if you, there's going to be a ballot dump in Milwaukee, which is when they get the flash drive from all the absentee ballot early vote numbers. So I thought that the president would win by 40 or 50,000 votes once that happens. But if you look at Green Bay, what you're going to see there is that's going to be a big win for President Trump. They're only about 35% in. That's going to keep coming the direction of President Trump. So, you know, like Rick said, I mean, Kamala Harris is just bleeding in every direction. The other point I want to make is that something I've been trying to argue for the past couple weeks is that Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania in 2016 went all three for Trump. In 2020, all three for Joe Biden. And one of the reasons I think that is is that when you think about the undecided voter, they're the same person in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. And there's a reason why these states run together. I'm not saying that's going to happen there's a lot that goes tonight, but it certainly is how it's trending, and it's just not very surprising.
I know, I think it's really interesting, Ryan. I think it comes all the way back to this, this central issue we've been talking about all night long, which is the economy. She's facing a situation where 70% of the country thinks the country is on the wrong track. And then when she is asked in the closing days of the campaign, "What would you have done differently from Joe Biden if you had been president?" She was just vice president. "What would you have done differently?" And her answer is, "There is not a thing that comes to mind." That might have been the single most devastating answer that she gave. And it was those words, and the pause too, because, you know, so much of political campaigns, as you know, was the visual, it's the moment, it's the interaction. It was from The View on ABC, and it was that question, and she did pause, and it was just, you know, in that moment, you knew that that is not what the voters who feel like the economy is issue number one, and some of the other issues that Ryan's previously listed, which we know are real issues to Americans, Democrats and Republicans.
And Mary, you talked about that moment too, perhaps being one of the defining moments. She had some really great moments along the way, but that was probably one of the weakest ones. Yeah, and I think her campaign was well aware of that, and that she never really was able to give that solid answer of how she would differentiate herself from the Biden administration. I do have one update, which is that we are, we had expected to hear from Kamala Harris tonight. We now know a source telling us that that is not going to happen. We do expect shortly Cedric Richmond, her senior advisor, to come before that watch party and tell everyone essentially to go home. And in fact, that was the message just moments ago. Let's listen. We still have votes to count. We still have states that have not been called yet. We will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken. So you won't hear from the Vice President tonight, but you will hear from her tomorrow. She will be back here tomorrow to address not only the Hu family, not only to address our supporters, but to address the nation. So thank you. We believe in you. May God bless you. May God keep you. And go Hu. And go Harris. Thank you.
All never an easy moment for whatever campaign has to make that announcement into the evening and say the on here. And we're going to, we're going to hold out hope in the early morning hours. And what a market shift from how the campaign was feeling. And I know they thought this was going to be very close, and still a challenge. Kamala Harris herself said repeatedly, "We are the underdog here." But they did sense there was some wind, some momentum in these final days, did they not? Kamala Harris herself said that the momentum was with her. And I think in part that was because of the huge crowds she was getting. I mean, I've been at almost all of these rallies in the last few days. She was pulling crowds of 20,000, 30,000 routinely in these final days. They felt that they were reaching all of those key demographics, that big broad coalition that her campaign talked about so often, that they felt was going to really propel them across the finish line. We are not seeing that broad coalition at all showing up here tonight. In fact, quite the opposite. And there's going to be, I think, a lot of soul-searching and a lot of questions in this campaign as to, you know, what went wrong. That said, they are still, you know, holding out hope. That's a very, you know, somber Cedric there. Hope. That's a very, you know, somber Cedric Richmond delivering that message. But as we heard from the campaign manager in this memo to the Harris team earlier tonight, stressing they expected this to be close, they do still see a path, but certainly not, not the path they were hoping for, an extraordinarily narrow one mathematically at this point.
Joe Biden made a promise to the American people when I was sitting in this seat four years ago. He said, "I am a transitional figure." The implication of that, David, was that he was going to serve one term because of his age, and he was going to move on. And when he broke that promise, he did two things. One, he broke faith with the people who voted for him. And two, he put his party in an awful position to where they had to replace him when he put on one of the worst debate performances in presidential history, if not the worst. And so Kamala Harris had to inherit all of that. Like it or not, that's what she had to inherit, and she had to overcome it. And it appears, at least tonight, that she's not going to be able to do that. So every candidate deserves some measure of blame anytime there's a loss. But I would say this, that Joe Biden should be looking in the mirror tonight and thinking about what did he do, what did his lack of keeping his word on that central promise from 2020 to this election tonight.
Ryan, well, first of all, I would also point a finger at the Democrat Party. I mean, they should have had an open contest. They should have let their leaders of their party pick their nominee. But I don't think it would have mattered because, like I said, the American people are choosing a path, and they're choosing the path that will dramatically, I think, take away power from Washington D.C. And we want to go talk about all these issues. But the fact that Kamala Harris is going home tonight, I think is amateur hour. You know, she has an obligation to speak. This pathway for her might be narrow, but it's also might be walking through the eye of a needle. She should say something to the people that adopted her as their nominee because they were just told by the president to do so. And she's leaving the country hanging now all night, and I think it's ridiculous and it's childish.
