It’s too close to call, but Trump’s wins in Georgia and North Carolina give him more pathways to success than Harris.
الوسم: election
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Donald Trump poised to win election after string of crucial swing state wins | US elections 2024
After notching a string of wins in crucial swing states, Donald Trump was poised to return to the White House after a momentous presidential election in which democracy itself had been at stake and which is likely to take the United States into uncharted political waters.
The Republican nominee took North Carolina surprisingly early, the first battleground state to be called, and later he took Georgia and then Pennsylvania. He was strongly positioned in Arizona and Nevada, other key contests.
The race between Trump, a former president, and the current Democratic vice-president, Kamala Harris, had been a frenetic contest and it finally approached its conclusion amid scenes of celebration in the Trump camp.
At 1.20am, at Trump’s election watch party in Palm Beach, Florida, a prolonged, almighty roar went up as Fox News had called Pennsylvania for Trump. “It’s over!” screamed one man, amid the noise, at what felt like the point of no return. A young man in a black Trump hat shouted: “Fuck Joe Biden! Fuck her!”
The euphoric crowd chanted: “USA! USA!” They gathered near the stage, waiting for Trump to speak.
At 1.47am, Fox named Trump president-elect, though the Associated Press – which the Guardian follows – has not yet put Trump over the finish line.
The man who incited the deadly attack at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, earning (and surviving) a second impeachment; the man who was this year convicted on 34 criminal charges; the man who faces multiple other criminal counts and who has been ordered to pay millions in multiple civil lawsuits, including one over a rape claim a judge deemed “substantially true”. The man at the centre of all of that whom senior military aides called a fascist and a danger to the republic was preparing to head for the White House again.
Eventually, past 2am, Trump emerged to speak, to the strains of God Bless the USA, the Lee Greenwood country anthem plastered on Bibles that Trump hawks for sale. Trump was surrounded by his family, by close aides, and by JD Vance, the hard-right Ohio senator he made his vice-presidential pick.
“This is a movement like nobody’s ever seen before,” Trump said. “This is I believe the greatest political movement of all time. There’s never been anything like this in this country and now it’s going to reach a new level of importance, because we’re going to help our country heal.
Supporters of Donald Trump celebrate outside a restaurant in Miami, Florida, on Tuesday. Photograph: Silvio Campos/AFP/Getty Images “We’re going to fix our borders. We’re going to fix everything about our country … I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe and prosperous America that our children deserve, this will truly be the golden age of America.”
Trump reveled in battleground state victories and said he would win them all. He claimed to have won the popular vote, which had not yet been decided. He described “a great feeling of love” and claimed “an unprecedented and powerful mandate”, celebrating Republicans retaking the Senate. He said it looked like Republicans would keep control of the House of Representatives – again, undecided at that point.
Trump saluted his wife, Melania, his family, and Vance, who he invited to the podium to speak. Vance buttered up the boss, promising “the greatest economic comeback in American history under Donald Trump’s leadership”.
Trump referred to the assassination attempts against him. “God spared me for a reason,” he said.
At Harris’s watch party, at Howard University in Washington, the mood became somber, as hopes Harris could become the first president from a Historically Black College and University began to flicker and dim. Around 1am, Cedric Richmond, a former congressman and Harris campaign co-chair, told supporters they would not hear from Harris.
“Thank you for believing in the promise of America,” Richmond said. “We still have votes to count. We still have states that have not been called yet. We will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken.”
Attendees rushed out, the mood swinging to despair. Eight years after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in a similar fashion, few attendees seemed surprised or shocked. Many declined to comment. “What more is there to say,” one woman shrugged as she shuffled out.
Strewn water bottles and other litter were all that was left after the crowd was gone.
Before 1am, the Republicans had retaken the Senate. A West Virginia seat went red as expected but the die was cast when Sherrod Brown, a long-serving progressive Democrat, was beaten in Ohio by Bernie Moreno, a car salesperson backed by Trump. Democrats had held the chamber 51-49. Other key races went right. In Maryland, Angela Alsobrooks provided a point of light for Democrats, joining Lisa Blunt Rochester, of Delaware, as the third and fourth Black women ever elected to the Senate.
