Stephanie Perry

Donald Trump has been elected the 47th president of the United States, NBC News projects — overcoming polls, prosecutions and other pitfalls that appeared to be standing in his way over a two-year campaign.

The state of democracy and the economy in the U.S. were the top issues on the minds of voters as they cast ballots in the presidential election, according to preliminary results from the NBC News Exit Poll.

Exit polls, large-scale studies of voters, now include phone calls to early and mail voters as well as interviews outside polling places on Election Day.

Half of registered voters under 30 years old plan to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris and one-third are lining up with former President Donald Trump — relatively unchanged from a previous survey in August, according to the new NBC News Stay Tuned Gen Z Poll, powered by SurveyMonkey.

Kamala Harris still has a wide lead over Donald Trump among Black voters in battleground states, according to a new poll, which shows a key slice of undecided Black voters still poised to make a decision about the presidential election.

Here’s how the NBC News Decision Desk projects election winners, the steps it takes to verify results and the answers to some frequently asked questions on the process.

An overwhelming majority of Black likely voters in battleground states said they’ll vote for Kamala Harris — though she needs to close the deal with some skeptical undecideds to reach Joe Biden’s 2020 margins.

Half of Gen Z voters say they’ll vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in November, while one-third say they’ll vote for former President Donald Trump — a bigger gap for the Democratic nominee than some other polls this year but not quite at 2020 levels for the party, according to a new survey of registered voters under 30.

Three in 10 voters under 30 years old say that inflation and the cost of living is the most important problem currently facing the country — three times more than the share calling “threats to democracy” their most important issue, which was the next highest issue among young voters.

NBC News exit polls show how Donald Trump won Super Tuesday Republican presidential primary elections over Nikki Haley.

Democrat Josh Stein and Republican Mark Robinson have won their party’s primaries for governor in North Carolina, NBC News projects.