Trump declares victory in presidential election

Republican Donald Trump claimed victory in the 2024 presidential contest after projected that he had defeated Democrat Kamala Harris, which would cap a stunning political comeback four years after he left the White House.

"It's a political victory that our country has never seen before," he said to a roaring crowd of supporters at the Palm Beach County Convention Center, flanked by his vice presidential running mate, Senator JD Vance, Republican leaders and members of Trump's family.

Other news outlets had yet to call the race for Trump, but he appeared on the verge of winning after capturing the battleground states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia and holding leads in the other four, according to Edison Research.

The former president was showing strength across broad swaths of the country, improving on his 2020 performance everywhere from rural areas to urban centers.

Donald Trump has won Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia and taken a lead over Kamala Harris in most of the other four battleground states that will decide the winner of the US presidential election.

In more good news for Trump's fellow Republicans, the party is projected to win majority control of the Senate.

Republican US Senator Ted Cruz is holding onto a narrow lead for his Senate seat against Democratic US Representative Colin Allred, who’s seeking to turn Texas blue for the first time in decades.

Cruz leads Allred by 3.4 percentage points, according to an average of polling data by election forecasting website 538. Democrats haven’t won a statewide election in Texas since 1994.

Cruz, a staunch ally of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, accused Allred of supporting boys competing in girls sports, a claim Allred has denied, at a Brenham, Texas rally.

As expected, Trump has swept conservative strongholds from Florida to Idaho, while Harris won liberal states from New York to California.