The House remained contested, Democrats seeking to retake the chamber, to erect a bastion against a Republican White House and Senate. The House can hold a president to account but the Senate controls federal judicial appointments. Further rightwing consolidation of control of the supreme court, to which Trump appointed three hardliners between 2017 and 2021, looms large.
In June 2022, that Trump court removed the federal right to abortion. Campaigns for reproductive rights fueled Democratic electoral successes after that but on Tuesday such issues seemed to fall short of fueling the wave of support from suburban, Republican-leaning women Democrats had hoped for and pundits predicted.
A measure to enshrine abortion rights in the Florida constitution, which Democrats hoped would help boost turnout, fell short of the 60% needed for approval. Nebraska, won by Trump, voted to uphold its abortion ban, which outlaws the procedure after 12 weeks of pregnancy. Abortion-related measures did pass in New York, Maryland, Colorado, Missouri, Nevada and Arizona.
A huge gender gap opened. A CNN exit poll showed Harris up by 11 points among female voters, Trump up 10 among male voters. Other polls showed dominant concerns over the economy and democracy. According to the AP Votecast survey, four in 10 voters named the economy and jobs as the most important problem facing the country, a hopeful sign for Trump. Roughly half of voters cited the fate of democracy, a focal point of Harris’s campaign.
Wednesday will bring jitters in foreign capitals. Victory for Trump’s “America first” ethos can be expected to boost rightwing populists in Europe and elsewhere – and to place support for Ukraine in jeopardy as it fights Russian invaders.
At home, America lies divided. Harris centered her campaign on Trump’s autocratic threat while he ran a campaign fuelled by grievance, both personal and the perception of an ailing America, baselessly painting Biden and Harris as far-left figures wrecking the economy with inflation and identity politics. Though he was the subject of two assassination attempts, in Pennsylvania and Florida, he stoked huge divisions and widespread fears of violence.
Trump told supporters “I am your retribution” and threatened to prosecute political foes, journalists and others. He suggested turning the US military against “the enemy from within”. He put immigration and border security at the heart of his pitch, painting a picture of the US overrun by illegal immigration, with language that veered into outright racism and fearmongering. He referred to undocumented people as “animals” with “bad genes … poisoning the blood of our country”.
He vowed to stage the biggest deportation in US history, to replace thousands of federal workers with loyalists, to impose sweeping tariffs on allies and foes alike.
On election night, he said he would govern “by a simple motto: Promises made. Promises kept. We’re going to keep our promises. Nothing will stop me.”
Additional reporting by Sam Levine in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Hugo Lowell in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Asia Alexander in Washington DC
Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage
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Despite setbacks, election denial continues to thrive in Republican Party | US Election 2024 News
Phoenix, Arizona – For nearly three decades, Buster Johnson served with little fanfare as a member of the Board of Supervisors in Mohave County, a deep-red section of western Arizona.
Even as former President Donald Trump pushed the false claim that widespread fraud was to blame for his loss in the 2020 election, the idea that such malfeasance had taken place in Mohave seemed laughable: Trump had carried the county by more than 50 points.
But that did little to stop the rise of election denialism in Mohave Country — and in the Republican Party at large.
Johnson, a lifelong Republican who previously was the vice chair of the party’s state chapter, said he was perplexed by the sudden pressure to implement new measures such as hand-counting each ballot.
That demand is common among election deniers, but experts say that technique for tallying votes is more error-prone, less efficient and more expensive.
Acceding to the wishes of his constituents, Johnson voted in favour of a measure to switch to hand-counting, but he tried to explain to voters in the county that such steps made little sense.
“This kind of thing never happened before 2020,” he said of the wave of new demands to overhaul the voting system.
“We’re a strong Republican county. We’ve always voted red.”
Johnson lost his re-election bid in the Republican primary in July to Sonny Borrelli, a state senator who had championed Trump’s false claims of widespread election “rigging” in 2020.
Borrelli, however, won an endorsement from Trump, the current Republican presidential candidate, who credited him with being “on the front line of fighting against corrupt elections since day one”.