Well, first of all, we're a very divided country. We're very polarized. And while, you know, I'm not sitting here, I'm not sitting here excited about the returns or the results, there's still a path. There's still a path. And we'll come back to all of you right after this. Our live coverage continues here in a moment. A slim path, but a path continues. Election night continues here in a moment too. President Trump holds on to a lead over Vice President Harris right now in the crucial battleground state. What are you hearing at this hour? Democratic officials are sounding very glum at this hour. Democratic officials are sounding very glum at this. There's about a 200,000 vote lead that the former president has. It might at this point be insurmountable. The economy, obviously playing a huge issue. The price of eggs has gone up 161%. That is something that matters to people. There's also something else here. People say they didn't know Kamala Harris. And the former president has a tremendous amount of name recognition. Been in the limelight for already nine years now. People know him. And clearly, they've been voting for him. Kira, Matt Gutman, thanks so much. I'm Kira. Philip, so glad you're with us tonight. I hope you'll continue to stay with ABC News. Our team is bringing you election results all throughout the night, led by our David Muir. Don't go far. Our race for the White House coverage continues.
1:00 a.m. now in the East, 10:00 p.m. here in the West. So glad you're still with us. Polls are now closed in all 50 states. The 2024 election, painting quite a picture here tonight. The picture is not complete. But you remember about 12 hours ago when we started, it just feels that way. We were talking about the House and the Senate. That we know the House Democrats needed a net gain of four to take back control of the House. On the Senate side, Republicans need a net gain of two. If President Trump, former President Trump, President Trump, former President Trump wins tonight, they'll just need one because then the Vice President would have the tie-breaking vote. This looks like a poll from the presidential. You know, Kamala Harris's struggle in Wisconsin is now reflecting in the Senate race here. Yeah, in fact, in all of these blue wall states, David, this is exactly the trend that we are seeing here. You have Hub who is ahead right here in this state, ahead of Tammy Baldwin. Again, she has been in public office for 40 years here, and now she is behind. Just take a look at Michigan as well. Mike Rogers ahead of Alyssa Sloin. And even in Pennsylvania, once again, you have McCormick ahead of Bob Casey. We're seeing that this is the exact result of former President Donald Trump overperforming in states, and now you have voters just voting right down the ballot. And we always talk every four years about split-ticket voters, but it's a, it's a concept that's pretty hard to wrap your head around if you're heading into the booth and you feel strongly about whoever's at the top of this.
This is an extraordinary night for the Republicans. John, it is. And it also points to what Donald Trump will be looking at if he gets back into the White House. This is a Donald Trump that will be significantly, I believe, more powerful than he was the first time. He got 10 Republicans in the House voted to impeach him over January 6th. Eight of them are already gone. Two are clinging to possible reelection. But the resistance is gone. Felony convictions, the call that our democracy would be over, the John Kelly statements about the military, and that, and that former President Trump had said that they were suckers and losers, the men and women who had died during wars. All of that. Some of the voters I talked to, in fact, one of them who was very strongly for Trump, and stronger than he was in 2020, stronger than he was in 2016, I said, "Do you have any reservations at all about January 6th?" And he said, "Absolutely not. The more you all talk about that, the more Trump voters you will attract." So this election was not about that. But in the end, here we are. This is democracy.
Martha, thanks. We do have a major call to make at this hour, and it's the power of the Senate moving forward. It's precisely what we've just been talking about with this conversation. Republicans will take control of the Senate with that call in Nebraska. Deb Fischer holding on to her seat tonight. If Donald Trump is named the next president, he will have a Republican Senate. We do not know who will control the House, but this is significant. And now the only question is, Rachel Scott, how strong that Republican control will be. Will he have a mandate? Because their majority will be more than just a one-senator majority.
And just let's take a quick walk down political memory lane. Look at the map that's there right now, okay? It's going to, it's going to fill in. Let's go back just a little bit in history, okay? Bill Clinton, this was his map. All right? Look at all that blue in the South, Missouri, Arkansas. Look at Iowa, Ohio, Florida, Mountain States. All right? So there was Ross Perot in the race and all that. You know, George Bush comes in, he takes a lot of it back. But Barack Obama, look at all that blue, Iowa, Ohio, Florida. Then Donald Trump comes in, and it looks like that, and it's going to look something like that, or even more this time. And what that represents is the Democrats essentially saying, "Well, we can't compete in Ohio. We can't compete in Florida. We can't compete in rural areas." They did compete in rural areas. I mean, here's Wisconsin, right? And let's just take a look at what Barack Obama did. No, no, no, gotta do that. Yeah. All right, well, you know what, but it was, yeah, no, they competed in rural counties along the Mississippi River aggressively. Those counties went blue. They wouldn't think of going blue today. That is a question the Democratic Party has to ask, not just about rural counties, but increasingly, if you look at the demographics of this election, about Hispanic voters, about young men, about all kinds of voters that they keep hemorrhaging.
