As Donald Trump racked up more electoral votes, Kamala Harris’ campaign co-chair addressed her rally at Howard University, saying there are still votes to be counted and states left to be called and Harris will address the nation on Wednesday.
As Donald Trump racked up more electoral votes, Kamala Harris’ campaign co-chair addressed her rally at Howard University, saying there are still votes to be counted and states left to be called and Harris will address the nation on Wednesday.
Millions of Americans have lined up at polling stations across the United States to choose between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris in a historic presidential race that remains too close to call.
Voting was under way on Tuesday with no major disruptions, as both candidates spent Election Day urging their supporters to cast their ballots, stressing that the stakes could not be higher.
“Today we vote for a brighter future,” Harris wrote in a post on X, linking to a national directory of polling sites.
Today, we vote for a brighter future.
Polling locations across the country are open. Find yours at https://t.co/VbrfuqVy9P. pic.twitter.com/7pJzch0XJR
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) November 5, 2024
Harris spent part of the day calling radio stations in an effort to encourage her supporters to vote. “We’ve got to get it done. Today is voting day, and people need to get out and be active,” CNN quoted Harris as telling one radio station in Georgia.
Trump, on his X account, told voters: “I need you to deliver your vote no matter how long it takes”, slamming his opponents as “radical communist Democrats”.
He addressed the media after casting his ballot in Palm Beach, Florida, saying he felt “very confident” about his election odds.
“It looks like Republicans have shown up in force,” Trump said. “We’ll see how it turns out.”
He added: “I hear we’re doing very well.”
A race churned by unprecedented events – two assassination attempts against Trump, President Joe Biden’s surprise withdrawal and Harris’s rapid rise – remained neck and neck, even after billions of dollars in spending and months of frenetic campaigning.
More than 80 million Americans had already taken advantage of early voting options before Tuesday, either via mail or in person, and lines at several polling stations on Tuesday were short and orderly.
Some glitches of vote-counting technology were reported in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, and a local court granted a request by election officials to extend voting hours by two hours on Tuesday night.
Several states have taken extra security measures to protect voting places.
In Georgia, election workers have been equipped with panic buttons to alert officials to possible security threats and violence.
In Maricopa County, Arizona, the heated scene of voter fraud allegations in the 2020 election, the voter tabulation centre now looks like a fortress behind fencing, concrete barriers and security cameras and with drones and police snipers.
But there were few incidents reported on Tuesday. Two polling locations in Fulton County, Georgia were briefly evacuated after false bomb threats.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said it was “aware of bomb threats to polling locations in several states”.
Many appear to originate from “Russian email domains”, it said in a post on X, adding that none of the threats have been determined to be credible.
Stephanie Jackson Ali, policy director at the New Georgia Project, told Al Jazeera that threats made against polling places in Georgia are not a danger.
“The [Georgia] secretary of state’s office believes that they are from a Russian influencing troll farm, basically, so not anything that’s credible or local”, she said.
These threats were against polling places in heavily Black-populated areas, she said, including Democratic-voting Fulton County, where Atlanta is located.
“This signifies that the power of the Black vote in Georgia is substantial, the power of the rising electorate is substantial.”
The “rising electorate” she said, includes Black voters, new voters, LGBTQ voters and Latino voters, who live in Atlanta in higher percentages than they do in the rest of the mostly conservative rural areas of the state.
In Dearborn, Michigan, Nakita Hogue, 50, was joined by her 18-year-old college student daughter, Niemah Hogue, to vote for Harris. Niemah said she takes birth control to help regulate her period, while her mother recalled needing surgery after she had a miscarriage in her 20s, and both feared efforts by Republican lawmakers to restrict women’s healthcare.
“For my daughter, who is going out into the world and making her own way, I want her to have that choice,” Nakita Hogue said. “She should be able to make her own decisions.”
At a library in Phoenix, Arizona, Felicia Navajo, 34, and her husband Jesse Miranda, 52, arrived with one of their three young children to vote for Trump.
Miranda, a union plumber, immigrated to the US from Mexico when he was four years old, and said he believed Trump would do a better job of fighting inflation and controlling immigration.
“I want to see good people come to this town, people that are willing to work, people who are willing to just live the American dream,” Miranda said.
Trump’s campaign has suggested he may declare victory on election night even while millions of ballots have yet to be counted, as he did four years ago.
The former president has repeatedly said any defeat could only stem from widespread fraud, echoing his false claims from 2020. The winner may not be known for days if the margins in battleground states are as slim as expected.
No matter who wins, history will be made.
Harris, 60, the first female vice president, would become the first woman, Black woman and South Asian American to win the presidency. Trump, 78, the only president to be impeached twice and the first former president to be criminally convicted, would also become the first president to win non-consecutive terms in more than a century.
