Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump addresses a campaign rally from behind bullet resistant glass at the Butler Farm Show grounds on October 05, 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania. This is the first time that Trump has returned to Butler since he was injured during an attempted assassination on July 13. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
After losing the state to Joe Biden in 2020, former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee, is projected to win Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes, according to the Associated Press, which called the race at 2:24 a.m. on Wednesday.
It was a bruising race that saw both candidates campaign relentlessly in Pennsylvania. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, rose to the top of the ticket after President Joe Biden abandoned his reelection bid in July following a terrible debate performance against Trump. If she had been elected, Harris would have been the first Black, Asian-American woman president.
State officials did not expect there to be a clear winner announced on Election Day in Pennsylvania, due in large part to how mail-in ballots are counted. Election workers can’t begin canvassing mail ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day itself, and in a large city like Philadelphia, that process takes longer.
Neither candidate had a path to victory without Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania, one of the three “blue wall” states, stayed in the Democrats’ column for 2024 for the second consecutive presidential race. Barack Obama carried the state during both of his presidential campaigns, but Donald Trump won it in 2016, beating Hillary Clinton by just under 45,000 votes. Joe Biden won the state in 2020 by about 80,000 votes.
Trump began the 2024 campaign early on, seemingly poised to cruise to easy victory over President Joe Biden, whose approval ratings were low all year, due in large part to the stubborn inflation that kept prices high across the board for many Americans.
Trump survived two assassination attempts in 2024, including one in Butler in July, where rallygoer Corey Comperatore was killed. Trump rallied back from the incident, and a photo of him, fist raised, ear bloodied, became an indelible image of not only his campaign, but the 2024 race.
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