Yeah, about messaging too, because you mentioned Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and you showed in the shading on the map that they were leaders who did break through. And Bill Clinton famously, you know, whether he exactly said the words or not, but it's about the economy, stupid. Well, a lot of this has to do with the messaging. I mean, populism is alive and well in America. I will say this, if Bernie Sanders were running, he'd win some of those counties. Exactly. He'd win Western, he'd win some of these counties in Wisconsin and Iowa. So, look, there's a reason why we're here. I mean, the Democrats put Donald Trump on the ballot. They put all of these issues. They wanted this to be about Donald Trump. That was going to be their way of making this happen. And Donald Trump made himself. He put himself on the ballot, and people made a decision. Now, the next thing that's being talked about here is looking at the popular vote. Now, we still have a ways to go in California, I understand that. But the fact that Donald Trump right now is over five million votes ahead of Kamala Harris. I know that this is something that's sort of bothered President Trump over the years that he couldn't win that popular vote. And it was an, it was match play, it's not, this is not stroke play. But nevertheless, that fact that we are looking at potentially Donald Trump not just having this big night and taking five senators plus with him, that he's looking at winning the popular vote is, it's the mandate that Jonathan Carl was just talking about. A significant drop-off of Democratic voters, and that's something that we're going to have to take a look at, not just in the so-called battleground states where all of the resources and all of the attention and all of the surrogates of the principals, but also when you look at New York, New Jersey, which I keep looking at the governor, like, come on, New Hampshire, Minnesota. I think Amy Klobuchar won. I think Kamala Harris will win Minnesota, but we shouldn't be talking about Minnesota after 1:00. So there's some drop-off there to assess as well. Her running mate, the governor of Minnesota. How in the hell have they not called Minnesota when her running mate is the sitting governor of a blue state? I mean, that's extraordinary. And it also calls into question the whole choice of Tim Walz, if he, he can't, if the sitting governor of a state that is traditionally blue has her sitting at 50.6%, I mean, he should have never left the State House.
Well, there's going to be a lot of questions about whether Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania might have been a better choice for VP pick, just based on numbers and the importance of the Keystone State. Not for me to debate, but by myself up here, but it will be a question that political asks in the days ahead. If Donald Trump is reelected here, I do want to take you to a picture coming from Palm Beach, Florida. They are preparing right now at.
This hour to hear from the former president, expected to greet those who have gathered in Palm Beach. And we will dip in and listen, uh, right after the break. ABC News live coverage of election night 2024 continues. Thanks to everybody here in this studio and everyone at home staying up with us. We'll be right back.
Welcome back. Now, 1:25 in the morning here on the East Coast. We're glad you're still up with us. I'm David Muir, in New York, with the whole powerhouse political team. We want to get right to Wit Johnson, Palm Beach Convention Center in West Palm Beach tonight, where they are awaiting, uh, Donald Trump, the former president, to speak to the crowd. And Wit, uh, quite a night for Trump supporters and for the former president.
David, it sure is. The anticipation is mounting here. We are seeing senior staff and leadership of the Trump campaign coming into the building. The crowd is cheering as the projections are being read behind me. And I should note that they are projecting some states that we haven't quite projected just yet. But we know that Donald Trump is on his way. JD Vance is in the building. We've also seen, uh, Donald Trump's teleprompter, guys, set up the teleprompter on stage. And the former president said earlier today on the radio that he did not have a speech prepared, but if he knew that he was going to win, he would come up with something quick. I have to say, I just spoke to a very senior advisor of Donald Trump's who told me, this may not shock you, but that when he comes out on that stage, he plans to declare victory, flatly declare that he has won this race. He did that, of course, in 2020. But unlike that, we haven't called it. At least he has a solid reason for coming out and saying that. In fact, fact, uh, we've also, uh, heard on Elon Musk's, uh, uh, X plat from Mark Cuban, who, of course, was a very prominent surrogate and supporter of Kamala Harris. I interviewed him just over a week ago. He's saying, "Congrats, Donald Trump. You won fair and square." Again, we haven't called it yet, but that's a very prominent, uh, supporter who was out there campaigning for Kamala Harris, going out and saying, congratulating Donald Trump. And by the way, also congratulating Elon Musk as well. But that's certainly not the message coming from the Kamala Harris campaign. Just to be clear, Mark Cuban may be a very, you know, a top supporter of Kamala Harris, but their campaign is still insisting they have a slim path. They have a slim path here. But even they recognize that in kind of going dark tonight or going quiet, that they're opening up all of this sort of airtime and conversation to the real possibility that Donald Trump is going to return as president, particularly given the mathematical path here that we see ahead of us with the blue wall. I mean, he, there's no way around it. He's had a very impressive night, uh, not only in the Sun Belt but right through, uh, the blue wall states. And so, and not giving sort of any sort of more explanation from the Harris campaign, this is where the conversation's going to go. And they know that, look, they made a choice. Kamala Harris is not coming out tonight to speak, likely because she didn't really know what to say. I mean, you, they, they still want to see the rest of these numbers come in. The last sort of official word from the Kamala Harris campaign is that they are waiting this out. They want to see, you know, every last vote counted in these key states. But they are seeing exactly what we are seeing. This is certainly not the night they wanted and had hoped to have. Are they ready to come out and say that definitively? No.
