Topline

Former President Donald Trump has gained a lead over Vice President Kamala Harris after winning Georgia and North Carolina, and he is ahead in five other battlegrounds just after polls closed — leaving Harris with a narrow path to 270 electoral votes.

Key facts

Important background

If elected, Harris would be the first woman and first person of South Asian descent elected to the White House, following a whirlwind campaign that saw her elevated to the top of the ticket to replace Biden after he decisively won the Democratic primary had won in every state. and dropped out of the race. Harris’ entry into the race marked a reunion of her party after Biden’s resistance to drop out of the race — even as Trump surged ahead in the polls — exposed deep divisions within the party. Democrats quickly coalesced around Harris, hours after Biden announced his historic decision to step aside on July 21, less than a month after his subsequent June 27 debate with Trump. Harris appointed Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate two weeks before the Democratic National Convention. She enjoyed a brief honeymoon period in the polls and was widely seen as the winner of her first and only debate with Trump on September 10, but Trump has narrowed the gap in the polls, with the two nearly tied nationally and in every battleground road to elections. Day. Harris, 60, the daughter of a South Indian mother, an acclaimed breast cancer researcher, and a Black father, a renowned economist, was born in Oakland, attended Howard University and received her law degree from the University of California Hastings. She was elected attorney general of San Francisco in 2004 and in 2011 became the first Black, first woman and first Asian American to serve as attorney general of California. She was elected to the Senate in 2016 and ran for president in 2019.

Tangent

Harris has focused much of her campaign on criticizing Trump and her warnings of the dangers she believes he poses if re-elected. She has called him a “fascist,” worked with prominent anti-Trump Republicans, including former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., to campaign against him, and has repeatedly emphasized his pledge to seek retribution against his political opponents, whom he recently called the ‘enemy from within’. In her truncated campaign timeline, some of Harris’ policy proposals lacked detail and she faced the difficult task of distinguishing herself from Biden without fueling criticism of his administration. Harris has also walked back — or remained silent — on some of her previous, more progressive policy proposals, including a federal ban on fracking and decriminalizing illegal border crossings (both of which she said she no longer supports). She and her campaign have declined to say definitively whether she still supports other policies she once supported, including decriminalizing prostitution and slavery restoration for black Americans. Harris has pledged to implement economic policies to boost the middle class if elected, including not raising taxes on Americans earning $400,000 or less, a federal ban on price gouging and no tax on tips. She has also pledged to expand the child tax credit for lower- and middle-class families and wants to offer a $25,000 down payment to first-time homebuyers.

Chief critic

Trump has portrayed Harris as a puppet of the Biden administration and the Democratic Party and accused her of inauthenticity, coining the nickname “lyin’ Kamala” for the vice president. Trump has suggested without evidence that Harris fabricated her summer job at McDonald’s and even questioned her race. In one of his more incendiary attacks on Harris during the campaign cycle, Trump suggested Harris was “turning black,” even though she has repeatedly spoken about her biracial heritage throughout her decades-long political career. He has also blamed her for the increase in illegal border crossings during the Biden administration and record high inflation last summer (which has since leveled off), and has attacked her intelligence by repeatedly claiming she has a “low IQ” and is ‘lazy’. and ‘slow’.

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