U.S. 2024 Election: One Week Later

Election Night is exciting, but often it takes much longer than that for every vote to be counted. As a result, a week after the election, several critical legislative races still remain too close to call. In the presidential race, it also takes time for all of the popular vote absentee, overseas, and mail-in ballots to be counted. A complete popular vote total gives a better picture of how people voted nationwide. Here, Election Central takes a closer look at what we now know about the votes cast on Election Day, as well as which races still remain undecided. 

The Race for the Presidency 

Donald Trump was declared the winner of the 2024 election just hours after polls closed across the nation because he had won the necessary number of Electoral College votes. It took longer for the popular vote to be counted. Each state receives a certain number of Electoral College votes based on its population. It is possible for one candidate to win the Electoral College vote, and the other to win the popular vote. (This happened most recently in 2016.) 

Ultimately, Trump won both. He received 312 Electoral College votes to Vice President Kamala Harris’s 226. He also won the popular vote, with about 74.9 million votes (50.4 percent) to Harris’s 71.4 million (48 percent). Third-party candidates Jill Stein and Robert Kennedy did not win any Electoral College votes, but they each won a share of the popular vote: 710,215 (0.5 percent) for Stein, and 683,300 (0.5 percent) for Kennedy. 

Traditionally Republican areas of the nation, such as the South and much of the Midwest, went for Trump. Traditionally Democratic areas, such as the New England states and California, went for Harris. The difference came down to the “battleground,” or “swing,” states – such as Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Each of these swing states cast more votes for Trump.  

Overall, Trump won more votes in every state than he did when he ran for re-election in2020. He also flipped six states that went to Democrats in 2020: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He accomplished this largely by winning over groups of voters who usually support Democratic Party candidates. This includes young voters, Latin American voters, and Black American voters. In 2024, 13 percent of Black voters, 46 percent of Latino voters, and 43 percent of voters under 30 years old all chose Trump. 45 percent of women voted for Trump as well. Trump is the first Republican in decades to win Miami-Dade County in Florida and Starr County in south Texas: two counties with large Latino populations.  

Who Has Control of Congress? 

Republicans are very close to winning control of the legislative branch of the federal government, as well as the executive branch. As of Tuesday night, November 11^th, Democrat Ruben Gallego was declared the winner in Arizona against Republican Kari Lake. This gives the Democrats one additional seat, but Republicans have captured at least a 52 to 47 majority. One seat remains undecided. Republican David McCormick is narrowly leading the Democratic incumbent Senator Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, but the counting continues. Out of roughly 6.9 million votes cast, McCormick leads by only 30,000 votes, 48.9 percent to Casey’s 48.5 percent.  

Party control of the U.S. House of Representatives has not been determined officially. It is likely that Republicans will have the majority here as well. As of data on Wednesday, November 12th, Republicans have been declared the winners in 215 seats, while Democrats have 206. There are fourteen races left to be called, and Republicans need to win just three more of these seats to take control of the House. 

Remaining House Races 

The final vote counts for the House of Representatives is not yet final because California is often slow to finalize the counts of all of its vote totals. California is traditionally considered a Democratic stronghold, and though some Republicans are going to win some seats in this large state, the California Democrats are expecting to retain control of all of the seats that they had going into Election Day.  

That said, the Republicans are expected to maintain a majority number of seats in the U.S. House because they won control of previously Democratic seats in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Nebraska, and maybe Alaska (when the final votes are tallied). 

Dig Deeper What other House of Representative races are not yet final? Take a look at other news sources and put together a list of what remains to be decided.