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After midnight Wednesday, it still remained unclear whether Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump or Democrat Kamala Harris would win Wisconsin’s electoral votes.
By 1:28 a.m. and 89.8 percent of precincts reporting, Trump was leading with 1,575,358 votes, or 51.3 percent, while Harris had 1,452,363 votes, or 47.3 percent. The Associated Press hasn’t declared either candidate as a winner.
The fact that the race hasn’t been called reflects both the apparent tightness of the race between the former president and sitting vice president, but also Wisconsin’s importance in both campaign’s electoral strategy. On the national map, both candidates are within striking distance to win the necessary electoral votes. A win in Wisconsin would boost their chances.
Currently, the Associated Press has identified that Trump has won 267 electoral votes to Harris’ 214 votes. The winning candidate needs 270 votes to become the next president.
The Harris campaign announced late Tuesday that Harris wouldn’t be speaking on Tuesday night, signaling that they expect the results could come on Wednesday or after.
The Trump campaign hasn’t indicated whether their candidate intends to speak early Wednesday morning or not.
2024 Campaign Was Historic For Many Reasons
The 2024 presidential campaign was by most measures historic. The campaign has remained consistently close between the candidates and the tenor and tone of the campaign was heated and oftentimes personal. And like most campaigns, it featured several crucial pivot points, but none was more remarkable than the sudden change at the top of the Democratic ticket. Harris was originally running as current President Joe Biden’s running mate during the campaign. However, Biden stepped down from his candidacy in July 2024 after a disastrous debate performance against Trump a month earlier. Concerns about Biden’s age and ability to effectively challenge Trump prompted the president to conclude his reelection bid and support Harris as his political successor.
Harris will already go down in the history books. Harris is the first Black and South Asian woman to become the presidential nominee of a major political party in the United States. She previously was the first woman, first Black person and first South Asian American to be elected vice president of the United States.
In 2016, she was elected as one of California’s two U.S. senators and served on the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
In 2010, Harris was elected California’s state attorney general. In 2004, she was elected district attorney for the city of San Francisco. In 1990, she served as an attorney in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office.
Harris was born in Oakland, Calif., in 1964 and was the daughter of immigrants. Her mother was a biologist and breast cancer researcher who came to the United States from India. Her father was a professor of economics at Stanford University who came to the United States from Jamaica. Harris briefly lived in Wisconsin in the late 1960s with her parents and sister while her father was an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her mother worked in a university lab.
Trump was born in Queens, N.Y., in 1946, the son of real estate developer Fred Trump and Scottish immigrant Mary Anne Trump. Trump took over his father’s real estate company in 1971. He published many books and was a renown figure in New York social circles and tabloids. In 2004, he was the star of the popular reality TV show, “The Apprentice.” In 2016, Trump defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to become the 45th president of the United States. During his term, Trump was twice impeached, but twice acquitted by the U.S. Senate.
In 2020, Trump lost reelection to Democrat Joe Biden, but he wouldn’t concede and claimed voter fraud. On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol during Congress’ counting of Electoral College votes in an attempt to stop the certification of Biden’s victory. Five people died as a result of the attack on the Capitol and officials said the Capitol complex suffered millions of dollars in damage.
