Vote count: Trump scored GOP’s biggest win in 36 years, Democrats bailed on Harris

President-elect Donald Trump won’t crack the 50% mark but is still on track for a comfortable win in the popular vote.

Ballots were still being tallied three weeks after Election Day, and the size and scope of Mr. Trump’s victory were firming up in what analysts called a decisive but not overwhelming victory for the Republican Party.

As of Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump had roughly 77 million votes banked compared with nearly 74.5 million for Vice President Kamala Harris. That works out to 49.9% of the vote for Mr. Trump and 48.3% for Ms. Harris. The remaining votes were cast for Green Party, Libertarian Party and independent candidates.

Ms. Harris will likely close that gap a little more, given that most of the remaining ballots are on the liberal-leaning West Coast.

Mr. Trump’s 312-226 win in the Electoral College should remain unchanged, barring a faithless elector or two.

The results challenge Republicans’ claims of a massive mandate but give Mr. Trump the most decisive win for a Republican candidate in 36 years.

“It was a close election by historical standards, although not necessarily by recent standards,” said Kyle Kondik, an analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “This election was probably most comparable to 2004, the last time a Republican won the popular vote, although that was not a sweeping victory and neither was this.”

Mr. Trump surpassed his 2020 vote total of 74.2 million, but the more significant factor was Ms. Harris’ stumble from President Biden’s record-shattering 81.3 million votes in 2020.

Based on exit polling and early results, election night indications suggested that Mr. Trump improved across geographic and demographic divides. He made significant inroads in the growing Hispanic electorate and performed better in counties with heavy Asian American populations.

Mr. Trump flipped the gender gap, winning men by a larger percentage than Ms. Harris won women. Prognosticators figured suburban women would doom him.

Perhaps most striking was his ability to eat into Democratic strongholds.

He won Texas by nearly 14 percentage points and Florida by 13. Those were larger margins than Ms. Harris’ 11-point victory in deep-blue New York. New Jersey, considered a safe blue state, ended up with a 6-point lead for Ms. Harris — almost as close as supposedly battleground Arizona, where Mr. Trump won by 5.5 points.

Mr. Trump improved his performance in nearly 90% of the counties nationwide.

“Trump’s victory was narrow but broad-based, with indications of a breakthrough among non-White working-class voters,” said William Galston, an analyst at the Brookings Institution.

However narrow the win, Mr. Trump has a postelection honeymoon with much of America.

He now has a 54% approval rating in the Emerson College poll, up 6 percentage points over Emerson’s preelection poll. A YouGov/CBS News survey over the weekend found striking optimism about Mr. Trump’s upcoming term, with 59% approving of how he has handled the election aftermath.

His election performance also helped pull the Republican Party into control of Congress.

The country’s Senate races have been settled, and Republicans gained seats in West Virginia, Ohio, Montana and Pennsylvania.

They will emerge with 53 seats, compared with 47 for the Senate Democratic Caucus. Democrats currently hold a 51-49 advantage.

Republicans also retained control of the House, though the size of their majority is in doubt. Three House races are still too close to announce a winner.

In Iowa, Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ race against Democrat Christina Bohannan was in a recount. The original tally showed Ms. Miller-Meeks leading by about 800 votes out of more than 400,000 cast.

In California, votes are still being counted in the race involving Rep. John Duarte, a Republican who held a 200-vote lead over Democrat Adam Gray out of more than 200,000 votes cast, and Derek Tran, a Democrat who had a roughly 600-vote lead over Republican Rep. Michelle Steel with more than 300,000 votes cast.

If each result holds, Republicans will emerge with a 221-214 edge in the House next year. That’s roughly what they had for most of the current session.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the expected partisan breakdown in the House.