Poor record
Following Trump’s defeat in 2020, many Republican officials and candidates across the country — especially in swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada — embraced his false allegations of rampant election fraud.
In several cases, election deniers ran for statewide positions that would give them substantial influence over the electoral process.
Some also voiced support for Trump’s alleged efforts to nullify the will of the voters through schemes to derail the election certification process.
Trump and his allies are accused of having recruited state officials to submit false Electoral College certificates after the 2020 race, and he faces a federal criminal indictment in Washington, DC, as a result.
However, for Republican candidates up and down the ballot, putting election denial front and centre in a campaign was a useful way to secure an endorsement from the former president.
Voters have also been receptive to election denialism. In October, a poll from the Marist Institute for Public Opinion found that a majority of voters, 58 percent, were concerned about the possibility of fraud at the ballot box.
That number was even higher among Republicans alone. An estimated 88 percent expressed worry over election fraud.
Patrice, a voter in Tucson who recently moved to Arizona from the East Coast, said he understood the need to implement new measures to ensure election security. He asked to withhold his last name, in order to speak freely about his election-related doubts.
“If you doubt something, don’t you want to check into it and question it?” said Patrice. “There are things happening, and they do deserve to be questioned.”
A sign points the way to an early voting station in Tucson, Arizona, on October 28 [Brian Osgood/Al Jazeera] But adopting Trump’s narrative about stolen elections has backfired for some Republican candidates seeking public office.
During the midterm elections in 2022, many high-level supporters of election denial who had won Trump’s endorsement lost their races in the general election.
That included gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, who fell short against Democratic rivals.
Doubling down
Some political observers assumed that, after the setbacks of 2022, Republican officials might move away from election denial for fear of alienating moderate voters.
Instead, many Republicans, including Trump, have continued to push false claims about US elections and cast doubt on previous results.
“They should do paper ballots, same-day voting, voter ID and be done,” Trump said as he cast his vote on Tuesday, casting doubt on widely used electronic voting.
A few days earlier, on November 2 in Salem, Virginia, he falsely accused Democrats of undermining the vote, sowing further uncertainty into the electoral process.
“I’d love to win the popular vote with them cheating. Let them cheat,” he said.
Some of his allies have since adopted his strategy of questioning election results that do not fall in their favour. Lake, who is now running to represent Arizona in the Senate, never conceded her loss in the 2022 elections.
“It’s definitely a trend that concerns me,” Kim, a voter at an early-voting station in the city of Tucson, told Al Jazeera. She asked to use only her first name in order to speak freely.
“I feel like the process is legit, and it works. I’m a teacher also, so it sort of feels like the sore-loser mentality, where you say, ‘It didn’t go my way, so the system must be wrong.’ Instead of figuring out what you need to do better, it’s someone else’s fault.”
She added: “It’s ridiculous.”
Experts warn that spreading unsubstantiated claims of election fraud can undermine faith in the overall democratic process and serve as a pretext for limiting access to voting in the name of election security.
“The anti-democracy movement has spent the past four years strategizing how to undermine our election system,” Joanna Lydgate, CEO of States United Democracy Center, which tracks election denial across the US, told Al Jazeera in a statement.
“Election deniers are trying to throw sand in the gears of every step in our election process, so they can claim things went wrong and throw out election results that they don’t like. But ultimately, our elections are free, fair, and secure.”
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AP PHOTOS: Stark contrast between Harris and Trump supporters as election margin becomes razor thin
As election night progressed, Americans were fixated on results trickling in, their faces giving way to despair or celebration as states were called for Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump.
Trump supporters were ecstatic at a campaign watch party in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Harris supporters looked on in dismay when it was announced she would not speak at a campaign watch party on the campus of Howard University in Washington, D.C.
It was all smiles and hugs at some watch parties when it was announced Trump won Georgia, a state that he lost by just under 12,000 votes in 2020.
That was a stark contrast with Democratic supporters, who could only bury their faces in their hands as Trump continued to gain ground in states that President Joe Biden won four years before.
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Republicans flip the US Senate, ending three years of Democrat control | US Election 2024 News
The Republican Party has reclaimed control of the United States Senate, ending two years of Democratic leadership.
