Vice President Kamala Harris has won Virginia, picking up 13 electoral votes, despite Republican excitement about winning Democratic-leaning counties in the state.
Harris led Trump 51.2% to 47.2% with 83% of ballots counted, according to the Associated Press.
The race was called at 11:42 p.m.
Polls closed in the state at 7 p.m. Eastern. An early or sizable win for either candidate was believed to be an indicator of how they would perform for the rest of the night.
Despite Harris’s late-night win, Trump did much better in the state than he did four years ago when he lost by 10.2 points to President Joe Biden. In that race, the Associated Press declared Biden the winner 36 minutes after the polls closed.
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Die-hard Trump supporters have been signaling since the summer that 2024 would be the year the state shifted from being blue to a battleground state.
Two separate polls, one conducted by the conservative-leaning Rasmussen Reports and another from the University of Mary Washington, showed in the days leading up to the election that Trump had cut into Harris’s lead and was within striking distance.
On Saturday, Trump visited Salem, one of the state’s reddest corners. He was welcomed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA), who introduced the former president with a 20-minute tribute to his “strength” and a prayer.
Trump, in a 90-minute speech, predicted victory in Virginia. He also told the crowd that they had a “very sane, very solid governor” in Youngkin.
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Virginia has been reliably blue for Democrats at the presidential level for the past two decades. However, Republicans have scored victories in the state, most notably Youngkin’s 2021 win over former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe.
Youngkin was the first Republican to win a statewide election in Virginia since 2009.