Opinion polls show the candidates running neck and neck in each of the seven swing states likely to determine the winner: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Reuters/Ipsos polling shows Harris leading among women by 12 percentage points and Trump winning among men by seven percentage points.
The hard-right Florida governor Ron DeSantis was widely seen as the most probable Republican candidate to prevent former president Donald Trump from becoming the party’s nominee for a third consecutive election. However, in January, despite being backed by the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, DeSantis ends his flailing campaign – and eventually endorses Trump, whose team had smeared him as “Pudding Fingers” owing to his alleged eating habits. Running almost as an incumbent, Trump’s last serious challenger ends up being the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who, against all expectations, takes on the mantle of the anti-Trump vote. Casting doubt on Trump’s mental fitness and his loyalty to the US constitution, the former UN ambassador garners significant support – and perseveres until Super Tuesday in March, when she finally stands aside, leaving Trump as the last major candidate standing for the 2024 Republican nomination.
In the annals of American politics, incumbent presidents seeking re-election typically enjoy a significant edge over their challengers. However, Joe Biden – the country’s oldest president – bucks the trend as his meandering remarks, frequent misspeaking of names and halting speech raise concerns that he might just be too old to take on Trump again. Nevertheless, essentially unopposed, the 46th president of the US runs the board in the Democratic primaries and is named the party’s candidate for 2024, while vowing that, despite his advancing years, he remains the most capable contender to defeat Trump once again.
The first real jolt of the election campaign arrives on 30 May, when a jury of 12 New Yorkers makes Trump the first ex-president in American history to become a convicted felon. They find him guilty of committing a crime – 34 of them, in fact – when he falsified business records to disguise $130,000 (£100,000) in hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels, to hide the scandal from American voters on the eve of the 2016 election. It is far from Trump’s only legal woe: at various times he has faced more than 90 criminal counts, including racketeering charges in Georgia for a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results, where he marked another milestone: the first mugshot of an American president. (That case itself later takes a dramatic turn when the district attorney, Fani Willis, is revealed to have had an affair with a prosecutor she hired, and the case remains on hold while a judge considers whether to disqualify her.) Separately, in February, a federal judge orders Trump to pay $83.3m to the writer E Jean Carroll, who had sued for defamation after Trump publicly disputed that he had sexually assaulted her – an accusation the judge ruled was “substantially true”. Many of the other cases remain in limbo while Trump pursues his well worn legal tactic: delay, delay, delay.
Biden’s performance in the opening presidential debate against Trump on 27 June in Atlanta is perhaps one of the worst in American history. Shaky, raspy-voiced and slack-jawed, his disastrous showing is punctuated by repeated stumbles over words, uncomfortable pauses and at least one point where he trails off before claiming: “We finally beat Medicare.” Top Democratic figures and donors panic, while recriminations swirl about the role of his campaign and of the media in failing to adequately account for his apparently declining mental fitness. The drum beat for Biden, 81, to step aside becomes increasingly relentless, as Democratic strategists finally join average voters in questioning whether the party might yet swap him out for a younger standard bearer to face off against Trump.
On 1 July, the supreme court drops a bombshell of its own: it rules that Trump is at least partly immune from criminal prosecution for anything he did in his “official capacity” as president. The decision, a major victory for Trump, destroys the likelihood of a criminal trial for Trump over trying to subvert the 2020 election occurring before the new election in November 2024. It is also the latest example of what most observers agree is the rightwing capture of the supreme court that Trump himself made possible by appointing three arch-conservative judges. Having already overturned Roe v Wade – a monumental victory for the anti-abortion movement, for which Trump proudly claims credit, that made abortion a huge issue in the 2022 midterms and now the 2024 election – the conservatives had caused even more of a furore in May when photos proved an upside down flag flew outside the home of Justice Samuel Alito, a symbol of support for Trump’s “Stop the Steal” movement that was prominent at the 6 January riot. Since the immunity ruling, the special counsel Jack Smith has hit back, filing a new indictment with more streamlined allegations; Trump in return has promised to fire Smith “within two seconds” if he wins re-election.
On 13 July, during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump is shot and wounded in his upper right ear by Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, who fires eight bullets with an AR-15-style rifle from the rooftop of a nearby building. As security agents cover the president, he stands with a raised fist and shouts: “Fight, fight, fight”, in what becomes an instantly iconic photograph and moment. The shooting claims the life of one attender and two others are left in critical condition; Crooks is killed by security agents. Just nine weeks later, on 15 September, Trump is allegedly the target of a second aspiring assassin at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, where Secret Service agents find Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, hiding in the bushes with a rifle. As well as setting off a crisis in the Secret Service, the events give Trump a rallying cry for his re-election effort: he appears at the Republican national convention days after the Butler shooting wearing an ear bandage, to a rapturous welcome.
