Republicans are feeling optimistic as election results continue to roll in

Georgia, North Carolina, and Michigan may give an early sense of where the election is headed – and if one candidate has an easier path to a win or if we're in for a drawn-out process. 

Editor’s note: This story was most recently updated at 10 p.m. EST and will be updated throughout the night as results come in

After a contentious and chaotic sprint of an election season, polls have closed in most of the country – including all presidential battleground states – and early results have Republicans feeling more confident than Democrats that they’ll win the White House, though both candidates still have a feasible path to victory.

As of 10 p.m. EST, former President Donald Trump appears to have the edge in the crucial southern battlegrounds of Georgia and North Carolina, though plenty of votes remain uncounted in both states and they remain too close to call. If he wins both states, Vice President Kamala Harris would likely need to sweep the “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to win the presidential election – and right now, that looks far from a sure thing.

Across the country, Mr. Trump appears to be doing slightly better overall in both rural and suburban counties that have most of their votes counted than he did in 2020, when he narrowly lost the presidency. 

Polls had long predicted a coin-flip race. And while the results that have come in so far indicate that they weren’t far off, it appears that for the third election cycle in a row, Mr. Trump might be outperforming them.

While we await the big prize, a handful of other key races have been called. Democrat Josh Stein has been projected to be the next governor of North Carolina, and Republican Jim Justice won a mostly uncontested West Virginia Senate race, giving Republicans their first Senate pickup of the night. They need to net one more seat for control. And Florida, a swing state as recently as 2020, was called quickly for Mr. Trump and appears to be going comfortably for the former president.

With four-fifths of Georgia’s votes counted at 10 p.m., Mr. Trump held a five-point lead. His lead in North Carolina stood at three points with more than half the vote counted. And he was narrowly ahead in Virginia, a state that most analysts thought Ms. Harris would win relatively comfortably, with two-thirds of votes counted in the state. 

If former President Donald Trump sweeps Georgia, North Carolina, and Michigan, he’s all but guaranteed to be heading back to the White House.

If Vice President Kamala Harris carries two of those three states, she’ll have an easier path to an election win at that point than Mr. Trump.

But if Ms. Harris is winning one of the three, while losing the other two, we’re likely looking at a drawn-out process where it could take days for the remaining states to count their results. 

Depending on how close it is, Wisconsin’s result might be clear by the morning, once Milwaukee reports its vote. Pennsylvania will likely take a bit longer. Arizona and Nevada, the remaining swing states, will likely take days to get their results counted because of their heavy use of mail voting.