All right, former President Trump expected to speak at any moment in West Palm Beach. We'll go there, uh, just as soon as he begins talking. We'll be right back after the break. And we'll see live from New York City here again, David Muir. Now, about 20 minutes before 2 a.m. in the East. Here you're looking at the path to 270. Kamala Harris with 194 electoral votes, Donald Trump with 246, on the precipice of perhaps another presidency. If and when Pennsylvania is called, that is, as we've been saying, the battleground of all battlegrounds, really. Both campaigns desperately needed a win, uh, in Pennsylvania. Our decision desk not ready to call that state. There is still outstanding vote. And so let's get over to Rick Klein. That path, uh, is still extremely narrow, uh, for Kamala Harris. And if she were able to pull it off in Pennsylvania, she'd also then need Michigan and Wisconsin as well, where she's trailing in both states at this hour, too.
That's exactly right. We're up to 94% of the vote in Pennsylvania, and we've gotten a lot more vote in Philadelphia, as well as some additional estimates. We think there's actually maybe as few as 30,000 additional early by mail votes, uh, still out there to be counted. And right now, with the outstanding vote in Philadelphia estimate, even if he won, if she won every single one of those votes, as well as all the votes in Delaware County and Chester County, Montgomery County, I mean, you'd have to run up enormous margins to begin to close this gap. So, so all the votes are going to be counted. Our decision desk is looking at the data, being very careful with any, any kind of a projection. But this is a, a very large lead this late in the, in the, in the evening. Say, we just have to make it clear that we haven't called it yet. We will definitely listen in. You know, that is the direction that this race is absolutely taking. And no matter how you look at this, this is a major night for Donald Trump across the map, through all of the battlegrounds, even the ones that haven't been called yet. Uh, the, the turnout has been, um, extraordinary, uh, for Donald Trump. And not only that, the effect it's had down ballot, uh, immediately down ballot in the key Senate races, which will then, should Donald Trump return to the White House, he'll have not only just the majority in the Senate, but, uh, quite possibly, um, a significant majority.
Yeah, he could have a significant majority in the Senate. David, this is already sort of the outlook for the Senate right now. Uh, Republicans expected to take the majority. They've netted the two seats that they need to. Is cheering very loudly. That's because, um, some other networks have projected, uh, the race for Donald Trump. Of course, we are still waiting on a few states to come through. But this is the cheering that we're hearing in the crowd, just adding to the anticipation of the former president, uh, who they expect to be the new president once again, to come in here and speak. We did see the Secret Service peeking through the curtains, uh, checking out the room. So early voting was no doubt a major part of this strategy. And yes, Donald Trump reluctantly, and sometimes contradicting himself inside the same sentence, embraced early voting in a way that Republicans took advantage of. And we were told by the Democrats, look, don't worry about it. We've got the, we've got our own ground game. We're going to, we're going to overcome that. That does not appear to be the case tonight in the major battlegrounds where we have vote in. I bring, I want to bring this to Terry, because first of all, this time Donald Trump embraced early voting, right? Uh, and, and, and the fact that the Democrats were then on defense come election day to try to run up the total, the run up the score in these urban areas. Uh, have the Democrats, one of the things in the postmortem, I think, for both of these campaigns, but for certainly for the Democrats, will be, you can't just count on the urban areas. You've got to, you've got to connect with rural America, with, you know, working-class America. You can't, you can't win these races. You, you showed the evolution of the electoral map over the last several presidential cycles. Moving forward, the Democratic Party is going to have to figure that out somehow, are they not?
This is a moment of truth for for Democrats. Ten years ago, what was it? A little bit longer that, uh, Democrats thought demography is destiny, and they are the natural party of government because America is becoming more diverse. There'll be a, a lower share of of white voters. And it turns out that's completely wrong. You have to talk to people, meet their needs, and answer, uh, their questions. And that includes rural voters as well. And it includes, you know, voters that, that for whatever reason, have bought into, uh, what Donald Trump stands for, which is the end of the ruling establishment, not just in government, but in all kinds of institutions, including the media. People like that. Yeah. And, and some of it might be that the institutions, but some of it is just, are you better off than you were four years ago? I felt like my money went further. You know, there are a lot of people I think hurting in the country, even if they see the stock market for when rates are going up or interest rates finally coming back down. You know, I, I do think that there's, this is what Martha and I hear when we were were out in the country, that the people just, they want to feel like they've been heard. But he says a lot more than that. He says, "Let's go get them." Yeah, yeah. Very true, Terry. Or it is just such a daunting math. And I, I've just, I've been clicking around on this board to try to find any way to piece together the votes. And look, there's always a hypothetical, and you could say, well, if all of these votes that we think are out break in one direction, then maybe, maybe, maybe. But it is just really hard to strain to see the numbers in this one state, to say nothing of the three states that we're talking about. What, what we saw across the country tonight was a rightward shift, a MAGA shift. And that happened in red states and blue states, and red areas and blue areas, and purple areas, all the same. Pennsylvania tells an extraordinary story. We were looking at, at you, literally can draw a line through through the state from Erie through State College all the way to Northampton County to find places that should have been and would have been trending toward Democrats. Democrats thought they had a good chance there, and that seems not to be the case. And then the, the story of turnout in cities appears to have been down. And that's why you see very narrow margins in places like New York and New Jersey and Rhode Island and across blue America, where the voters just did not turn out in the same number for Harris.
