On stage in West Palm Beach in the early hours of Wednesday morning, Donald Trump thanked his supporters, his family and his campaign team as he declared victory in the US presidential race. One group not on the former president’s thank-you cards: the media, whom he referred to as “the enemy camp”.
Introducing his running mate, the Ohio senator JD Vance, Trump said: “I told JD to go into the enemy camp. He just goes: OK. Which one? CNN? MSNBC? He’s like the only guy who looks forward to going on, and then just absolutely obliterates them.”
Trump has had an antagonistic relationship with the US press for years, often labeling them as the “crooked media” and calling them the “enemy of the people”. But as the Republican candidate in recent weeks ramped up his rhetoric against his perceived opponents, he’s intensified his attacks on reporters as well.
The comment during Trump’s victory speech come less than a week after he joked during a campaign rally he would have no concerns about reporters being shot at if there were another assassination attempt against him.
During meandering comments at a rally in Pennsylvania last week, Trump complained about gaps in the bulletproof shields surrounding him after a gunman opened fire on him at a rally in July.
“To get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news and I don’t mind that so much,” he said.
The press, he added, were “seriously corrupt people”.
Trump’s communications director later claimed in a statement the comments were supposedly an effort to look out for the welfare of the news media.
Trump on Wednesday morning claimed victory over his Democratic opponent in the presidential race, Kamala Harris, and pledged to bring a “golden age” to the United States.
“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,” Trump said.
South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham has sent an ominous message to special counsel Jack Smith as Donald Trump was on the precipice of being announced as the winner of the 2024 election.
Early on Wednesday morning, mere moments before Trump took the stage in West Palm Beach, Florida, to give his victory speech, Graham posted a note on X “to Jack Smith and your team”.
“It is time to look forward to a new chapter in your legal careers as these politically motivated charges against President Trump hit a wall,” Graham wrote.
“The supreme court substantially rejected what you were trying to do, and after tonight, it’s clear the American people are tired of lawfare. Bring these cases to an end. The American people deserve a refund.”
The US attorney general Merrick Garland appointed Smith in November 2022 to determine whether Trump should face criminal charges stemming from investigations into the former’s president’s alleged mishandling of national security materials and his role in the 6 January attack on the US Capitol.
Smith charged Trump last year in Florida over his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club, and in Washington over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
With the election mere months away, Trump’s legal team tried to stall the proceedings as much as possible.
Their case was aided in July, when the supreme court conferred broad immunity on former presidents and narrowed the scope of the prosecution.
Smith and his team detailed their case against Trump in a 165-page filing that was unsealed in October, in which they argued that Trump should not be entitled to immunity from prosecution. In the filing, federal prosecutors said that Trump “resorted to crimes” in a failed bid to cling to power after losing the 2020 election and that he is not entitled to immunity from prosecution.
The charges filed by Smith and his team were not the only one vexing Trump since leaving office in 2021. When he takes office in January, Trump will be the first convicted criminal to win the White House and gain access to the nuclear codes.
In May, Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records relating to a hush-money payment to the adult film performer Stormy Daniels. Sentencing was originally scheduled on 18 September, but delayed to 26 November after a request from Trump for it to be postponed until after the election. It’s unclear if the date will stand.
Since the unsealing of Smith’s case in October, Trump has spoken publicly about how he would immediately fire Smith if he were re-elected.
In a conversation with the conservative podcast host Hugh Hewitt, who asked whether Trump would pardon himself or fire the special counsel, Trump said: “Oh, it’s so easy. It’s so easy … I would fire him within two seconds.”
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
As Americans waited anxiously for the results in a knife-edge election, newspaper headlines around the world captured the uncertainty – and fears of unrest in the near future.
The Guardian’s headline is “Hope… and fear” over a photograph of Democratic presidential candidate and US vice-president Kamala Harris. The Guardian’s Washington bureau chief, David Smith, describes the feeling Americans have as “see-sawing between anxiety and hope”. A second front page story is headlined “Democrats dare to believe”.
Guardian front page on Wednesday, 6 November 2024, the day after the US presidential election. Photograph: Guardian
The Times looks beyond the US to how people in other countries feel about elections in the world’s largest economy, with, “World awaits America’s fate”:
The International New York Times had two US election stories: an opinion piece with the headline “Trump’s fans should also fear a victory” and a piece headlined “Voters share a deep sense of anxiety at ballot boxes”.
The Daily Mail captured fears of what will happen if either candidate wins in a single word – “tinderbox” – as well as how close the polls are: “Tinderbox America on knife edge”.
The Financial Times leads with a demure “America decides”:
The i Paper: “America votes for its future – and braces for election unrest”. Instead of a photograph of either candidate, or both, the paper’s front page image was of security personnel wearing helmets and bullet proof vests and carrying guns.