Tuesday’s general election saw a third of the upper chamber in Congress — or 34 seats — hit the ballot, of which approximately nine were competitive.
The Democrats were vulnerable to losing their grip on the chamber, given their narrow majority. A coalition of four independent senators and 47 Democrats gave the party its 51-person majority, out of a total of 100 possible seats.
The party needed to defend every seat possible to retain control.
But on Tuesday, two key defeats decisively put the power over the Senate back in Republican hands.
Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown lost his bid for re-election in the midwestern state of Ohio. Meanwhile, in West Virginia, Republicans picked up a seat formerly held by retiring independent Senator Joe Manchin.
The Republican Party also successfully defended a vulnerable seat in Texas, held by Senator Ted Cruz. Tuesday was Cruz’s second time beating back a Democratic contender angling to take his seat.
Meanwhile, in Nebraska, another Republican incumbent Deb Fischer fended off an upstart challenge from independent candidate Dan Osborn, who made the race a nailbiter in its final weeks.
The shift in control over the Senate could pave the way for Republicans to hold both chambers in Congress, which would give the party power over the legislative agenda for at least the next two years.
It also grants Republicans significant sway over nominations for the Supreme Court, the presidential cabinet, ambassadorships and other federal positions that the president nominates.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump remarked on the chamber’s flip in his election night remarks from West Palm Beach, Florida, in the early hours of Wednesday.
“We have taken back control of the Senate. Wow,” Trump said. “I mean, the number of victories in the Senate was absolutely incredible.”
“Nobody expected that. Nobody. So I just wanted to thank you very much for that. You have some great senators and some great new senators.”
What happened?
Tuesday’s race to maintain the Senate was always an uphill battle for Democrats.
Under the US Constitution, the Senate has a staggered process for shaking up its ranks: Only a third of the chamber is up for re-election at any given point.
Senators serve a six-year term — much longer than the two years awarded to their counterparts in the House of Representatives. That makes each seat all the more precious.
In 2021, two run-off elections in Georgia gave Democrats their first lead in the chamber since 2011.
Then, in 2022, the midterm elections resulted in a surprise yet again. While Republicans were expected to grab the lead in the Senate, they fell short when a predicted “red wave” failed to materialise.
Fast forward to 2024, and the Democrats were on the defensive. Seven of the nine toss-up races for the Senate were held by Democrats. By contrast, only two Republicans — Cruz and Fischer — were considered vulnerable.
In short, the Democrats had more to lose.
West Virginia, the first to fall
West Virginia has long been a Republican stronghold, which made the retiring Senator Manchin something of a unicorn.
Since 2000, the Appalachian state has consistently voted Republican in presidential races by healthy margins.
But Manchin — a moderate Democrat before switching to his present independent status — had been a unifying figure in the state.
The announcement in November 2023 that he would retire opened up a tantalising fight for Republicans.
Governor Jim Justice, a Democrat turned Republican, quickly threw his hat into the ring. He won the governor’s mansion in West Virginia in 2016, the same year Republican Donald Trump took the White House, leading a wave of “outsider” candidates.
On Tuesday night, Justice — known for campaigning with a pudgy bulldog named Baby Dog — handily defeated Glenn Elliott, the Democratic mayor of the city of Wheeling.
A mighty tumble in Ohio
The defeat of three-term Democratic Senator Brown in Ohio was much more unexpected.
Ohio had, until recent years, been perceived as a swing state in the industrial Rust Belt region of the US. But as the state leaned rightwards, Democratic leaders like Brown faced increasing threats to their positions.
By 2024, Brown was the only Democrat left holding a statewide position in Ohio.
On Tuesday, he tried to win a fourth term over Republican car dealer Bernie Moreno, a Colombian immigrant who gained Trump’s endorsement.
Brown played up his progressive bona fides and hammered Moreno over abortion policy. He also framed himself as a politician willing to stand up to power, no matter the party.
“I’ve stood up to presidents in both parties,” he told local media on the campaign trail.
Moreno, meanwhile, bashed Brown as a “radical Democrat” who was lax on immigration.
