On Wednesday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast (first released on November 6, 2024): Former President Donald Trump will return to the Oval Office after winning several critical battleground states. Find the full results here. USA TODAY Senior National Political Correspondent Sarah D. Wire reports from Philadelphia on how Pennsylvania voters viewed the candidates and the polarizing politics in their state. Republicans have won control of the Senate. Americans voted to protect abortion rights in several states, while a ballot amendment in Florida failed. USA TODAY National News Reporter Lauren Villagran relays what some voters said about their experiences at the polls.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I’m Taylor Wilson. Today is Wednesday, November 6th, 2024. This is The Excerpt. Today Donald Trump is on the cusp of election victory. What’s next? Plus, we hear from the major battleground state of Pennsylvania, and Republicans win control of the Senate.
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It was a long election night, and ballot counting continues, but as a 4:00 AM Eastern time Republican nominee, Donald Trump is all but guaranteed to return to the White House. Trump won North Carolina, Georgia, and the coveted prize of Pennsylvania, three critical swing states. Results were still too close to call in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin, though Trump held leads in all four. Trump spoke to supporters with a victory speech that lasted some 25 minutes well after 2:00 AM Eastern time at the Palm Beach Convention Center in Florida. Echoing comments he made on the campaign trail, Trump credited his “political movement” for winning a second term in office.
Donald Trump:
We made history for a reason tonight, and the reason is going to be just that. We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible. It is now clear that we’ve achieved the most incredible political thing. Look what happened. Is this crazy? But it’s a political victory that our country has never seen before, nothing like this. I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president.
Taylor Wilson:
Meanwhile, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris did not see the kind of support she had hoped for, and she decided not to address supporters gathered at Howard University in Washington, D.C. for her election night party. She plans instead to address voters later this morning.
Trump’s late-night win in Pennsylvania came after many expected we might have to wait longer to know a winner in the Keystone State, and it was seen by many as a must win for either candidate in order to win the White House. USA TODAY national correspondent Sarah D. Wire was on the ground in Philadelphia to put some of what she saw in context. Sarah, thank you so much for hopping on during this election night.
Sarah D. Wire:
Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So Sarah, just tell us where you’re joining me from and set the scene for us if you would. How smoothly did things run there on election day?
Sarah D. Wire:
So right now I’m standing outside of Philadelphia’s central ballot count location. It’s a warehouse on the outskirts of the city. In Pennsylvania, once they start counting, they’re not allowed to stop, so it’s going to be going here 24 hours a day until they’re done. What we’re hearing from election officials, especially out here in Philadelphia, is that things for the most part ran very smoothly. The hiccup has been a series of bomb threats across the state and also across the country. It seemed to have come in by email and closed down some polling locations for about a half an hour, and the city was able to reopen those locations and kept them open late.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah, so I want to hear more about those threats. What else have we learned there, Sarah, and just how big of a headache did this create on the day?
Sarah D. Wire:
It seems like what we’re hearing is that they came in through email and that all these counties were very well prepared. They had law enforcement lined up to respond, and so they were able to close locations and reopen them within a very short time span. They don’t believe it impacted turnout broadly, but really, anytime you have a polling place closed, you’ve got an inconvenience that’s created. Some people might not move to another polling location. They might not come back.
Taylor Wilson:
You mentioned turnout, Sarah. We don’t expect final results for some time, but let’s talk about voter turnout. How big was it in Pennsylvania?
Sarah D. Wire:
We don’t have exact figures yet, but realistically, it’s looking like another banner year for elections in Pennsylvania. The turnout numbers seem to be very large, and the vote-by-mail ballot returns seemed to be higher than they were even expecting.
Taylor Wilson:
Sarah, you spent time this week with voters. What did you learn there? What issues did folks seem to really care about, and what has it been like for them living in this deeply divided political landscape?
Sarah D. Wire:
A lot of the voters I talked to fell along the same partisan lines that we’ve been hearing throughout this election. It’s the economy. It’s immigration. There are a lot of Harris supporters. It came down to abortion rights and women’s healthcare, but we also heard a lot about the future of the country and the rhetoric they want to be hearing for the next four years. Pennsylvania has gotten used to being a battleground in the last few years. They don’t hold people’s political choices against one another. People don’t punish their neighbors for how they voted, but even people who are used to this are saying it’s going to be hard to come back from this election and come back together as a country.
Taylor Wilson:
Sarah D. Wire, USA TODAY’s senior national political correspondent, joining us from Philadelphia. Thank you, Sarah.
Sarah D. Wire:
Thanks for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
As for the Senate race, Republicans have officially won control reliably flipping West Virginia, a seat that was vacated by Democratic-turned independent Senator Joe Manchin, who retired from the majority Republican state and then claiming victory over a hotly contested seat in Ohio with Republican candidate Bernie Moreno edging out Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown. Odds have favored the GOP this entire election cycle, with all of the most competitive races in states represented by vulnerable democratic senators. The race for the house remains too close to call at this time, with dozens of competitive races still uncalled.