At 1.46pm on 21 July, Biden announces he will no longer seek re-election – ending weeks of fevered speculation and mounting pressure from lawmakers, donors, activists and voters terrified of his inability to beat Trump. A key intervention comes from the actor and Democratic fundraiser George Clooney: “It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fundraiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010,” he writes. Biden’s longtime political ally and ex-House speaker Nancy Pelosi also plays a crucial role in limiting the president’s legacy to one term in what she says is a “cold calculation” for the sake of the country – and later tells the Guardian she has not spoken to her old friend since.
Taking the stage in Chicago on 23 August to a thunderous standing ovation, the vice-president, Kamala Harris, with the full-throated support of Biden, officially accepts the Democratic presidential nomination, making her the first Black woman to lead a major party ticket. Harris declares the election an opportunity for the country to “chart a new way forward” and encourages voters to write the “next great chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told”. The impact is immediate and dramatic: she goes on to raise more than $1bn in less than three months, a record, and draws boisterous crowds to energetic rallies where she focuses on reproductive rights, economic help for the middle class and safeguarding US democracy.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, the scion of the most famous Democratic family whose independent campaign for president had at times reached as high as 10% in national polling, drops out. Kennedy had faced a string of scandals, including accusations he had assaulted a former babysitter. He also admitted that, yes, it was him who dumped a bear carcass in Central Park in a case that had mystified New Yorkers a decade earlier. After dropping out, the environmental campaigner turned vaccine skeptic then plays both sides – reportedly making overtures to Harris in August to discuss endorsing her in exchange for a job, then opting to back Trump, who has allegedly offered Kennedy control over the health agencies. Among third-party candidates still running are the environmentalist Jill Stein, who also stood as the Green party’s candidate in 2012 and 2016, the progressive activist Cornel West and Chase Oliver of the Libertarian party.
In July, the Ohio senator JD Vance formally accepts Trump’s offer to run as his vice-presidential nominee – a dramatic change of position for Vance, the author of the hit memoir Hillbilly Elegy who once described himself as a “never Trumper” and called his new boss “America’s Hitler”. But if there is one quote for which JD Vance will be remembered in history, it is his controversial definition of leading Democrats: “A bunch of childless cat ladies,” he told the Fox News host Tucker Carlson in 2021. On the other side of the aisle, Harris chooses the Minnesota governor Tim Walz, a native of rural Nebraska who was a teacher and high school football coach and served in the National Guard for 24 years before entering politics. Walz captures national attention with a surprisingly effective takedown of Republicans: “These guys are just weird.”
The wealthiest man on the planet formally declares what most people had suspected after he bought Twitter and rebranded it as the more extreme X: he is a fully fledged cheerleader for Trump. First endorsing Trump after the assassination attempt, and then dancing and leaping on stage at a Trump rally, the boss of Tesla, Space X and several other companies takes to the newest of his many jobs with a gusto that shames even the most politically active billionaires. Musk becomes everything from a Trump policy adviser to a mega-donor and (through his America Pac campaign group) a leading figure in the Republican “ground game”, its effort to get voters to the polls. In October, he also begins giving away $1m a day to Pennsylvanians who are registered voters – causing a judge to demand his presence in court for running an “illegal lottery”. To those who ask what’s in it for Musk, observers point to billions in federal contracts and Trump promising him a role in helping to gut regulators.
On 11 September, Harris outperforms Trump in their first debate, appearing to vindicate Biden’s decision to gracefully bow out and marking a dramatic change in fortune as she takes a slight polling lead over Trump – though the polls essentially remain tied for the remainder of the race. However, it isn’t Harris’s victory that most attracts headlines from the debate, but the former president’s claim about immigrants from Haiti: “In Springfield, they are eating the dogs,” Trump said. “They are eating the cats. They are eating the pets of the people that live there.” Quickly immortalised in a viral song, the statement – an obvious and quickly debunked lie – appears at first to hurt the Republicans, but far from repudiating it Trump and Vance begin repeating it as part of an anti-immigrant focus that the campaign embraces as its driving principle, including a promise to carry out the largest mass deportation in US history.
If Trump can rely on the support of the world’s richest man, Harris can count on that of its biggest-selling recording artist. In a post on Instagram minutes after the debate, Taylor Swift endorses Harris, encouraging her fans to register to vote and signing it “Childless Cat Lady”, a reference to Vance’s slur. She is hardly alone: Charli xcx had already set off a series of pro-Harris internet memes by tweeting “kamala IS brat” – referring to a lifestyle inspired by noughties excess and rave culture, as well as the name of her hit album Brat – and eventually Beyoncé, Eminem (whose hit Lose Yourself was rapped by Barack Obama at a Detroit rally where the superstar told his home city to “use your voice” for Harris) and dozens more popstars back Harris. From actors such as Robert De Niro – who clashes with Trump supporters outside the ex-president’s hush-money trial in New York – and the cast of Marvel’s Avengers movies, or athletes such as LeBron James (“When I think about my kids and my family and how they will grow up, the choice is clear to me”), most of the highest-profile celebrity endorsements have gone to Harris – though Trump can boast he has Hulk Hogan, Dr Phil and Kid Rock in his camp.
