Trump Takes PA, Projected To Win Presidency: Latest Updates

PENNSYLVANIA — Donald Trump won Pennsylvania handily on Tuesday night en route to defeating Kamala Harris and becoming the next president of the United States, the Associated Press and others have projected.

While the race was too close to call through most of the evening, Trump pulled in front shortly after 10 p.m., erasing Harris's early mail-in lead, and quickly built up a lead of tens of thousands of votes. By midnight it seemed all but impossible for Harris to come back.

While mail-in votes and some extraneous precincts are still being counted, data shows an enormous victory for Trump in Pennsylvania compared to the close contests of 2016 and 2020. Trump's current margin of around 156,000 votes is about double what Biden won by in 2020, and it's a far cry from his 44,000 margin over Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Here's the most recent tally as of mid-Wednesday morning, according to the Department of State:

• Trump: 3,418,533
• Harris: 3,261,989
• Stein (Green Party): 32,574
• Oliver (Libertarian): 32,018

As expected, the winner of Pennsylvania carried the White House, though Trump likely would've won even without it. He's won most other swing states that have been called, including Georgia, Wisconsin, and North Carolina, and he appears likely to also win Arizona and Michigan.

Trump's victory over Harris was also much more decisive than other state level races, some of which remain too close to call. Only about 54,000 votes separate U.S. Senate candidates Bob Casey and Dave McCormick, indicating that a fair number of Pennsylvanians who supported Casey did not support Harris.

Previous updates:

Pennsylvania, a part of the once-reliable Democratic stronghold known as the “blue wall” with Michigan and Wisconsin, was carried by Trump when he first won the White House in 2016 and then flipped back to Democrats in 2020. Trump also flipped Georgia, which had voted for Democrats four years ago, and retained the closely contested state of North Carolina.

1:01 a.m.

Trump's lead grew notably throughout the, and is now up to about 221,000 votes. That's more than double the margin that Biden won the state by in 2020. While some Democratic precincts still have not reported in Philadelphia and the blue suburbs, about 91 percent of precincts statewide are already in.

The race is considered "likely" to go to Trump, who has an 85 percent chance of winning the state, per the New York Times.

12:41 a.m.

The New York Times now qualifies Pennsylvania as "leaning Republican" as the number of precincts reporting grows to 88 percent.

12:36 a.m.

Trump's lead over Harris has ticked up a few thousand votes, to about 174,000 votes. A large chunk of Pennsylvania precincts still have not yet reported, with only 86 percent of the vote counted heading into the early morning hours Wednesday.

12:13 a.m.

About 85 percent of all of Pennsylvania's precincts have reported in. Harris has narrowed Trump's lead to about 2.8 percentage points, or 169,000 votes.

11:52 p.m.

The bomb threats targeting polling places in numerous swing states, including Chester County in Pennsylvania, appear to be executed by Russia, the FBI says.

11:39 p.m.

Trump's lead in Pennsylvania sits at about 188,000 votes, largely unchanged from where it stood 30 minutes ago.

About 80 percent of all precincts have reported statewide.

11:20 p.m.

Democratic officials are adamant that Harris can make a comeback in Pennsylvania due to the electoral makeup of the remaining precincts to be tabulated.

"Many rural counties are (more than 95 percent) done counting," Montgomery County elections chief Neil Makhija said. "Montgomery County is only at 50 percent so far and all the Philadelphia Suburbs still have *hundreds of thousands* of votes to count. This is gonna take time. Patience, people."

About 76 percent of all Pennsylvania precincts have reported.

11:09 p.m.

Trump's lead is no longer expanding, though it's holding. He's winning by about 185,000 votes, or 3.7 percentage points.

His current lead is significantly more than he won Pennsylvania by in 2016 (44,000 votes). It's also much more than Biden won by in 2020 (about 81,000 votes).

10:47 p.m.

In possible good news for the Harris camp, returns have been slow in southeastern Pennsylvania, which is a heavily blue region. About 68 percent of votes are in for Philadelphia, 37 percent of votes in Montgomery County, 30 percent in Chester County, and only 24 percent in Bucks County.

Trump's lead continues to grow, however, and he currently has about a 3.6 percent advantage over Harris. Some 120,000 votes separate the two.

10:25 p.m.

Trump has quickly extended his lead to nearly three percentage points in Pennsylvania. It's a much more significant, and more rapid, gain of in-person votes than most expected in the state, and Harris faces an uphill battle now to win the state.

While Trump has not "flipped" the heavily blue suburbs, he has made drastic gains already over what he did against Biden in 2020.

In heavily blue Montgomery County, for instance, he already has 60,791 votes, with only about 36 percent of precincts reporting. Though Harris carries the county easily, she'll likely do so by far less than Biden's margin four years ago. Trump is on track to get some 50,000 more votes here than he did in 2020.

10:11 p.m.

Trump is now leading in Pennsylvania, passing Harris in the state for the first time this evening. He has been steadily erasing her early mail-in voting lead ever since polls closed at 8 p.m.

10:04 p.m.