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One big issue this election cycle was abortion. In 2022, the Democrats were able to galvanize voters across the country to come to the polls to cast their vote in favor of abortion access. How much of a driver the issue was for voters in 2024 is yet to be seen, but several states, including Florida, had ballot measures that would’ve enshrined abortion rights for its residents. But Florida’s measure, Amendment 4, failed after not meeting the 60% threshold it needed to pass. On the other side, measures to protect abortion rights did pass in Arizona, Maryland, and New York. How the issue impacted voter turnout is something pollsters and USA TODAY reporters will be closely watching in the days to come.
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Facing a barrage of robocalls, political ads, and campaign outreach that some said felt like overreach, many pushed past election fatigue and headed out to the polls. My colleague, Dana Taylor, spoke with USA TODAY national news reporter Lauren Villagran about how some Americans felt as they cast their votes.
Dana Taylor:
It’s good to have you on, Lauren.
Lauren Villagran:
Hey, Dana.
Dana Taylor:
Were American voters optimistic as they headed to the polls yesterday, or was it more of a mixed bag?
Lauren Villagran:
Yeah, I would say it was a mixed bag. USA TODAY had reporters fanned out across the country, especially in swing states, places like Reno, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Atlanta, key cities in key states, and across the country we saw a lot of optimism. There were long lines at polls even before the polls opened yesterday on Tuesday. Millions of Americans had already voted via mail-in ballot or in early voting opportunities. So it’s clearly been a historic time in the country.
Dana Taylor:
You highlighted several first-time voters. What was this experience like for them?
Lauren Villagran:
Yeah, there were first-time voters, many who showed up to the polls. Our reporters met, for example, Tyler Hilliard, who is an 18-year-old in Nevada who went to vote with his dad. He was there before 7:00 AM yesterday and just said he felt proud. Poll workers gave him a first-time voter certificate, and folks at the polls clapped for him.
Dana Taylor:
You also wrote about Nevada’s 90,000 tribal voters. Nevada was a coveted swing state this year. What impact did that have on their decision to vote?
Lauren Villagran:
USA TODAY reporter Trevor Hughes was in Reno, Nevada, where he met a husband-wife, team Ayana Isham, and her husband, Kendell Isham, both 25 years old. They cast their ballots at Reno-Sparks Indian Colony in Nevada. Ayana said that growing up on the reservation, that a lot of times folks said that they didn’t believe their vote counted, and she was there to say that she believed that her vote is really important. There were folks across swing states, Dana, who were keenly aware that every single vote, especially in these states, was going to count toward the outcome of this election.
Dana Taylor:
Lauren, we’ve talked a lot this year about how politics have divided the country. One of the candidates was the target of two assassination attempts. What role did that play?
Lauren Villagran:
USA TODAY reporter Phillip Bailey was in the field in North Carolina, where he met voter Laura Lindsay of Harrisburg. She’s been a longtime Trump supporter, but her husband is a registered independent and wasn’t planning on voting for former president Donald Trump until the first assassination attempt. That moment when Trump raised his fist and there was blood around his ear, that really moved her husband, and they both cast their ballots, and he changed his mind and voted for Trump in North Carolina, another swing state.
Dana Taylor:
The big question on everyone’s mind is whether voters will accept the outcome of the election. Did you get a sense of which way people are leaning?
Lauren Villagran:
Folks who reporters spoke with at the polls leaned towards saying they were going to accept the results. There were some who would repeat what we’ve all often heard on the campaign trail, particularly from Trump supporters, that if the election is kind of “fair and free,” they will accept the results. There are Republicans who said they were worried Democrats wouldn’t accept the results if Harris loses, and Democrats who said they were concerned that Republicans won’t accept the results if Trump loses. So as we head into today and tomorrow and continue to wait for the results of this election, I think how Americans ultimately accept whether the election was free and fair is really going to be something that’s going to evolve this week.
Dana Taylor:
Lauren, thank you so much for being on The Excerpt.
Lauren Villagran:
Thanks, Dana.
Taylor Wilson:
You can read more on what voters shared about their experience at the polls yesterday with a link in today’s show notes. For more election results and news throughout the day and week, stay with usatoday.com and right here on The Excerpt.
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If you’re one of the millions who are fans of books and are looking for non-election-related news, we have a great episode coming for you this afternoon about bookstores. Bob Manson is a retired teacher from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and he’s also a super fan of independent bookstores, so much so that he has now visited over 600 of them across the country. He joins my co-host Dana Taylor to discuss his travels and why he finds independent bookstores so inspiring. Find it this afternoon, beginning at 4:00 PM Eastern Time right here on The Excerpt.
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Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your pods, and if you’re on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I’m Taylor Wilson, and I’ll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.
Source: politics.einnews.com…
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