WASHINGTON>> Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris notched early wins in reliably Republican and Democratic states, respectively, on Tuesday.

Trump won the battleground state of North Carolina, fending off a challenge from Harris, who was looking to flip the state and expand her pathways to 270 electoral votes.

The former Republican president made stops to the state in each of the past three days of the campaign to deprive Harris of the pickup. The Democratic vice president’s campaign leader, Jen O’Malley Dillon, told workers in a memo after polls closed that the “blue wall” of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin was now the Democrat’s “clearest path” to victory, according to a copy obtained by The Associated Press.

Polls were closed in additional battlegrounds — Arizona and Nevada — but the results in all remaining swing states were too early to call. CBS and NBC called Georgia for Trump slightly before 11 p.m.

Trump won Florida, a one-time battleground that has shifted heavily to Republicans in recent elections. He also notched early wins in reliably Republican states such as Texas, South Carolina and Indiana.

Harris won Virginia, a state Trump visited in the final days of the campaign, and took Democratic strongholds such as New York, New Mexico and California.

Harris also won an Electoral College vote in Nebraska that was contested by Republicans.

The crowd at Harris’ watch party at her alma mater, Howard University in Washington, began to file out after midnight Wednesday. Harris was not expected to speak at the party.

Trump was expected to speak early today in Florida.

The Trump campaign bet that it would cut into Democrats’ traditional strength with Black and Latino voters, with the former president going on male-centric podcasts and making explicit racial appeals to both groups.

Nationally, Black and Latino voters appeared slightly less likely to support Harris than they were to back Joe Biden four years ago, and Trump’s support among those voters appeared to rise slightly compared with 2020, according to AP VoteCast.

The fate of democracy appeared to be a primary driver for Harris’ supporters, a sign that the Democratic nominee’s persistent messaging in her campaign’s closing days accusing Trump of being a fascist may have broken through, according to the expansive survey of more than 110,000 voters nationwide.

Trump’s supporters were largely focused on immigration and inflation — two issues that the former Republican president has been hammering since the start of his campaign.

In his recent visits to North Carolina, Trump seized on the heavy damage caused Hurricane Helene, spreading false claims about the federal government’s response and using GoFundMe to collect millions in donations for impacted residents. Trump initially trumpeted the Republican nominee for governor, Mark Robinson, and hailed him as “Martin Luther King on steroids,” but distanced himself after a CNN report that alleged Robinson had made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago.

Robinson, who lost his race Tuesday to Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein, denied writing the messages and sued CNN for defamation last month.

In another positive sign for the GOP, the party took control of the Senate, with Trump-backed Bernie Moreno flipping a seat in Ohio held by Democrat Sherrod Brown since 2007.

They picked up another when Republican Jim Justice won a West Virginia seat that opened up with Sen. Joe Manchin’s retirement.

Those casting Election Day ballots mostly encountered a smooth process, with isolated reports of hiccups that regularly happen, including long lines, technical issues and ballot printing errors. Federal officials said there were minor disruptions throughout the day but there was no evidence of any impact to the election system.

Officials determined that bomb threats that were reported in multiple states were all not credible and did not impact the ability of voters to cast their ballots.