Trump and Harris are nearly tied in Pennsylvania, with only about 44 percent of the votes counted. This would seem to be good news for Trump, who has already erased the huge early mail-in balloting deficit.

9:53 p.m.

Trump has nearly caught up to Harris in Pennsylvania, a state that could determine the winner of the White House. The Libertarian Oliver has now passed the Green Party's Stein, with the two third parties accounting for about one percent of the vote.

The Department of State estimates about 39 percent of the vote has been tabulated.

9:30 p.m.

Roughly a quarter of all votes have been counted in Pennsylvania. Trump has cut Harris's lead in half in the past half hour, though the Democrats still hold a significant advantage 90 minutes after polls closed.

9:13 p.m.

Final vote tallies may be further delayed in Pennsylvania, as the highly populous Chester County has joined the counties and precincts around the state that will have polls open late.
Two polling locations will not close until 10 p.m. after a bomb threat at the Chester County Government Services building. See more.

8:42 p.m.

While mail-in votes that have been tabulated already are Democratic, it's less clear where third parties fit in. Jill Stein won about 0.8 percent of the vote in Pennsylvania in 2016. Her current numbers have her just under that at 0.5 percent, with Libertarian Chase Oliver at 0.4 percent. But it's not know if that percentage will increase or decrease as more in-person ballots are tallied.

• Harris: 575,214
• Trump: 250,814
• Stein (Green Party): 4,030
• Oliver (Libertarian): 3,065

8:33 p.m.

As the Democratic lead grows as expected in Pennsylvania with the early mail-in vote tabulation, it's important to note that this will dwindle significantly in the coming hours. Montgomery County elections chief Neil Makhija said Tuesday that Republican candidates would likely steadily make up ground up until midnight, when in-person balloting is likely to be complete.

Mail-in balloting will be about two thirds finished in most of the state by midnight, officials estimate.

• Harris: 386,966
• Trump: 150,248
• Stein (Green Party): 2,745
• Oliver (Libertarian): 1,923

8:21 p.m.

A huge swath of new votes have been counted.

Harris: 369,971

Trump: 131,536

Stein (Green Party): 2,642

Oliver (Libertarian): 1,754

8:11 p.m.

The earliest vote tabulations have Kamala Harris out to a big lead, as expected, over Donald Trump. Mail-in ballots are tabulated first and they are usually heavily Democratic. Here's where results stand in the battleground of Pennsylvania as the counting gets underway:

Harris: 166,891

Trump: 68,336

Chase Oliver (Libertarian): 893

Jill Stein (Green Party): 1,105

8 p.m.

There has been a bomb threat to the Chester County Government Services building, where in-person votes are tabulated. The building has been evacuated. It is not yet clear how this will impact the timeliness of vote counting and final results for the presidential race in Pennsylvania. See more here.

PENNSYLVANIA — Polls are closed and results are beginning to trickle in for the presidential race in Pennsylvania, a pivotal battleground state that could determine the winner of the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.

Check back here at Patch for full Pennsylvania results of the election as they come in throughout election night.

Heading into election day, Trump held a narrow lead over Harris in the polls in Pennsylvania of 0.8 percentage points, according to an aggregate of polls from RealClearPolitics. Trump also led nationally by half a point.

For full coverage of the election in Pennsylvania, go here.

The Hill's Election Forecast gives Trump a 53.6 percent chance of winning the state. Nate Silver's modeling similarly gives Trump a narrow 0.6 percent edge in Pennsylvania, and Trump is also a minus 125 betting favorite in Pennsylvania at Oddschecker.

Aside from having the lead, Trump also has the recent momentum. Harris erased Trump's large lead over Biden after announcing her candidacy over the summer, but the boost from the launch of her campaign seems to have dwindled in the final weeks leading up to the election, as Trump has regained around three points over her nationally in the past month.

The winner of Pennsylvania has won the White House in every presidential election in the United States since 1972 except for 2000, when Al Gore still won the popular vote. In fact, in the past 100 years, there have only between two other elections where Pennsylvania's winner was not the White House winner: 1948, and 1968.

Pennsylvania's 19 electoral votes could be transformational in the final outcome of the race. Not only does the state generally determine the winner, but it also serves as a bellwether for other rust belt swing states, like Michigan and Ohio, which have similar historical track records to the Keystone State.

In recent years, Pennsylvania has seen historically close races. Only some 44,000 votes, a 0.7 percent margin, separated Trump from Hillary Clinton in 2016. It was the closest state in a Presidential contest since the 1840s. Four years later, President Joe Biden's 1.17 percent margin over Trump was barely any larger.

Though both the 2016 and 2020 elections wound up being nearly dead even, Democrats held huge poll leads throughout the summer and autumn leading up to the election. Clinton led Trump by 7 points in Oct. 2016, while Biden held a 7.5 lead at the same point in October in 2020. Harris will be in trouble if Trump similarly outperforms his polling again in Pennsylvania in 2024.

Both campaigns have been focused on Pennsylvania in the months and weeks leading up to the election, with each candidate making numerous visits to key purple areas across the state. Vice presidential candidates JD Vance and Tim Walz also spent time in multiple counties addressing who they hoped would be their key electorates.