Yes. And Gary Langer, just real quick for you. Gary Langer is our pollster here at ABC News. Going into election night, what did the final ABC News poll, if you can pull this up on your head, I'm sure you can better than we can at 2 in the morning, uh, what was the gender gap in the final poll?
Very similar to that. This gender gap is dead normal. It's what, almost exactly the average gender gap we've seen in exit polls since 1996. Uh, and women are more apt by about 10 points to be Democrats than men, and therefore to vote that way. So it's a gender gap. What's interesting, though, is that Harris's number among women was a few points, three or so points off of Joe Biden. So she did, she did worse among women than Joe Biden.
Yeah. I mean, that's an astounding. Those are the final exit poll numbers, or are we going to have final final numbers?
Oh, they'll be tweaking it well into the morning. Yeah, well into the morning. She did two points worse than Joe Biden did in 2020 with the female voters. Yeah, if that holds, that is really, really interesting. Gary, also, he had another point, which is this is the first presidential election since we've been doing exit polls, 1976, where Republicans outnumbered Democrats coming to the polls. Right, Gary?
I have your right on that. Right.
Yeah, just by a couple of points, but it's the first time we've seen it. And again, exit polls started 1976. This is the first time we've seen.
Democrat. Here's the call of the night. We can project now that Pennsylvania, the biggest battleground prize of the night, will go to former President President Donald Trump. ABC News can now project that Donald Trump has won the 19 electoral votes in the state of Pennsylvania. We had said for many weeks leading up to this election that this was a must-win state for both Kamala Harris and for Donald Trump. ABC who's now projecting Donald Trump wins the state of Pennsylvania.
Uh, Rick Klein, take us to the board that essentially gets him the presidency, although we have not called what he absolutely needs to get to get there. Right? But you see the path on the board. Talk us through it.
I want to be careful with the math here. That that gives us, according to ABC News projections, 265 electoral votes, uh, for, for Donald Trump. And, and I want to then play things through a little bit and make the assumptions, and they are assumptions, but this is how this is how things work in politics. Uh, if everything falls into place for the, the, the some of the remaining places, Alaska with the three electoral votes would be a shock if Alaska did not land for Donald Trump. One of the congressional districts in Nebraska, where he's currently leading, he's he's already been awarded one of them. And one of the congressional districts in Maine. This is what we're looking at. That would be 270 electoral votes. So again, being very careful here, we have him at 265. But, uh, you don't have. So that number up on the board is the hypothetical get expected to go his way. The final dominoes here. But Mark Burin, our producer, just tell me again, what, what Nebraska one goes to Trump there?
There we go. We're now projecting one electoral vote from Nebraska will go to Donald Trump. That's the one that you thought would go his way. Yes. Again, this is still the hypothetical number we have up there. So the chips are falling into place, in so many words.
Here, that's exactly right. I mean, Alaska is a very Republican state. It's going to vote for Donald Trump almost certainly. And that 269, that would be, yeah, that's that's correct. 269, which would be a tie in the Electoral College. Under the, under the rules, it would be broken by the House of Representatives. Almost certainly the House of Representatives will be controlled by enough Republican delegations to give Donald Trump the presidency. But that other district in Maine would be the majority maker. And look, we still have Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona. He leads in Michigan and Wisconsin. That, that's correct, right now, based on, based on the numbers, 266,000 votes in Michigan, although there's still a lot of Detroit left, and 120,000 or so votes in Wisconsin. Uh, Nevada is still, is still coming in. Trump is up there right now by about 999,000 votes, and, and up 19. So he's up in every other state that we have on the board tonight. So we're waiting to hear from the former president here. Obviously, we've just projected, ABC News projecting Pennsylvania, the biggest prize of the night. Among those, really, not a path here on the board for Kamala Harris at this point. It's just the final chips for Donald Trump. I'm so curious, though. Will we wait for the former president? And we wait for the final math to come in. States like New Hampshire, we haven't called yet. Minnesota, where Governor Walls is from. And just a little perspective here, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by almost 3 million. Joe Biden won it by eight or nine million or right. All right. And Joe Biden won it by eight or nine million or so. Yeah, we can go historical. You can see exactly where the numbers were. It was a 7 million vote edge. He only had 47% of the vote four years earlier. He only had 46% of the vote, lost by about almost three million votes. This is a different night. This is a different electorate. This is this is one that has fallen for, fallen Trump's in a very considerable way. Red states, blue states, and everything in between. So you're looking at popular vote, obviously, and Electoral College. We've had a lot of discussions in this country, particularly with recent elections, where popular goes one way, electoral goes another. That's certainly not the storyline, at least not, does not appear likely to be. There's still a lot of vote out west, in particular, a lot of it in California. Those margins, I'm sure will tighten, but right now, that's a pretty strong advantage and a very strong likelihood that he will