Anger and vitriol take centre stage at New York’s Madison Square Garden as Trump and a cabal of his acolytes hold a rally marked by racist comments, coarse insults and threats about immigrants. The rally features nearly 30 speakers, with some of them making a series of racist remarks about Latinos, Black Americans and Jewish citizens. “I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” Tony Hinchcliffe says, among other controversial remarks including singling out a Black man in a remark about watermelons. In the subsequent hours, Democrats, celebrities and Hispanic groups on both sides of the political aisle condemn the comments as “offensive” and “derogatory”, with many voters of Puerto Rican heritage saying they will change their votes to Harris – potentially a key voting bloc in the swing state of Pennsylvania. The event had already drawn comparisons to an infamous Nazi rally held at the arena in 1939, with the Democratic National Committee projecting images on the outside of the building repeating claims from Trump’s former chief of staff that he had “praised Hitler” – and although Vance dismisses the comparison, many note it was only in 2016 that Vance himself had suggested Trump could become “America’s Hitler”.
The days leading up to election day are always the most frenzied, and the 2024 race is no exception, with the candidates trading insults and billions of people around the world glued to the latest polls, which do not show a clear lead for either Trump or Harris. With the White House illuminated behind her, Harris draws a crowd of more than 75,000 people in Washington DC, referring to Trump as “another petty tyrant” who had stood in the same spot nearly four years ago and, in a last-gasp effort to cling to power, helped incite the mob that stormed the US Capitol. Meanwhile, Trump continues to smear immigrants and arrives at a rally in a garbage truck, a stunt to attack Democrats. Police chiefs and sheriffs across the country brace for potential violence against election workers, disruptions at polling locations and harassment of voters, while unfounded allegations of voter fraud prompt fears that Trump could, once more, refuse to accept the results if he loses – and this time get millions of Americans to do the same.
In Michigan, Trump then goes on to talk insultingly about President Joe Biden, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and representative Adam Schiff, the lead investigator in Trump’s first impeachment.
“Joe Biden in one of his crazy moments said that we were all garbage,” Trump remarked adding “They stole the election from a president,” in apparent reference to Biden’s dropping out of the campaign to be replaced by Harris.
He then says of Pelosi “she’s a crooked person … evil, sick, crazy b… oh no! It starts with a ‘b’ but I won’t say it! I wanna say it.”
He said of “Adam Shifty Schiff”: “He’s got the biggest head, he’s an unattractive guy both inside and out.”
Key events
After touting Joe Rogan’s endorsement of him, Trump has invited his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, the co-chair of the National Republican Committee, to take the mic.
She says “we send a loud and clear message” to “the mainstream media” and “the swamp” among other people “that it is we who get to choose the president”.
She says it has been “a very special night for our family”, adding “it has been my honour to be a part of this family, to be out speaking on behalf of a man whom I love … who is going to save this country and is going to save the world.”
It’s approaching 2am in Michigan.
Trump has now called his family up to the stage, including his sons Eric and Donald Jr, Tiffany Trump and her husband Michael Boulos and Eric’s wife Lara, who is the co-chair of the National Republican Committee.
His daughter Ivanka Trump, who was a White House advisor to him during his first term, and his wife Melania, are notable by their absence.
Trump has given shoutouts to a list of people supporting him, including Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the ambassador to Germany during his time in office, Rick Grenell.
He goes into a story about former chancellor Angela Merkel, saying that when Grenell “was taken out it was the happiest day of her life”.
At one point he adds as an aside, “We can’t let them forget that we stopped that big Chinese plant in Mexico!” and “Let’s put it this way if they build it theyre going to lose their ass”. It wasn’t clear who or what plant he was referring to – see our earlier post.
The crowds are reportedly beginning to thin out at Trump’s rally in Michigan. He’s been talking for over an hour now.
As the clock ticked past 1am in Grand Rapids, the crowd at this final Trump rally began to thin. Trump has brought much more energy here than he did in Pittsburgh but it’s getting laaaate.
— Garrett Haake (@GarrettHaake) November 5, 2024
It’s 1.30am in Michigan and Trump has now moved back to talking about cutting energy prices and the cost of groceries again.
He tells a familiar story about an old woman going into a shop to buy three apples but only being able to afford two and having to put one back in the fridge (“refrigeration”). It’s not clear where or when this happened.
“That shouldn’t be happening in our country,” he says.
After some more insults hurled at Kamala Harris and California governor Gavin Newsom, Trump begins making further inflammatory remarks about immigration, accusing Harris of wanting open borders and of allowing an “invasion” of immigrants including those from “mental institutions”.