In his Election Night victory speech, Moreno played up his patriotism — and echoed Trump’s call for “America First” policies.
“Today starts a new wave. We talked about wanting a red wave. I think what we have tonight is a red, white and blue wave in this country,” Moreno said.
“Because what we need in the United States of America is leaders in Washington, DC, that actually put the interests of American citizens above all else. We’re tired of being treated like second-class citizens in our own country.”
Al Jazeera correspondent Kristen Saloomey underscored how big of a loss Ohio was for Democrats in the Senate.
“Ohio is the big flip here. This is the one that really hurt the Democrats,” she said on Election Night. “It was a really expensive race.”
Nebraska, less of a surprise
Located in the central prairies of the US, Nebraska has a reputation for electing Republican leaders. While it splits its Electoral College votes among its districts, not since 1964 has a majority of its Electoral College votes gone to a Democrat for president.
That Republican incumbent Fischer won re-election on Tuesday was expected. What was less anticipated was the close race she faced in the final weeks of her campaign.
A former school board member, Fischer had already served two terms in the Senate when she announced her re-election bid. But the entry of Osborn, a navy veteran and union leader, into the race upended her cruise to victory.
Osborn rejected an offered endorsement from the Democratic Party during his campaign and pledged to remain staunchly independent in his politics if elected.
He even declined to say whether he would caucus with the Republicans or Democrats if he reached the Senate.
That made him a cipher in the race — one that disillusioned Republicans could rally behind. He surged in the polls, trailing Fischer by mere percentage points in the waning weeks of the race.
But Fischer sought to portray Osborn as the “same old Democrat BS” and “just a different DC puppet”, as one campaign advertisement put it. She also accused him of being soft on immigration, a common rallying cry for Republicans this election cycle.
“Nebraska wasn’t really surprising,” Saloomey said of the race, though she acknowledged Osborn “made it close”.
Cruz survives in Texas
Texas has long been stubbornly Republican, and just as stubborn in holding onto his Senate seat is right-wing firebrand Ted Cruz.
First elected to the Senate in 2012, Cruz became the first Latino from Texas in Congress’s upper chamber. He was also a prominent member of the far-right Tea Party movement.
Democrats have failed to win a statewide vote in Texas since 1994. But that does not mean the party has not tried — and Cruz has often been in its crosshairs.
During his first re-election bid in 2018, Cruz faced a well-funded charismatic Democratic challenger in former US Representative Beto O’Rourke. Despite a backlash against the far right in the midst of Trump’s first term in office, Cruz squeaked out a victory over O’Rourke.
In 2024, Cruz was in the hunt for a third term, and once again, Democrats sought to rattle him.
This time, they put forward US Representative Colin Allred, a civil rights lawyer and former American football player for the Tennessee Titans. Once again, they fell short.
“God be the glory,” Cruz said in his victory speech on Tuesday. “Tonight is an incredible night, a huge victory here in Texas.”
He also thanked “all the Democrats across Texas who crossed over and supported my campaign”.
“To all of those who didn’t support me, you have my word that I will fight for you, for your jobs, for your safety and for your constitutional rights.”
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Republicans win back U.S. Senate majority from Democrats in 2024 election
Republicans have won the Senate, flipping control of the chamber from Democrats for the first time in three years, following a fierce competition for a Senate majority that came down to a handful of seats in the 2024 election.
Republicans have won the Senate, flipping control of the chamber from Democrats for the first time in three years, following a fierce competition for a Senate majority that came down to a handful of seats in the 2024 election.
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Election night on Fox News: hosts laud Trump as ‘phoenix from the ashes’ | US elections 2024
By 11pm on election night, Fox News was declaring Donald Trump “a phoenix from the ashes”.
“[He’s] the biggest political phoenix from the ashes that we’ve seen in the history of politics,” said anchor Bret Baier.
As counts in some swing states were starting to show Trump in the lead, and Trump’s chance of winning seemed to increase, some of Fox’s biggest stars were writing the first draft of his comeback victory.
“This is the most incredible political comeback that we’ve seen since 1968,” said commentator Ben Domenech. It will be “not just the greatest political comeback of all time,” added Laura Ingraham. “It will be the greatest comeback in history.”
