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

Ballots are still being tallied in some slow-counting states three weeks after Election Day, but the size and scope of Mr. Trump’s victory are firming up in what analysts called a decisive, but not overwhelming, victory for the GOP.

He had roughly 77 million votes banked as of Tuesday morning, compared to 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 rest of the votes were sprinkled among the Green Party, Libertarian Party and independent candidates.

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

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

The results challenge Republicans’ claims of a massive mandate but still 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’s 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 has surpassed his 2020 vote total of 74.2 million. But the bigger factor in the election was Ms. Harris’ stumble, falling from President Biden’s record-shattering 81.3 million votes in 2020.

Election night indications, based on exit polling and early results, suggested that Mr. Trump improved across geographic and demographic divides. He made significant inroads in the growing Hispanic vote, and did better in counties with heavy Asian-American populations, too.

And he flipped the gender gap, winning men by a larger percentage than Ms. Harris won women — defying the expectations of prognosticators who 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 — both larger 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.

Nationwide, Mr. Trump bettered his performance in 2024 in nearly 90% of counties.

“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 is enjoying a post-election honeymoon with much of America.

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

His election performance helped drag the GOP to control of Congress, too.

All of the country’s Senate races have been settled, with the GOP gaining seats in West Virginia, Ohio, Montana and Pennsylvania.

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

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

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

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

If each of those results holds, Republicans would emerge with a 221-114 edge in the House next year. That’s roughly what they held for most of the current session.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.