win not only the electoral college, but also the popular vote. And that's really going to matter. John Carl, to, uh, the former president. I, I mean, absolutely. Men and young men in particular, in ways that campaigns hadn't used before. Now, Kamala Harris went on Howard Stern, Charlamagne Tha God, so she did try the podcast route too, in these very popular programs, and, you know, SiriusXM. But, but to go on Joe Rogan, for example, and then to have Joe Rogan endorse him in the 11th hour, those are, in, in 2024, those are, those are powerful things to do, apparently, and they work for a campaign. And it was an effort to get people to vote who didn't normally vote, in some cases, never voted. And I think, and I'm sure Lindsay got the, uh, the exit polls on this, but we see Trump doing better than Harris, significantly better among those who are first-time voters. And for all of those efforts to outreach, the Harris campaign thought all of that was just playing to his base, that it was doing nothing to expand his reach. Clearly not the right assessment. Uh, we're waiting to hear the former president here. Eric Trump, his son, has just sent out on social media, this image of the former president, presumably holding the speech that he will give tonight. We had reported earlier that he had prepared a speech for this evening, but if the time came and he needed one, he said he would put one together quickly. Eager to hear that here tonight with the rest of you. And John Sanui is reporting the entire Trump family is there at the convention center, his children, including Ivanka and Barron. And as we know, David, we reported on the air with you, it was Don Jr. that really was the driving force behind JD Vance being on the ticket with his father tonight. Don Jr. telling me, "My guy is going with my father, potential to the White House." David, we'll see the family. Any word, John, on who worked with the former president on his remarks for tonight and, and, and what the tone will be here?
You know, I, I, it's evolved, David. When I say that, because as results were pouring in, sources were telling me, you know, he's going to go right up to the line from declaring victory. I can now agree with my colleague John Carl, hearing the same thing. It does indeed feel like Donald Trump's going to come out here and declare victory, though we of course have not projected the race. I do think, David, the question of tone is going to be quite interesting. And I say that because think about 2016. Pretty much at this hour of the night, when Donald Trump came with his family into the Hilton Hotel, just steps away from Trump Tower, it sounded like a speech of unity. I don't think we're going to hear too much of that tonight, maybe some tenors. But look at where Donald Trump has been, look at the words that his son tells me, as I just reported a few moments ago, indicated I do think you're going to feel a little bit of those tones that we've been reporting over the last couple of days, some of the darkness, some of the things that he's been talking about, feeling and seeing around the country, talking about the southern border. Yes, we all know what the turning point for General Milley, Chairman Milley, was, and that was walking across Lafayette Park during the, during Floyd, yeah, during George Floyd protests, and Milley peeled off and said, "This is unconstitutional," and later apologized for that. Sort of cast of characters around there. There's some questions about if there's going to be guardrails. This is a former president who has ran this race his way.
David, let's take the stage. Thank you. First Lady Melania Trump and the Trump family, accompanied by Vice President-elect JD Vance, Second Lady Ursula Vance, along with friends and campaign staff, thanking the American voters who have, uh, said loud and clear across this country, and in particular among those key battleground states. It does very much look like Donald Trump will be returning to the White House. We are being very careful, uh, waiting for the final results to come in in Wisconsin. Of the network, and thank you for being here. This is ABC News live coverage of election night 2024. It's now, uh, just before 3:00 a.m. Eastern Time. John Carl, uh, former President Donald Trump up there. He was talking about being the 45th president, the 47th president, um, and, and, uh, he thanked his family, his supporters, and talked about, uh, the extraordinary night that it is for him. I, I mean, look, it is an extraordinary night. Uh, we said it. JD Vance said it as well. Greatest political comeback in the history of American politics. Nothing else is even close. I mean, Nixon, we thought had the greatest before this, when he lost in 1960, comes back in '68. But this is somebody that I don't think anybody in the Republican Party, any, any of the, the leaders in the Republican Party, I don't even think our, our friend RS over here, uh, would have imagined Donald Trump coming back after he left the White House the way, uh, he left, uh, in, in, in January of 2021, uh, and then to win the way he won, to win the popular vote, to win decisively, uh, in the Electoral College, to have what appears to be at least potentially lining up to be a clean sweep of of the battleground states. Look, uh, Democrats spent more money than Donald Trump on this race. Democrats thought they had more enthusiasm than Donald Trump. They were proven to be wrong on on that score. This, this, uh, was something I, I was talking to Democrats in the final days of this campaign, who believed that they had a chance, that Kamala Harris had a chance to, to basically run the table on the battleground states. They thought that something had fundamentally changed in the race. This is what we were told. I know Mary heard, uh, the same thing. Uh, and it just wasn't there. Donald Trump won, and won decisively. Waiting for our final call, but what, what we've called so far, it's, uh, it's, it's astounding.
