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Pessimism was growing for Kamala Harris’s pathway to the White House based on early voting totals across the US on Tuesday night.
Trump took quick leads in the Sun Belt states of North Carolina and Georgia, though observers haven’t called the election in either state.
Meanwhile, The New York Times election needle projects there’s an 91 percent of a Trump victory based on current data, with the Republican potentially winning 301 out 270 necessary Electoral College votes.
In North Carolina, Trump lead Harris 50.7 percent to 47.9 percent, with 84 percent of expected votes in, while Trump had a narrower 0.6 lead over Harris in Georgia after 50 percent of expected votes had been cast, according to NBC News.
Harris, as expected, was ahead in more urban North Carolina counties containing cities like Raleigh and Charlotte, while Trump dominated much of the rest of the state’s more rural areas.
If those trends hold, Harris will likely needing to sweep the “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania to win.
At the moment, Harris is leading Trump in Michigan with 51.2 percent of votes with 30 percent of expected turnout factored in, while Trump is in front in Wisconsin with 50.4 percent support and 61 percent of votes in.
The Harris campaign hasn’t lost faith however.
It is eyeing what is says are positive factors like enthusiasm in Michigan and North Carolina university towns and above-average support in suburban Indiana and Georgia, in some cases outpacing Biden’s 2020 results in the latter state.
The campaign also tells The Independent that Trump’s wide support in rural Georgia isn’t exceeding what Harris already expected to face, and that late-arriving mail ballots could bump the vice president’s numbers up in North Carolina.
“While we continue to see data trickle in from the Sun Belt states, we have known all along that our clearest path to 270 electoral votes lies through the Blue Wall states,” Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote in an email to staff obtained by The Independent. “And we feel good about what we’re seeing.”
The email said Harris was overperforming in turnout expectations in must-win Philadelphia, to the point it might top 2020 levels, and was expecting “strong turnout” in Detroit, where election results won’t be reported out until later tonight.
The Democratic campaign is also still awaiting results from parts of hotly contested Wisconsin, as well as West Coast battleground states Nevada and Arizona.
Elsewhere, Democratic strategist James Carville said he was disheartened at the strength of some Trump performances in suburban areas such as Loudon County, Virginia.
“Loudoun County, Virginia’s not great,” Carville said on Amazon’s election night show. “Think Dulles Airport, suburban Washington — [I] think [Joe Biden] was like 62% in 2020. I’m seeing 57, 58 right now. There are troubling signs out there, but we got a big vote coming out of Philadelphia. Let’s just wait a second. Let’s see what happens in North Carolina and Georgia; but I would be less than honest if I didn’t say the early indications here are not sterling.”
However, as the night went on, Harris was projected to win the state, leading Trump 50 percent to 48.4 with 80 percent of votes in.
Carville said he was more optimistic about potential votes for Harris in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.
“Talking about a 50,000-100,000 increase in Democratic votes in Philadelphia,” he added, “so that should absolve something. That should absolve a lot; and some of the stuff I see out of Georgia is, obviously, more encouraging than Florida. Anything is more encouraging than that.”
In Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a closely watched swing district, Harris led Trump 50.2 to 48.5 percent with 44.7 percent of precincts reporting, according to unofficial tallies from the local board of elections.
Overall, Harris leads Trump 51.4 percent to 47.7 in the state, according to the Associated Press, with 72 percent of votes counted.
As votes began arriving in the Keystone State this morning, Trump baselessly claimed he was hearing chatter about “massive cheating” in Pennsylvania, though Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said this had “no factual basis whatsoever.”
Read More: Pessimism is mounting inside Harris HQ as experts voice concerns of early voting