The ellipsis makes its second appearance on the Daily Mirror’s front page with: “Pray for victory… brace for chaos’:
In France a play on “Après-moi, le deluge”, with Libération’s “Après l’election, la peur d’embrasement” – after the election, fear of unrest:
The front page of Libération. Photograph: FrontPages.com
And “The world hangs on the choice of Americans” in Le Figaro:
Front page of Le Figaro on the day after the 2024 US election. Photograph: Frontpages.com
Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung’s headline is simply, “Her or him”, while Tagespiegel’s headline is “A desk full of worries”, with a picture of the Resolute desk in the Oval Office with nobody behind it.
The front page of Süddeutsche Zeitung. Photograph: FrontPages.com
Frankfurter Allgemeine has a photograph of the Sesame Street character Oscar the Grouch popping out of a garbage bin, and the headline – a reference to a movie about the Vietnam war – “Good morning America”:
The front page of the Frankfurter-Allgemeine Zeitung the day after the US election. Photograph: Frontpage.com
In Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald carries a reference to the tagline of the Melbourne Cup, a horse racing competition that happened on Tuesday, with the headline: “Real race that stops a nation”:
Front page of the The Sydney Morning Herald the day after the US election. Photograph: FrontPages.com
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
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.
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
The swing states still to be called are Wisconsin (10 electoral college votes), Nevada (6), Michigan (15) and Arizona (11).
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.
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.
The House is still in play, but Republicans hold a strong lead, with 190 representatives to the Democrats’ 168.
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
Republicans have seized majority control of the Senate.
The Trump-backed auto magnate Bernie Moreno has ousted three-term Democratic senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio, and Republican Ted Cruz has defeated Democratic challenger Colin Allred in Texas, according to the Associated Press.
With the re-election of Republican Deb Fisher in Nebraska, Republicans now have at least 51 seats in the Senate, as well as the chance to pick up a few remaining wins in battleground states, according to the Associated Press.
Democrats have held the Senate majority for the past four years. Republican control of the Senate gives the party crucial power in confirming the next president’s cabinet members and future supreme court justices, providing a check on Kamala Harris if she is elected, or boosting Donald Trump’s power.
Earlier, Trump loyalist Jim Justice won the US Senate seat in West Virginia previously held by Joe Manchin, giving Republicans two additional seats, according to the Associated Press.
Several hotly contested Senate seats remain to be called, including a race between Democratic incumbent Jon Tester and Republican challenger Tim Sheehy in Montana.
Ahead of election night, the most vulnerable incumbent Democrat was widely deemed to be the three-term Montana senator Jon Tester, who – if polls are accurate – faces likely defeat at the hands of a Republican challenger, Tim Sheehy, an ex-navy Seal endorsed by Trump.
A win for Sheehy, whose campaign has faced allegations that he made racist comments about the state’s Indigenous community, would tip the Senate further into Republican hands.
The race between Sherrod and Moreno was the most expensive in Senate history, with about $500m has been ploughed into ad spending.
Thirty-four seats in the US Senate – one-third of the 100-member chamber – were up for grabs on Tuesday in contests that could influence the makeup of the new administration, impact the balance on the supreme court and shape policy on areas ranging from foreign affairs to abortion.
Democrats made some historic wins in safe districts: Andy Kim of New Jersey will become the first Korean American elected to the US Senate, while Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland and Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware will be the first two Black women to serve in the Senate at the same time.
In other early races to be called, the independent Bernie Sanders won re-election in Vermont, and the Republican congressman Jim Banks of Indiana won his first Senate challenge comfortably.
The victory for Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats, was called by the AP with less than 10% of the vote in. It will be the 83-year-old’s fourth Senate term.
Democrats were trying to cling to a one-seat majority with the knowledge that the odds appeared stacked against them, given Manchin’s retirement and the fall of his seat to a Republican.
Elsewhere, the party faced uphill struggles, with incumbents trying to hold 23 seats, often in states that have become increasingly pro-GOP as Trump has strengthened his grip over the party.
By contrast, only 11 Republican senatorswere up for re-election, all in solidly GOP states, thus giving the Democrats much less scope for making gains.
Facing off against a Trump-backed candidate in an increasingly Republican state, Brown had tried to emphasise shared policy goals with Trump – including supporting anti-fentanyl legislation – in a one-time battleground state that the Republican presidential nomineeheld on comfortably.
Key races that remain up in the air are those in the Democrats’ three blue wall states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, the closeness of which mirror the knife-edge presidential contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
In Pennsylvania, the Democratic incumbent Bob Casey – a senator for 18 years – is seeking a fourth term against a challenge from the Republican Dave McCormick. McCormick, who has funded his own campaign, has sought to tie Casey to the same policies that Trump has attacked Harris for, namely immigration and a past support for a fracking ban.
The race has been designated a toss-up by the Cook Political Report, as has that in Wisconsin between another incumbent Democrat, the two-term senator Tammy Baldwin, and her GOP challenger, Eric Hovde, a wealthy banker and property developer who is another campaign self-funder.