“The day I take office the migrant invasion ends,” he says, later adding that we “live in an occupied country”.
He also repeats his call for the death penalty for any illegal immigrant who kills and American citizen and his plan to ban sanctuary cities.
Trump has promised to restore and expand his most controversial immigration policies, including the travel ban aimed at mostly Muslim countries. He has consistently promised to stage the “largest deportation operation in American history”.
Trump talks briefly about groceries (“People say ‘groceries,’ right? I haven’t used tha … it’s such a sort of an old term.”)
Then he talks for a while about the attempt to assassinate him in Pennsylvania in July. He calls his survival a “miracle” and at one point mentions that “illegal immigration saved me” although I didn’t catch how.
He then moves into an anecdote about visiting Abraham Lincoln’s bedroom with Melania Trump. He says that the assassinated president suffered from “melancholia” and adds that: “He was very tall, he was six foot six, that’s the equivalent of a Barron Trump today … the bed was very long.”
After a few asides about Melania’s book, he returns to the theme of the attempt on his life.
Trump has returned to the theme of plants and Mexico, telling a convoluted story about a businessman friend and China’s intention to build a plant in Mexico which was going “to destroy Michigan”.
He says that his threats to “put a 100% tariff on every single car coming out of that plant” had led to a decision not to build the purported plant.
“I saved Detroit and Michigan a lot and I did that without even being president,” he claims.
It’s not clear what plant he’s referring to. Newsweek has previously reported after similar remarks he made at the end of last month that his campaign could not confirm what plant it was but that it appeared to be one planned by auto manufacturer BYD and that there was no evidence the claim was true.
Jonathan Yerushalmy
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have tied with three votes each in the tiny New Hampshire town which traditionally kicks off voting on election day.
Since the 1960’s, voters in Dixville Notch, located close to the border with Canada, have gathered just after midnight to cast their ballots. Votes are then counted and results announced – hours before other states even open their polls.
According to CNN, four Republicans and two undeclared voters participated took part in the vote just after midnight on Tuesday.
Trump then launches into some familiar insults of Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton of whom he says, “She called me and conceded [presumably eight years ago] and then spent seven years saying how she was a good sport.”
He calls Harris a “low IQ person” and then begins on a long story about Elon Musk and his rockets.
In Michigan, Trump then goes on to talk insultingly about President Joe Biden, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and representative Adam Schiff, the lead investigator in Trump’s first impeachment.
“Joe Biden in one of his crazy moments said that we were all garbage,” Trump remarked adding “They stole the election from a president,” in apparent reference to Biden’s dropping out of the campaign to be replaced by Harris.
He then says of Pelosi “she’s a crooked person … evil, sick, crazy b… oh no! It starts with a ‘b’ but I won’t say it! I wanna say it.”
He said of “Adam Shifty Schiff”: “He’s got the biggest head, he’s an unattractive guy both inside and out.”
In Michigan, Trump claims to have done 930 rallies during his campaign, which I can’t confirm. Then he continues:
If you make one slip up and you know I wrote a beautiful speech I haven’t even gotten to it yet … rarely do they ever catch me making a mistake!
Those ellipses are covering for a series of meandering comments which included remarks on his use of teleprompters and the state of the country.
Trump starts his rally in Michigan apparently talking about his first election run, saying “we were given a three per cent chance” in Michigan and then begins a series of rambling remarks about Detroit, (“I’ve heard a lot about Detroit”) and adds “We killed the plant in Mexico”. It’s not clear what he was referring to.
He then moved on to immigration, saying the US was suffering the “invasion of some of the biggest criminals in the world… we’re going to end that immediately.”
“We don’t have to live this way,” he adds.
Then he moves on to Kamala Harris, mocking her and claiming, “Nobody knew who the hell she was.” He then made some more inflammatory comments about transgender people .
Trump has finally arrived at his final rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, almost two and a half hours behind schedule.
Rachel Leingang
A few dozen conservative voters gathered at a Phoenix park to launch a canvass with Turning Point Action the night before the election, pulling up an app to get names and locations of voters they could talk to and convince to head to the polls.
Turning Point, the conservative youth organization, has run its “chase the vote” program in Arizona and Wisconsin to reach low propensity voters. Monday’s “super chase” canvass involved a data-driven approach to a part of town that the group says has right-leaning voters who haven’t yet turned in ballots.
“We actually modeled this program around a lot of what the Democrats have built in years prior,” said Andrew Kolvet, the group’s spokesman.
People from 47 states have come to Arizona and Wisconsin to volunteer with the group to turn out voters, Kolvet said. At the Phoenix park, teams of at least two – often wearing red Maga hats and toting clipboards – set off to knock some doors.