Fox News is still firmly in the center of the conservative media universe, despite growing competition from the likes of NewsMax, the One American News (OAN) network, and myriad conservative podcasts. The US broadcaster remains the most-watched cable news network in the country, consistently beating CNN and MSNBC in the ratings.
Though none of the crucial seven battleground states had been called by the network by 11pm on election night, Fox’s roundtable appeared to be getting ready for a Trump victory, speculating on what it would say about the future of politics and American media.
Sean Hannity, who did not make any election night appearances in 2020, said on Tuesday night: “After all they have thrown at this man, after all they have done to this man, with all the media that wouldn’t even vet [Harris] and her radical positions, what would this say about legacy media? It’s dead.”
Jesse Watters told viewers that a Trump win would be a “mandate” to run the country. A Trump victory would be a “complete rejection of everything [the media] has been telling us about Donald Trump”, he added.
Multiple Fox commentators noted that Trump appeared to be doing well with Black and Hispanic voters, noting the “diverse coalition” that Trump’s campaign has pulled together this election. Commentator Dana Perino called it the most “racially diverse political coalition that we’ve seen in generations”.
Things were looking quite different on election night in 2020. Just before 11.30pm, Fox News called Arizona in favor of Joe Biden. The call was pivotal. Arizona had voted for Trump in 2016, a slide to Biden would suggest Donald Trump’s grasp had loosened since the 2016 election.
The early call infuriated Trump, who had come to see Fox News as a friendly extension of his communications team, frequently calling into the network during his presidency and appearing for exclusive interviews.
Ever since then, the network, owned by media scion Rupert Murdoch, has had to navigate a sometimes tense relationship with Trump. The former president has given the network its highest ratings. On election night in 2020, the network got 14.1 million viewers between 8pm and 11pm – 5 million more than CNN during the same time block, and more than double the viewership of other news networks.
But the cozy relationship has also gotten the network in trouble. Fox News paid voting machine maker Dominion $787.5m in a settlement over misinformation in the 2020 election. It still has a $2.7bn lawsuit from Smartmatic in the courts.
Going into the 2024 presidential election, the network has been walking a tightrope. It hosted a town hall with Trump in January, the first time the former president had appeared on the network in almost two years. He has called into the network more and participated in another town hall hosted by the network in October. Murdoch, who in 2020 said that “Trump will be becoming irrelevant”, showed up to the Republican national convention in Milwaukee in July.
But Trump and Fox News have put some distance between each other since 2016. In the days leading up to the election, Trump told reporters that he was annoyed that the network kept playing clips from Oprah’s speech supporting Harris.
“You know who else should be ashamed of themselves is Fox,” Trump said. “Everybody thinks Fox is so pro-Trump. They’re not pro-Trump at all.”
But on Tuesday night, even with most swing states too close to call, Fox brought some of the network’s most Trump-friendly commentators on air to raise the prospect of a Trump resurrection – and discuss its possible implications.
“It would be up to the Democrats and the media,” Watters said. “What’s their posture toward the greatest comeback victory that we’ve ever seen?”
Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage
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Re-election for Tlaib and Omar – first Muslim women to serve in US Congress | US Election 2024 News
Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar have won re-election and continue their political careers after being the first two Muslim women to serve in the US Congress.
The Democratic Party’s Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar – the first two Muslim women to serve in the United States Congress – have won re-election to the US House of Representatives.
Tlaib, who is also the first woman of Palestinian descent in the US Congress, was re-elected on Tuesday for a fourth term as a representative for Michigan with support from the large Arab-American community in Dearborn.
Omar, a former refugee and Somali American, retook her seat for a third term in Minnesota, where she represents the strongly Democratic 5th District, which includes Minneapolis and a number of suburbs.
A leading critic of US military support to Israel in its war on Gaza, Tlaib ran uncontested in her primary and defeated Republican James Hooper to represent the solidly Democratic district in Dearborn and Detroit.
Congratulations to @RashidaTlaib on her re-election!
She has bravely fought for Palestinian liberation and championed the interests of working-class people in Detroit.