Mayor Bruce, anything more from the Harris campaign tonight? They are notably dark. They are notably dark. And, and silence speaks volumes, I think at this hour. Uh, we do know that she is going to come out and speak tomorrow. The remarks that she had planned to give tonight were postponed. She'll be there speaking, we believe, at Howard University tomorrow. Uh, I just keep thinking about the picture that they had been painting of Donald Trump in the last days and weeks, this really dire picture, you know, calling him unfit, saying that he simply doesn't represent and stand for the ideals of this country. Kamala Harris called Donald Trump a fascist, um, and she continued to argue over and over again that she could bring the country forward, that she could turn the page. And it turns out that the country did want to turn the page. They just wanted to turn the page on Kamala Harris and Joe Biden's administration. And what a remarkable different vision, uh, we are now getting from this, uh, from this election. You know, elections tell you a lot about what the country stands for and what the country wants. And, and it is just such a drastically different vision from the one that Kamala Harris was outlining. And some surprising, uh, numbers given the polling going into this election, and then where we landed as far as the gender gap being, you know, just Gary Langer said the same gender gap that we've had going back to the mid-90s. Together, but I think tonight, so much uncertainty reigns throughout this country, no matter which side you're on.
Yeah. And he did say that he had a taste of that or insinuated that he did in his first, uh, presidency, that when there was some successes, that then support then comes from other corners. Martha, your thoughts on, on the speech and the night? The speech and the night? I, I, when I heard Kamala Harris give her speech on the mall, and Mary, you, of course, were there. I was driving through Arizona. And when she said, talking about Donald Trump, "This is not America." I had just left a Trump voter standing under gazillion Trump flags, a flag that said, "Joe Biden is not my president." I thought, actually, this is a big part of America. I don't think people in the end really knew her. I'm not sure that message really got out. There was such enthusiasm. You actually drove across all the Rust Belt on the way to the DNC. Such enthusiasm for her, but it just stalled. It just stopped. And I do think voters really didn't get a chance to know her.
Donna Brazil, what do you think the Democratic Party, uh, takes from this evening? And are, you know, always post-mortems, you've been part of those. You've been part of victories along the way, too. Uh, where does the post-mortem begin here?
Well, and, and just sitting here over the last three hours, and I've been in this game now for 40 years. I know I don't look a day past 18, but that's because I like to go out when I leave here. Uh, look, winning Illinois, 51-47. Joe Biden carried by 57 points. The fact that we just called New Jersey, we just called Minnesota. I mean, you, you got to sit here and wonder the underperformance of key Democratic constituencies, voters, the inability to expand the electorate, significant headwind from right track, wrong track, the economy that is the envy of the world, according to the Wall Street Journal, but of course, your next-door neighbor is struggling. So there's a lot to take away. Uh, uh, and there's a lot to learn. We will figure out how to heal the party, but also how to rebuild the party. Where I'm, where I was born was Cook County, Illinois, Chicago, Illinois. And I'm actually shocked at, at what happened there. So, uh, she's going to win Illinois, of course, she did win Illinois by about 225,000 votes. You know, Biden won it by more than a million. And Cook County, my birthplace, my hometown, you know, Biden won it going away there. And this year, are, it's, she, she lost a tremendous amount. It's, uh, she, she's winning in the city. She's, he's winning in the cities. He's making converts to this movement. And now he's got a mandate, an extraordinary mandate, because of the election results and because of this journey that he, that he's been on, having been brought down first by the election and then leaving Washington in disgrace after the attack on the capital. And he comes back in triumph. And he's promised, we know what he's going to do. He's going to try mass deportations. He's going to change, uh, our trade policy to tariffs. He's going to abandon Ukraine. Right? There's no question about that. Uh, it's going to be a very different country, and it will probably have long-lasting impact. He, he is a historic figure with few parallels in our history. But I do have to wonder, what if any role race and gender played? I mean, we're talking about, uh, we have one, one thing that stands out, a less diverse electorate, when you think about even just at large, with the world of the 193 UN member nations, only 13 have a woman who leads them. Black women are often the last at the table when it comes to even pay disparity in this country, getting 67 cents on the dollar when it comes to to white men. You know, Barbara Jordan, when she was asked in 1976, do you think that this country is ready to have a black woman on the national ticket? She said, no. And, and so I just, I don't know that we have the answers tonight. But I think that that is kind of the elephant in the room that that we're not talking about, because we're not just talking about having a woman, we're talking about having a woman of color. And, and I think that that's something that we cannot underestimate when we see, uh, this increasing, uh, red spread throughout the country. And where did her unfavorables land at the end of the night, too? I'm just curious, because you put the, the Trump number, I think is pretty close to what you said at the beginning of the night. So I'm just curious.