“The job is not to convince a swing voter necessarily, or to convince a Democrat to vote Republican,” Kolvet said. “These are people that we know are probably our people that just haven’t got their vote in.”
Registered Republicans have so far turned in more ballots than their Democratic counterparts in Arizona, a reversal of the last two cycles when Republicans trailed in early voting (though Republicans before 2020 often had a lead in early votes).
“We’re feeling as good as we could feel,” Kolvet said. “I’m not predicting victory. I’m just saying we have done the hard work and set the state up to have a really good day tomorrow. Anything could happen.”
Lauren Gambino
Dispatch from Philadelphia: Kamala Harris has run a remarkable 107-day presidential campaign, the shortest in modern political history.
It began on a Sunday morning with a call from the president saying he was stepping down. On election eve, hours before polls opened, she finished the final speech of a campaign she cast as a fight for American democracy.
But Harris has also sought to inject hope and optimism into her campaign.
“Tonight, then, we finish, as we started with optimism with energy, with joy,” she said.
“Generations before us led the fight for freedom, and now the baton is in our hands,” she said.
“We need to get to work and get out the vote,” she concluded.
A Georgia poll worker was arrested on Monday on US charges that he sent a letter threatening to bomb election workers that he wrote to appear as if it came from a voter in the presidential election battleground state. Reuters reports:
Federal prosecutors said Nicholas Wimbish, 25, had been serving as a poll worker at the Jones County Elections Office in Gray, Georgia, on Oct. 16 when he got into a verbal altercation with a voter.
The next day, Wimbish mailed a letter to the county’s elections superintendent that was drafted to appear as if it came from that same voter, prosecutors said. The letter complained that Wimbish was a “closeted liberal election fraudster” who had been distracting voters in line to cast ballots, according to charging papers.
Authorities said the letter, signed by a “Jones county voter,” said Wimbish and others “should look over their shoulder” and warned that people would “learn a violent lesson about stealing our elections!”
Prosecutors said the letter ended with a handwritten note: “PS boom toy in early vote place, cigar burning, be safe.”
Wimbish was charged with mailing a bomb threat, conveying false information about a bomb threat, mailing a threatening letter, and making false statements to the FBI, prosecutors said. A lawyer for Wimbish could not be immediately identified.
Georgia is one of seven closely contested states expected to decide the outcome of Tuesday’s presidential election match up between Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
Concerns about potential political violence have prompted officials to take a variety of measures to bolster security during and after Election Day.
WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s the election that no one could have foreseen.
Not so long ago, Donald Trump was marinating in anger at Mar-a-Lago after being impeached twice and voted out of the White House. Even some of his closest allies were looking forward to a future without the charismatic yet erratic billionaire leading the Republican Party, especially after his failed attempt to overturn an election ended in violence and shame. When Trump announced his comeback bid two years ago, the New York Post buried the article on page 26.
At the same time, Kamala Harris was languishing as a low-profile sidekick to President Joe Biden. Once seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party, she struggled with both her profile and her portfolio, disappointing her supporters and delighting her critics. No one was talking about Harris running for the top job — they were wondering if Biden should replace her as his running mate when he sought a second term.
But on Tuesday, improbable as it may have seemed before, Americans will choose either Trump or Harris to serve as the next president. It’s the final chapter in one of the most bewildering, unpredictable and consequential sagas in political history. For once, the word “unprecedented” has not been overused.
“If someone had told you ahead of time what was going to happen in this election, and you tried to sell it as a book, no one would believe it,” said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster with more than four decades of experience. “It’s energized the country and it’s polarized the country. And all we can hope is that we come out of it better in the end.”
History was and will be made. The United States has never elected a president who has been convicted of a crime. Trump survived not one but two assassination attempts. Biden dropped out in the middle of an election year and Harris could become the first female president. Fundamental tenets about democracy in the most powerful nation on earth will be tested like no time since the Civil War.
And that’s not to mention the backdrop of simultaneous conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, hacking by foreign governments, an increasingly normalized blizzard of misinformation and the intimate involvement of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.
For now, the only thing the country can agree on is that no one knows how the story will end.
Republicans could have been finished with Trump after Jan. 6, 2021.
That’s the day he fired up his supporters with false claims of voter fraud, directed them to march on the U.S. Capitol while Congress was ceremonially certifying Biden’s election victory, and then stood by as rioting threatened lawmakers and his own vice president.
But not enough Republicans joined with Democrats to convict Trump in an impeachment trial, clearing a path for him to run for office again.
Trump started planning a comeback even as some leaders in his party hoped he would be eclipsed by Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, or Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations.
In the year after Trump announced that he would run against Biden, he faced criminal charges four times. Two of the indictments were connected to his attempts to overturn his election defeat. Another involved his refusal to return classified documents to the federal government after leaving office. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all the charges, and none of those cases have been resolved.
