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Former President Donald Trump is projected to win Pennsylvania and its 19 electoral votes, according to multiple networks and the Associated Press.

Trump had secured 50.7 percent of the vote compared to 48.4 percent for Kamala Harris with 97 percent of ballots counted, according to the AP, which declared Trump the winner at 2:24 a.m. ET.

Ahead of November 5, the two nominees were seen as “even” in Pennsylvania, with FiveThirtyEight giving former Trump a slight 0.2 percent margin as of October 29.

In 2016, Trump took the Keystone State by a 0.8 percent margin, but he lost it to President Joe Biden in 2020 by 1.2 percent.

On Tuesday morning, several election ballot scanners were inoperative at multiple polling locations in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Department of State said that it was in contact with officials in Cambria County to resolve the technical issues.

Long voting lines were seen on Tuesday afternoon at Lehigh University, located just 50 miles north of Philadelphia.

Late Tuesday afternoon, Trump posted on Truth Social that there was a “lot of talk about cheating” in Philadelphia. He added that law enforcement was “coming.”

CNN confirmed that the Philadelphia Police Department was “not aware” of what Trump was referring to, and that it did not know of “any issues with voting that required a law enforcement response.”

Prior to the 2016 presidential election, polling showed results within the margin of error, but many experts said former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had an edge over former President Donald Trump. The Democratic National Convention was also held in Philadelphia that year.

Trump ended up receiving 2,970,733 votes in Pennsylvania, or 48.6 percent of the vote, compared to Clinton’s 2,926,441 votes, or 47.9 percent. Clinton had a lead in 11 of the 67 counties, which included mostly the metropolitan areas around Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Harrisburg.

Trump won Pennsylvania by 44,292 votes, which is the narrowest margin in a presidential election since 1860 between William Henry Harrison and Martin Van Buren. He was the first Republican nominee for president to win the state since George H. W. Bush in 1988. Trump ended up winning the “Blue Wall” of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan in 2016.

Pennsylvania election officials certified the state’s results for the 2020 election on November 24, providing President Joe Biden with 20 electoral votes.

The Keystone State, Biden’s birth state, had a record-number of voter turnout. Biden received 3,458,229 votes in Pennsylvania, an increase for the Democratic Party by 531,788 votes in 2016.

Biden saw the majority of his gains, compared to Clinton’s 2016 results, in areas around Philadelphia, including Lehigh, Northampton, Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware, Chester, Lancaster and York Counties.

Trump, however, also saw his largest gains in Montgomery, Bucks, Lancaster, York and Allegheny Counties. The most votes cast throughout the state were in Philadelphia and Alleghany Counties, which house Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Outside of the two large cities, Montgomery County saw 504,971 voters.

There were also smaller increases for Biden in areas around Pittsburgh like Butler, Westmoreland, Washington and Beaver Counties. Erie County also gave Biden an additional 10,174 votes compared to Clinton’s 2016 run.

Trump received 3,377,674 votes, which also was an increase for the Republican Party by 406,941 from 2016.

However, since 2020, Republicans remained optimistic about reclaiming Pennsylvania due to voter registration numbers. While there are still more Democrats registered in the state compared to Republicans, the number has been significantly cut over the past four years. Leading up to the 2024 election, there are 3,991,381 Democrats, 3,710,290 Republicans and 1,460,307 non-party affiliates and third-party registrants, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State’s release on October 28. This is an increase of .78 percent compared to the 2020 election, and the GOP gained 167,220 voters over the four years.

In 2020, there were 685,818 more Democrats registered than Republicans in Pennsylvania. In 2024, that margin is now at 281,091.

In the 2016 and 2020 elections, Pennsylvania had 20 electoral votes. The U.S. Census Bureau’s population counts from 2020 reset the power within the Electoral College as well as in the House of Representatives. In a hypothetical redo of the 2020 presidential election with the new electoral voting map, Biden would have still won, but his margin would have been smaller.

Who Was Winning in Pennsylvania, According to Polls?

Pennsylvania is often considered a bellwether state. According to polling expert Nate Silver’s calculations, the candidate who wins Pennsylvania has more than a 90 percent chance of winning the election. Polls from recent weeks showed the two candidates neck-and-neck, with their leads mostly falling within the polls’ margins of error.

A poll by InsiderAdvantage taken between October 26 and 27 showed Trump one percentage point ahead of Harris, 48 percent to 47 percent. The poll surveyed 800 likely voters and has a margin of error of +/- 3.46 percent.

Another recent poll by American Greatness conducted by North Star Opinion Research showed both candidates in a dead heat with 47 percent each. The poll, conducted between October 22 and 26, surveyed 600 likely voters and has a margin of error of +/- 4 percent. This poll noted that the sample included more Democrats than Republicans, and said the results reflected a big shift toward early voting for Republicans.

A poll conducted by Emerson College Polling/RealClearPennsylvania showed Trump at 49 percent to Harris’ 48 percent. This poll was conducted between October 21 and 22 of a sample of 860 likely voters, and has a margin of error of +/- 3.3 percent.

FiveThirtyEight aggregate polling showed the two candidates as “even” in Pennsylvania on October 29. Trump was expected to receive 47.9 percent of the vote, and Harris 47.7 percent.

Economy, Abortion, Immigration Among Biggest Issues in Pennsylvania

A survey by The New York Times/Siena College in August showed economy was the No. 1 issue in Pennsylvania, with more than one in five voters in each state considering it their priority voting issue.

Abortion is considered the second or third most prominent issue across all seven battleground states.

Voters across the seven battleground states also say that immigration is in their top three key topics, with the highest percentage—16 percent—recorded in Pennsylvania.

Robert Speel, an associate professor of political science at Penn State Behrend, told Newsweek, however, that this election would ultimately come down to values. “Suburban areas have been trending blue and rural areas trending red in Pennsylvania and in many other states because most Americans don’t make voting decisions on an economic basis, even if they claim in polls that they do,” he said.

“Instead, most voters choose a party based on the values that party’s leaders represent and whether those values match more closely with the social and cultural attitudes of the voters.

“On many non-economic issues, Democrats have a lot more appeal than Republicans to suburban university-educated voters, and Republicans have a lot more appeal than Democrats to rural voters. These include issues like guns, religious views, social tolerance, abortion, and foreign relations.”

Nearly twice as many Democrats than Republicans voted early in Pennsylvania. Registered Democrats had returned 849,849 ballots a week before Election Day, compared to 468,067 Republicans, according to the state’s election data.

Pennsylvania has seen the most ad spending and attention from both presidential campaigns.

Harris and her running mate, Governor Tim Walz, campaigned in Pennsylvania more heavily than Trump and his running mate Senator JD Vance. The two campaigns made a total of 53 stops in Pennsylvania since Trump and Vance accepted their nominations at the Republican National Convention. Harris and Vance both rallied in the Keystone State most recently on October 30.

Both held two rallies in Erie. The Harris-Walz campaign made 13 stops in and around Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania, one more than for Trump and Vance.

Trump and Vance took to northeastern Pennsylvania three times in total, compared to Harris’ one visit to Wilkes-Barre. The Harris-Walz campaign made 13 stops in and around Philadelphia and Harrisburg, two more than Trump and Vance.

Harris had over 475 paid staffers officed in Pennsylvania. Since July, over 110,000 people volunteered for her campaign in the state, according to TIME.

Update: 11/5/2024, 3:37 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with more information.

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