The US presidential election is far from decided, but the playing field appears to be steadily tilting toward Donald Trump.

The electoral map is beginning to look more like 2016, when Trump won, than 2020, when he lost.

Across the US, in counties that have reported their results, the former president is making modest but noticeable headway.

Trump has been projected to win North Carolina, the first of the seven battleground states to be decided. He leads in Georgia, on the back of a strong performance in traditional rural areas.

Kamala Harris is largely matching Joe Biden’s totals in the urban and suburban counties, but so far it has not been enough for her to close the gap with the former president.

The Sun Belt door to a Harris presidential victory is slamming shut. North Carolina, the one battleground state that Trump won in 2020, remains in his column.

All eyes are again turning to the Democratic “Blue Wall” states along the Great Lakes, where Trump has also built narrow leads. There are indications that Harris is not meeting Democratic expectations in the urban and suburban areas of those states, either, and that could be the difference between victory and defeat.

The Harris campaign is still pointing toward a path to victory along these great lake states, but if the tide turns in her favour, the shift won’t happen until the big cities finish reporting their tallies. That will take hours if not days.

In close presidential elections, key battleground states tend to break in one direction. So far, the movement has been toward the Republicans – both for Donald Trump and for many of the party’s top Senate candidates.

At Trump’s election-watch party in Mar-a-Lago, the mood is festive. At Howard University, where Harris faithful have gathered, the situation is tense.

If the current electoral trends continue, former president Trump will be on his way toward becoming president-elect Trump.

A batch of exit poll data also provides some early clues about how Americans voted, shedding light on the divide between men and women in this election.

Not surprisingly, a majority of women are backing Kamala Harris, while men are giving their support to Donald Trump.

What is a bit surprising, at least according to these findings, is that the 54% of women voting for Harris doesn’t match the 57% that backed Joe Biden in 2020.

All that talk of a historic political divide between the two genders may have been premature.

Exit poll results often shift as the hours tick by and should be seen as general guide and not a detailed map, but if Democrats have lost ground with women voters compared to four years ago, it would be extremely concerning for the Harris camp.

One thing is clear at this point, however. Turnout in this election is once again approaching the highest level in modern American history. It may even eclipse the 65.9% mark set in 2020.

Both Trump and Harris have repeatedly said that the stakes in this election are high. The American public seems to have heeded that call.

This analysis will be updated as more results come in.