What to know about the 2024 Election
However, a fourth indictment in New York led to Trump becoming the first president in U.S. history to be criminally convicted. A jury found him guilty on May 30 of falsifying business records over hush money payments to a porn star who claimed they had an affair.
None of it slowed Trump, who practically ignored his opponents during the primary as he barreled toward the Republican presidential nomination. A mugshot from one of his arrests was adopted by his followers as a symbol of resisting a corrupt system.
Trump’s candidacy capitalized on anger over inflation and frustration about migrants crossing the southern border. He also hammered Biden as too old for the job even though he’s only four years younger than the president.
But Democrats also thought Biden, 81, would be better off considering retirement than a second term. So when Biden struggled through a presidential debate on June 27 — losing his train of thought, appearing confused, stammering through answers — he faced escalating pressure within his party to drop out of the race.
As Biden faced a political crisis, Trump went to an outdoor rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13. A young man evaded police, climbed to the top of a nearby building and fired several shots with a semiautomatic rifle.
Trump grabbed at his ear and dropped to the stage. While Secret Service agents crowded around him, he lurched to his feet with a streak of blood across his face, thrust his fist in the air and shouted “fight, fight, fight!” An American flag billowed overhead.
It was an instantly iconic moment. Trump’s path to the White House seemed clearer than ever — perhaps even inevitable.
The vice president was getting ready to do a puzzle with her nieces on the morning of July 21 when Biden called. He had decided to end his reelection bid and endorse Harris as his replacement.
She spent the rest of the day making dozens of phone calls to line up support, and she had enough to secure the nomination within two days.
It was a startling reversal of fortune. Harris had flamed out when running for president four years earlier, dropping out before the first Democratic primary contest. Biden resuscitated her political career by choosing her as his running mate, and she became the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president.
But Harris’ struggles did not end there. She fumbled questions about immigration, oversaw widespread turnover in her office and faded into the background rather than use her historic status as a platform.
All of that started to change on June 24, 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to abortion enshrined by Roe v. Wade. Harris became the White House’s top advocate on an issue that reshaped American politics.
She also proved to be more nimble than before. Shortly after returning from a weeklong trip to Africa, her team orchestrated a spur-of-the-moment venture to Nashville so Harris could show support for two Tennessee lawmakers who had been expelled for protesting for gun control.
Meanwhile, Harris was networking with local politicians, business leaders and cultural figures to gain ideas and build connections. When Biden dropped out, she was better positioned than many realized to seize the moment.
The day after she became the candidate, Harris jetted to Wilmington, Delaware to visit campaign headquarters. Staff members had spent the morning printing “Kamala” and “Harris for President” signs to tape up next to obsolete “Biden-Harris” posters.
There were 106 days until the end of the election.
While speaking to campaign staff in Wilmington, Harris used a line that has become a mantra, chanted by supporters at rallies across the country. “We are not going back,” she declared.
It’s a fitting counterpoint to Trump’s slogan, “make America great again,” which he has wielded since launching his first campaign more than eight years ago.
The two candidates have almost nothing in common, something that was on display on Sept. 10, when Harris and Trump met for the first time for their only televised debate.
Harris promised to restore abortion rights and use tax breaks to support small businesses and families. She said she would “be a president for all Americans.”
Trump took credit for nominating the justices that helped overturn Roe, pledged to protect the U.S. economy with tariffs and made false claims about migrants eating people’s pets. He called Harris “the worst vice president in the history of our country.”
Harris was widely viewed as gaining the upper hand. Trump insisted he won but refused a second debate. The race remained remarkably close.
Pundits and pollsters have spent the final weeks straining to identify any shift in the candidates’ chances. Microscopic changes in public opinion could swing the outcome of the election. It might take days to count enough votes to determine who wins.
The outcome, whenever it becomes clear, could be just another surprise in a campaign that’s been full of them.
Former US President Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump arrives, more than 3 hours late, to a campaign rally in Traverse City, Michigan on October 25, 2024.
Jim Watson | Afp | Getty Images
A senior official in the presidential campaign of Kamala Harris said Friday they “fully expect” Donald Trump to declare victory before all votes are counted on Election Day evening.
But “it won’t work,” the official told reporters.
“He did this before. It failed,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in a press call, according to NBC News. “If he does it again, it will fail.”
The official said Republican nominee Trump “lies all the time” and is already seeking “to sow doubt about a loss that he anticipates is coming” on Tuesday against Harris, the Democratic nominee and current vice president.
“Meanwhile, we are focused on making sure that all of our voters have the information to get out and vote, and that they feel confident doing it safely and securely, and that they know that we’re going to protect that vote and that we are going to ensure that it counts, no matter what Trump and his campaign are doing,” the campaign official said.
The call came on the heels of baseless claims by Trump that there is large-scale “cheating” going on in voting in Pennsylvania, a key swing state in the election.
