Donald Trump won the 2024 U.S. presidential election, receiving 312 electoral votes to Kamala Harris’s 226 in the official Electoral College result. Election Day was Tuesday, November 5, 2024; the Associated Press called the presidential race at 5:34 a.m. Eastern on November 6. That call was a news organization’s projection, not the final state certification or Congress’s later count.
Who won the 2024 presidential election?
The National Archives and Records Administration records Donald J. Trump as the winner with 312 electoral votes and Kamala D. Harris with 226. There are 538 electoral votes in total, and a candidate needs 270 for a majority. The National Archives’ 2024 Electoral College results are the official federal record.
Maine and Nebraska can award electoral votes by congressional district as well as statewide outcome, so not every state uses a winner-take-all allocation. The 312–226 national total is the Electoral College result, not a count of individual ballots.
When was the race called?
The Associated Press declared Trump the elected 47th president at 5:34 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday, November 6. Its chronology records earlier calls for Pennsylvania at 2:24 a.m. Eastern and Wisconsin at 5:34 a.m. Eastern on November 6; Michigan was called for Trump at 12:54 p.m. Eastern that day. See AP’s 2024 election race-call chronology for the sequence and additional state outcomes.
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Those timestamps refer to AP’s calls, not to when every ballot was counted or every state certified its result. The timing of calls varied by state as outstanding ballots were counted and the race became clear.
What is the difference between a race call and an official result?
A newsroom race call is an analytical judgment about who is expected to win. AP says it calls a race only when it is confident that trailing candidates no longer have a path to victory; it considers factors such as outstanding ballots, state counting rules, recount requirements, historical county results, and ballot-counting patterns. AP notes that some races take days and, rarely, weeks to call. This describes AP’s approach, not a universal rule for every newsroom. AP explains how it calls election races.
A call is not a state’s certified return, and a running vote total may remain unofficial while counting continues. The Washington Post’s archived results dashboard said AP vote-count updates were unofficial until states certified results and records that it stopped updating on November 25, 2024. The archived dashboard is useful for understanding the distinction, but it is not a current live results page.
What happened after Election Day?
The presidential election process continued after Election Day and after news organizations called the race. The National Archives lists these key dates for the 2024 Electoral College process:
- December 11, 2024: State appointment of electors.
- December 17, 2024: Electors met and voted.
- January 6, 2025: Congress counted the electoral votes.
- January 20, 2025: Inauguration Day.
The Archives explains that voters in each state choose the electors on Election Day. See the National Archives’ Electoral College key dates for the formal timeline.
How broad was Election Day coverage?
The presidential race was only one part of the 2024 election. In a coverage plan published October 29, 2024, AP said it expected to cover nearly 7,000 races and declare at least 6,823 winners across federal, state, and local offices. It also said it planned coverage of more than 150 statewide ballot measures. Those were AP’s stated plans before Election Day, not an independently verified final tally of races covered or winners declared. AP’s October 29 coverage announcement described its planned scope.
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That plan included all 435 U.S. House seats, 33 Senate elections, 11 gubernatorial races, and state-by-state presidential coverage. AP also announced continuous video coverage, updates on APNews.com and the AP News app, and an election map translated into 18 languages. These details describe the announced coverage plan, not a complete archive of every local result or event.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How to verify a result
When checking an election result—especially a down-ballot race or ballot measure—keep four details in view:
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- Status: Is the information a newsroom call, an unofficial running count, or a state-certified result?
- Time: When was it updated, and which time zone does the timestamp use?
- Jurisdiction: Does it cover the country, a state, a district, a county, or a local contest?
- Source: Is the information a news organization’s reporting or an official government record?
For a specific down-ballot outcome, consult the relevant state or local election authority and check whether the result is certified. The national presidential result and the AP chronology answer different questions: the former records the Electoral College outcome, while the latter documents when AP called the race and individual state contests.
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