We are honored to stand with Congresswoman Tlaib in this fight. pic.twitter.com/lU0befG7uh
— Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) November 6, 2024
Omar is also a sharp critic of Israel’s war on Gaza.
In a post on social media, Omar thanked her supporters for all their hard work in her election campaign.
“Our hard work was worth it. We knocked on 117,716 doors. We made 108,226 calls. And we sent 147,323 texts. This is a victory for ALL of us who believe that a better future is possible. I can’t wait to make you all proud over the next two years,” she said.
Thank you, CD5. Our hard work was worth it. We knocked on 117,716 doors. We made 108,226 calls. And we sent 147,323 texts. This is a victory for ALL of us who believe that a better future is possible. I can’t wait to make you all proud over the next two years. pic.twitter.com/FMDUNo2Jb8
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) November 6, 2024
Tlaib and Omar are both members of the informal group of lawmakers known as “The Squad”, which is made up of progressive members of Congress including Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, among others.
Other “Squad” members Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri both lost their party primaries against opponents who had won substantial support from the pro-Israel fundraising group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
The group has invested more than $100m in US political races this year in a bid to silence pro-Palestine voices in Congress.
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Election briefing: Kamala Harris watch party falls silent as Trump speaks of ‘golden age’ in America | US elections 2024
As the clock ticked toward 3am on Wednesday morning on the US east coast, three of the seven swing states – Georgia, North Carolina, and, crucially, Pennsylvania – had been called for Donald Trump, putting him within spitting distance of 270 electoral college votes. The Republican candidate currently has 267 electoral college votes.
On a stage in West Palm Beach, Trump declared victory and pledged to bring a “golden age” to the United States.
Earlier on Wednesday, the mood at the Kamala Harris campaign party at her alma mater, Howard University, in Washington DC shifted from jubilant to quiet as Trump appeared to be in a stronger position than Harris to claim the White House.
What have Trump and Harris said about the election?
Speaking on Wednesday, Trump said: “This was a movement like nobody’s ever seen before, and frankly, this was, I believe, the greatest political movement of all time. There’s never been anything like this in this country, and maybe beyond.”
Earlier, Harris’s campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond addressed the crowd at her campaign party in Washington and said, “We still have votes to count. We still have states that have not been called yet”, but made clear that the Democratic candidate wouldn’t be speaking.
States still to be called
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The swing states still to be called are Wisconsin (10 electoral college votes), Nevada (6), Michigan (15) and Arizona (11).
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The other states still to be called are Alaska and Maine. Alaska is considered a red state, and its three electoral college votes could deliver Trump the presidency.
Here’s what else happened on Tuesday:
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Missouri, Colorado, New York and Maryland all passed measures to protect abortion rights, while in Florida, an effort to roll back a six-week ban fell short.
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Republicans have retaken the majority in the Senate, the Associated Press reported, after picking up seats in Ohio and West Virginia, and fending off challenges to their candidates in Texas and Nebraska. Republicans will control Congress’s upper chamber for the first time in four years. Donald Trump will be in a position to confirm his supreme court justices, federal judges and appointees to cabinet posts.
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The House is still in play, but Republicans hold a strong lead, with 190 representatives to the Democrats’ 168.
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There were decisive victories for Democrats elsewhere in the election. The US will have two Black women serving as senators for the first time in American history, with the election of Lisa Blunt Rochester from Delaware and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland.
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Sarah McBride, a Delaware state senator, also made history as the first out transgender person elected to the US House of Representatives. McBride, 34, won Delaware’s at-large House seat in Tuesday’s general election against the Republican candidate John Whalen III, a former Delaware state police officer and businessman. The House seat, Delaware’s only one, has been Democratic since 2010.
Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage
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US election results and map 2024: Donald Trump and Kamala Harris vie to be president | US elections 2024
Electoral college votes
Electoral college votes
57,032,553 votes (48.0%)
First results expected after 18.00 EST (15.00 PST or 23.00 GMT)
Long a Republican stronghold, Georgia has become more of a battleground due to its growing black electorate. In 2020, Biden won by less than 12,000 votes. In 2022, Republican Brian Kemp won by 7.5 percentage points.
