Trump prematurely claims victory as Harris camp says votes are still being counted
Republican nominee Donald Trump claimed to have defeated Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the presidential election in the small hours of Wednesday as poll results were still pouring into battleground states including Michigan and Wisconsin.
Official polls do not support the former president’s claim at this time. According to the Associated Press, Trump has 267 of the 270 electoral college votes he needs to be declared the official winner of the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Harris has 214 electoral votes. Multiple states have yet to declare official results. To be clear, Fortune uses AP‘s race calls for its own results, and will not declare victory for any candidate until the outlet has done so.
“I would like to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president,” said Trump, who also claimed to have won the popular vote.
According to the Associated Press, Trump won the critical swing states of Georgia and North Carolina. He also swept electoral votes in Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Tennessee. Harris won Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Illinois. Too close to call on Wednesday included Arizona and Nevada.
Trump addressed supporters who gathered at a convention center in Palm Beach, Fla. He was joined by former First Lady Melania Trump, his youngest son, Baron Trump, as he addressed the crowd.
Even before Trump claimed he had won the election with poll results still too close to call, Tesla CEO and Trump backer Elon Musk’s America PAC posted on X: “Donald Trump has won the 2024 Election.” Musk donated at least $132 million to elect Trump through the PAC he founded, including a $56 million infusion in the last few weeks of the election.
BREAKING: Donald Trump has won the 2024 Election
— America (@america) November 6, 2024
Earlier in the evening on Election Day, Harris’ campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond spoke at Harris’ campaign headquarters at Howard University and alerted supporters that Harris would not speak until Wednesday.
“We will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken,” Richmond told supporters. He said Harris would be back at Howard on Wednesday to address her supporters and the nation.
Trump’s early claim came after several Election Day posts that were almost immediately disputed by officials.
Trump posted on Truth Social earlier that there had been rumors of “massive CHEATING” in Philadelphia, the largest city in the swing state of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner immediately countered that Trump’s allegation was “wild.”
“The only talk about massive cheating has come from one of the candidates, Donald J. Trump,” Krasner said in a statement. “There is no factual basis whatsoever within law enforcement to support this wild allegation.”
Trump later posted on Truth Social that both Philadelphia and Detroit had “Heavy Law Enforcement” presence.
Detroit Police Department Public Information Officer Sgt. Daron Zhou told Fortune: “The amount of staffing deployed is appropriate for the expected turnout and consistent with the department’s plan developed in advance to meet the needs of this event. There has been no recent increase in our staffing levels.”
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