“REPORT CHEATING TO AUTHORITIES. Law Enforcement must act, NOW!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Wednesday.
Trump has falsely claimed for four years that he, not President Joe Biden, won the 2020 election.
He faces criminal prosecutions in federal court in Washington, D.C., and state court in Atlanta in connection with his attempts to overturn his loss to Biden.
A presidential campaign that has careened through a felony trial, an incumbent president being pushed off the ticket and multiple assassination attempts comes down to a final sprint across a handful of states on Election Day eve.
A presidential campaign that has careened through a felony trial, an incumbent president being pushed off the ticket and multiple assassination attempts comes down to a final sprint across a handful of states on Election Day eve.
A presidential election unlike any other in US history is entering its last full day with Donald Trump, Kamala Harris and their campaigns scrambling to get supporters to the polls.
The electorate is divided down the middle, both nationally and in the seven battleground states expected to decide the winner on Tuesday.
Trump, a 78-year-old Republican, survived two assassination attempts, just weeks after a jury in New York – the city whose tabloids first elevated him to national fame and notoriety – made him the first former US president to be convicted of a felony.
Harris, 60, was catapulted to the top of the Democratic ticket in July – giving her a chance to become the first woman to become president – after President Joe Biden, 81, had a disastrous debate performance and dropped his re-election bid under pressure from his party.
Polls show Harris and Trump running neck and neck nationally and in the battleground states. More than 78 million voters have already cast ballots, according to Election Lab at the University of Florida.
In the final days of this campaign, both sides are flooding social media sites and TV and radio stations with a last round of campaign ads, and racing to knock on doors and make calls.
Harris’s campaign team believes the sheer size of its voter mobilisation efforts is making a difference and says its volunteers knocked on hundreds of thousands of doors in each of the battleground states this weekend.
“We are feeling very good about where we are right now,” campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon told reporters.
The campaign says its internal data shows that undecided voters are breaking in their favour, particularly women in the battleground states, and that they see an increase in early voting among core parts of their coalition, including young voters and voters of colour.
Trump’s campaign has its own in-house canvassing operation, but has effectively outsourced most of the work to outside super PACs (political action committees), which can raise and spend unlimited sums of money.
They have been more focused on contacting “low propensity” voters, or voters who often do not go to the polls, instead of appealing to middle-of-the-road voters who can flip to either side.
Many in this category are Trump supporters, but they are not normally reliable voters. However, Trump has had success in getting them to turn out in the past.
By cherry-picking the voters they want to contact, Trump and his team say they are sending door knockers to places where it makes a difference and being smart about spending.
US voters will also cast their ballots for thousands of local, state and federal officials and weigh in on crucial referendums.
This includes all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, 34 seats or one-third of those in the US Senate, 11 elections for state governors, as well as abortion rights in 10 states.
Trump has promised “retribution”, including prosecuting his political rivals, and described Democrats as the “enemy within”.
On Sunday, he complained about gaps in the bullet-proof glass surrounding him as he spoke at a rally and mused that an assassin would have to shoot through the news media to get him.
Harris has cast Trump as a danger to democracy but sounded optimistic at a Detroit church on Sunday.
“As I travel, I see Americans from so-called red states to so-called blue states who are ready to bend the arc of history towards justice,” Harris said. “And the great thing about living in a democracy, as long as we can hold on to it, is that we have the power, each of us, to answer that question.”
Voters responding to a late-October Reuters/Ipsos poll ranked threats to democracy as the second-biggest problem facing the US today, just behind the economy.
Trump believes concerns about immigration, the economy and high prices, especially for food and rent, will carry him to the White House.
His final day of campaigning on Monday will include stops in three of the seven battleground states expected to determine the winner.
“This is really the end of a journey, but a new one will be starting,” said Trump, speaking at his first rally of the day in Raleigh, North Carolina.
“Hopefully, everything will work out well. We’re way leading,” he said, urging people to “get out and vote”.
Trump will also visit Reading and Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, and Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the Arab-American vote could be crucial. He then plans to return to Palm Beach, Florida, to vote and await election results.
Harris started off Monday in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where she urged a room of campaign workers to “enjoy this moment” as she thanked everyone for volunteering.
“Let’s get out the vote. Let’s win. Let’s get to work. Twenty-four hours to go,” she said. “We are all in this together. We rise and fall together.”
Harris also plans to spend Monday campaigning in Pennsylvania’s Allentown, one of the most competitive parts of the state, with a large Puerto Rican electorate energised by pejorative remarks made during a recent Trump campaign rally. Then, she will visit a Puerto Rican restaurant in Reading with progressive New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, before heading on to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
Her evening rally in Pittsburgh will feature performances by DJ D-Nice, Katy Perry and Andra Day, before she rallies at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, famous for the “Rocky Steps” and featuring a statue of the fictional Hollywood movie boxer.