Trump, Harris in dead heat - Donnecommebernard

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris were neck and neck in the first nationwide results released shortly after the polls closed Tuesday night, making this year's unprecedented and unpredictable race for the White House too close to call Tuesday night .

According to incomplete, unofficial results released by the Arizona Secretary of State as of 3 a.m. Wednesday, Trump was narrowly ahead and had increased his lead slightly from earlier in the night.

At the county level, initial results showed Harris narrowly ahead of Trump in vote-rich Maricopa County shortly after the polls closed on Tuesday evening. About 60% of Arizona voters live in Maricopa County.

Maricopa County's results included 1.1 million ballots, representing 43.43% of the county's 2.5 million voters who were eligible to vote in the election. The district expects 2.1 million voters to turn out and estimates that 700,000 ballot papers still need to be evaluated in the coming days.

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The vote count released by Maricopa County includes ballots received through Tuesday, Oct. 29, according to the county. Election Day in-person votes will be posted throughout the evening. Voters voted on Tuesday evening at 7:30 p.m. In Arizona, polls closed at 7 p.m., but voters who registered before that time could cast their ballots after the deadline.

Arizona is at the center of the presidential election. The battleground state has 11 electoral votes that will play a major role in deciding which candidate wins the White House.

The dramatic battle for the presidency was marked by chaos and a series of unexpected events.

Only a few times in history has a former president lost and tried again for the White House, or a president resigned in the middle of a re-election campaign. Additionally, presidential candidates running on felony convictions are a rarity in U.S. history.

According to the latest public polls, the Arizona race is a dead heat. Trump was narrowly ahead of Harris, but the numbers were so close that each candidate had a real chance of winning the Grand Canyon State.

Voter frustration over the economy and immigration is exacerbating Trump's slight lead among Arizona voters. The former president has struck a confident tone at recent rallies in Arizona and even mused on stage in Prescott Valley that he should be in the all-important swing state of Pennsylvania instead.

“We are going to win Arizona,” Trump said at an October rally in Tempe, indicating he was pleased with the early voting numbers. “We will defeat Kamala Harris.”

However, Harris isn't far behind. She is strongest on issues of democracy and reproductive rights, and her campaign is relying on a massive ground operation to push her to the top in a state where Democrats have made big gains during the Trump era.

“It will be a very close race until the end. And we are the underdog,” Harris told a rally crowd in Phoenix last month.

The battle for the White House appeared to be shaping up to be a rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden in 2020, but that changed dramatically in late June when Biden's disastrous debate performance against Trump sent Democrats into a panic. The president was ousted by his own party within weeks. He dropped his re-election bid in July, long after the primary was over.

That same month, Trump was nearly killed on live television when a gunman opened fire during the former president's campaign rally in Pennsylvania. A bullet hit his ear, leaving Trump bloody but otherwise unharmed as Secret Service agents rushed him from the stage. He would be the target of another failed assassination attempt in September.

Harris took Biden's place just weeks before the Democratic National Convention, leaving senior members of her party on the fence about their own presidential ambitions and the possibility of an open convention. In her new role as candidate, Harris only had three months to mount a presidential campaign. She took over Biden's campaign activities across the country, including in Arizona, where the groundwork for the general election had been laid since February.

This story will be updated as election results are announced.

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