Yeah, John, do you have the honor? We don't have that on. And this is now the second time that Donald Trump has blocked Democrats' hopes of electing the first woman president. And think about how differently she ran compared to Hillary Clinton. What is always talking about this is the highest, hardest ceiling, the glass cracks in the ceiling. She was planning her whole, uh, victory speech at the Javits Center to have that big glass ceiling. And with Kamala Harris, I noticed it in her interview with, with you, when when you asked her about kind of like the historic nature of this, and she made a joke about it and said, "I'm well aware of my race and gender." And again, made it about substance, maybe thinking perhaps didn't work so well for Hillary Clinton. I'm going to kind of shy away from that as to potentially not alienate. And I, I could never tell if it was lessons learned from Hillary Clinton's campaign or or a sign of progress in this country that a woman could run for president and not have it be about being a woman, to just lean into substance. But the fact that she never talked about it, she went out of her way. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't at the top of the mind for. So I can only imagine what is going through her head as she has to switch gears and go from writing what I imagine she had hoped was a victory speech to now coming out and somehow, you know, thanking her supporters, trying to offer perhaps some kind of explanation as to how we got here. And given the optimistic, positive tone that she tried to finish her campaign on, you know, give her vote, give supporters and her voters some hope, because she did outline a very stark contrast in this race and made very clear that she thought Donald Trump was a danger to America, a threat to democracy. And yet, she also wanted to end on a note of unity. How does she merge those two messages now and, and transfer some of that optimism to, to, to the, you know, large portion of the population that is outraged and upset by, by what appears to be very much the, the results in another Donald Trump presidency?
And David Muir, hello again, everyone. It's about 12 minutes past 4 in the morning here in the East. We know these are American elections. They last well into the night, at least the last several presidential elections. Let's let's go right back over to the board and R-line. I just want to explain to our viewers who are staying up with us, who are getting up this now, getting ready for their work, for those who get up super early to start their day. And I just want to bring people up to speed. Obviously, we're very aware that Donald Trump is most likely going to be here, the 47th president of the United States. We just don't want to project it officially until we absolutely know it's a mathematical impossibility. That's what the decision desk, that's their job. That's why, uh, they're so careful and steady with what they know. That the Republicans are really going to work on the early vote this time. And we have to come to terms with the fact that it's a movement, and it's an enduring movement. I mean, it's, it's the better part of a decade, and it, and it, and it's grown. And it, they did very well. They, they exceeded, uh, benchmarks that we had, that the 538 team came up with for each candidate tonight. We're going to take a. Did they just say election night 2024? Because I think we need to update that. Announce to election morning. 5:30 here in the East. The whole team is here, and we're glad you're with us at home. And we can project that Donald Trump has won the state of Wisconsin, the key battleground state of Wisconsin, its 10 electoral votes. Uh, I believe that that then makes Donald Trump now. ABC News can project that the former President Donald Trump will be the 47th president of the United States. That takes him to 276 electoral votes. There are still states on the map to be counted. Not since Grover Cleveland has someone served non-consecutive presidential terms. Uh, John Carl was was talking about that earlier in the night. It's now become a reality. Again, the breaking news at 5:31 here in the East, former President Donald Trump, ABC News now projecting, will be the next president of the United States. And part of the path, uh, that he built, uh, along the electoral map is this blue wall that the Democrats were convinced would be Kamala Harris's best route to the presidency. Donald Trump winning Pennsylvania, and now he has won Wisconsin. He won North Carolina and Georgia, and the number of other battlegrounds are still being counted where he holds, uh, leads, significant, even though we've been reporting on this, and the analysis has been excellent and careful from the whole team here all night long, but we are here. And Mary Bruce, John Carl, your first reaction here to the official news, Donald Trump has headed back to the White House?
Look, we, we, we said it as we approached this point. This is just an unbelievable comeback. The greatest political comeback in the history of the United States. And this is a victory unlike his 2016 victory, certainly unlike his loss, uh, in 2020. Donald Trump not only wins the Electoral College, but it looks like he has a very good chance of winning the popular vote. He comes back to the White House, rising like a phoenix from the ashes after having left in disgrace, twice impeached, facing multiple indictments, convictions here in New York. And, uh, he captures the White House in a way that he didn't even do the first time, and with the strength of a significant majority in the United States Senate as well.
Mary Bruce, you cover the White House, and you know, part of the calculation for so long, President Biden believed that he was best positioned to keep Donald Trump from returning to the White House, ultimately deciding after that debate performance in June that he needed to step aside. He quickly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. There's going to be a lot of discussion, obviously, in so many Democratic circles, right there in the White House about the timing, the decision, when the decision was made, uh, the fact that they didn't do a, a primary or some version of a primary, if there was a better way for Democrats to be, uh, better prepared to sort of take on Donald Trump. And those questions now begin. 107-day sprint. That was what Kamala Harris had, and what she tried to pull off here. It was the shortest campaign in modern American political history. The party coalesced around her quickly. They thought and felt extremely confident, cautiously confident, but confident nonetheless, many hours ago, when this day began yesterday morning, that they were going to be able to pull this off because they felt that they had built such a broad coalition, that she had reached out to all of those key demographics, that she was going to expand beyond her base in a way that they argued Donald Trump simply could not do. And yet, we have seen really the opposite. That she wasn't able to turn out, uh, her own base in some ways, in those big urban centers, in the way that she needed. And despite, despite painting such a dire picture of a second Trump term, ultimately, it was that question of whether you are better off now than you were four years ago, that Donald Trump hammered, hammered throughout this campaign, that seems to have resonated most with voters. It's going to take a while, uh, to figure out, you know, what happened. And we will figure out how to heal the party, but also how to rebuild a party.