2,602,408 50.8 2,483,919 48.5 20,298 0.4 17,822 0.3 Michigan was one of the states that Biden managed to flip from Trump in 2020, after voting for Democrats for president consistently between 1992 and 2012. A rust belt state, Democrats have full control of its state government.
1,354,970 51.6 1,225,913 46.7 14,504 0.6 12,771 0.5 11,428 0.4 3,149 0.1 2,611 0.1 1,137 0.0 Wisconsin sided with the Democratic candidate in all presidential elections from 1988 through 2012. In 2016, Trump managed to flip the state but it was reclaimed by Biden in 2020 – albeit by a small margin.
1,307,838 51.2 1,208,696 47.3 13,455 0.5 9,396 0.4 8,124 0.3 3,112 0.1 1,859 0.1 1,460 0.1 Biden flipped his birth state back from Donald Trump in 2020. Despite voting for Democrats in every presidential election bar 2016 since 1992, the large rust belt state is now seen as a crucial swing state.
3,013,110 51.4 2,793,104 47.6 28,293 0.5 27,679 0.5 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 1,390,072 65.5 712,271 33.6 11,520 0.5 4,613 0.2 4,171 0.2 707,002 63.7 378,380 34.1 12,443 1.1 5,365 0.5 4,015 0.4 2,044 0.2 1,088 0.1 910,139 49.8 903,114 49.4 7,543 0.4 7,183 0.4 Show all
How does the US election work?
The winner of the election is determined through a system called the electoral college.
What is the electoral college and how does it work?
Each of the 50 states, plus Washington DC, is given a number of electoral college votes, adding up to a total of 538 votes. More populous states get more electoral college votes than smaller ones.
A candidate needs to win 270 electoral college votes (50% plus one) to win the election.
In every state except two – Maine and Nebraska – the candidate that gets the most votes wins all of the state’s electoral college votes.
Electoral college votes correspond to electors from each state. These electors vote directly for the president, based on the results in the general election in their state. In early January, following the presidential election, Congress convenes in a joint session to count and certify the electoral votes.
How do people vote in the US election?
Elections in the US are administered by each state. Whether by mail-in ballots or voting in person on election day, people effectively vote in 51 mini-elections in the presidential election.
Due to the electoral college rules, a candidate can win the election without getting the most votes at the national level. This happened in 2016, when Trump won a majority of electoral college votes although more people voted for Hillary Clinton across the US.
A handful of races are run with a ranked choice voting system, whereby voters can rank candidates in their order of preference. If no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, then the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their supporters’ votes will be counted for their next choice. The Guardian has marked these elections where applicable above, and shows the results of the final result with redistributed votes.
How are the votes counted?
Vote verification and counting involves many processes to ensure oversight and security, and it runs before, during and after election day.
As soon as the polls close, local precincts count the ballots cast in person on election day, alongside any absentee or mail-in ballots that have been verified. Processes vary by state, but typically this involves verifying mail-in voter signatures and ensuring ballots are properly filled out. Provisional ballots, used when there are questions about a voter’s eligibility, are set aside for later verification.
Verified ballots are then counted, usually digitally but in some cases manually. The counts are then transmitted to county election offices for aggregation and verification.
This process involves thousands of local election officials who are either appointed or elected, depending on the state. Partisan and nonpartisan observers can monitor vote counting.
State election authorities then compile the county-level results and, after another round of verification, certify the final results.
Results are communicated through media – the Guardian receives results data from the Associated Press.
Official results can take days or weeks to be fully finalised. This is often because of the verification process of absentee, mail-in and provisional ballots. In some states, mail-in ballots can be received and counted several days after election day. High voter turnouts and potential recounts in close races can also slow down results publication.
How are the results reported?
The election results on this page are reported by the Associated Press (AP). AP “call” the winner in a state when they determine that the trailing candidate has no path to victory. This can happen before 100% of votes in a state have been counted.
Estimates for the total vote in each state are also provided by AP. The numbers update throughout election night and in the following days, as more data on voter turnout becomes available.
Illustrations by Sam Kerr. Cartograms by Pablo Gutiérrez.