Democrats are also on the defensive in Michigan where Elissa Slotkin, a member of the House of Representatives, is running to fill the seat left vacant by the retirement of a fellow Democrat, Debbie Stabenow. Her Republican opponent is Mike Rogers, a former GOP House member and ex-FBI agent, who was once a critic of Trump but has now received his endorsement.
Another Democratic soft spot is Nevada, where the party’s sitting senator, Jacky Rosen, is in a tight race with Sam Brown, a decorated army veteran who was badly wounded in Afghanistan. Brown has tried to fend off Rosen’s attacks on his abortion stance by saying he would not support a nationwide ban and acknowledging that his wife once underwent the procedure.
In Arizona, Ruben Gallego, a US Marine Corps veteran, is trying to keep a seat in the Democratic camp following the retirement of the independent senator, Kyrsten Sinema, who voted with the party in the chamber. Up against him is Kari Lake, a Trump ally who baselessly claimed that her failed 2022 bid for the state’s governorship had been derailed by Democratic cheating.
Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage
The GOP regained control after it became clear that the Democrats had lost their one-seat majority in Congress’s 100-member upper chamber.
Republicans gained two Senate seats, as Trump-backed businessperson Bernie Moreno defeated three-term Democratic senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio, and Trump loyalist Jim Justice won the seat once held by Joe Manchin in West Virginia.
Republican incumbents also fought off Democratic challengers in Texas, where Ted Cruz defeated Colin Allred, and in Florida, where Rick Scott won out over Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.
In Nebraska, union organizer Dan Osborn launched a surprisingly successful independent campaign to oust the Republican incumbent, Deb Fisher. But Fisher ultimately held on to her seat.
Shortly after midnight ET, several competitive Senate races still had not been called, giving Republicans a chance to grow the margin of their majority by a few more seats.
The result puts the Republican party in pole position in the confirmation process for senior officials appointed by the new incoming administration, and for potential new justices to the US supreme court if and when vacancies open up.
At least two veteran conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, are expected to retire in the next few years, while speculation has surrounded the health and intentions of a third, Sonia Sotomayor, one of the court’s three liberal justices.
The transfer of Senate control back to the Republicans will also lend greater piquancy to the race to succeed Mitch McConnell, the GOP leader in the chamber, who had announced that he would retire after the election.
Leading contenders to replace him are John Thune of South Dakota, Texas senator John Cornyn and Rick Scott of Florida, with the winner primed to assume the powerful position of Senate majority leader.
Cornyn launched his bid for the leadership just moments after Republicans won their Senate majority, according to the Associated Press, with a statement touting his experience working with Republican members, and serving as the GOP vote-counter during the first Trump administration.
“As I’ve said, this election is not about us but rather what is best for the conference and the nation,” the Texas Republican said. “I look forward to working with President Trump and our new conservative majority to make America great again by making the Senate work again.”
The leadership election is due to take place at the end of November by secret ballot.
The Republicans’ win had been widely anticipated. The Democrats faced an unfavourable electoral map, with several incumbents either retiring or up for re-election in Republican stronghold states – meaning loss of Senate control was highly likely even in the event of Kamala Harris being elected president.
The retirement of the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin, a formerly centrist Democrat who had lately become an independent, was the clearest signal that the Republicans were on a winning path. As expected, the seat he vacated was won by the state’s Republican governor, Jim Justice, who triumphed over his Democratic opponent, Glenn Elliott, the mayor of Wheeling.
Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage
First results expected after 18.00 EST (15.00 PST or 23.00 GMT)
*includes independents
27/34 races called
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How does the US election work?
The US legislature, Congress, has two chambers: the House of Representatives and the Senate.
How is the House of Representatives elected and how does it work?
The lower chamber, the House of Representatives, has 435 voting seats, each representing a district of roughly similar size. There are elections for each of these seats every two years.
The speaker of the House is the chamber’s presiding officer, elected by the representatives. The House has several exclusive powers, such as the power to initiate revenue bills, impeach federal officials and elect the president in the case of an electoral college tie.
How is the Senate elected and how does it work?
The upper chamber, the Senate, has 100 members, who sit for six-year terms. One-third of the seats come up for election in each two-year cycle. Each state has two senators, regardless of its population; this means that Wyoming, with a population of less than 600,000, carries the same weight as California, with almost 40 million.
In most states, the candidate with the most votes on election day wins the seat. However, Georgia and Louisiana require the winning candidate to garner 50% of votes cast; if no one does, they hold a run-off election between the top two candidates.
Most legislation needs to pass both chambers to become law, but the Senate has some important other functions, notably approving senior presidential appointments, for instance to the supreme court. The Senate also has the sole power to provide advice to the president, consent to ratify treaties and try impeachment cases for federal officials referred to it by the House.
How are governors elected and how do they work?
Governors are elected by direct vote in their states. The candidate with the highest number of votes is declared the winner.
In every state, the executive branch is led by a governor. They serve for four years in office, with the exception of Vermont and New Hampshire where tenures are two years long.
Governors are responsible for implementing state laws, and have a range of powers available to them such as executive orders, executive budgets and legislative proposals and vetoes.
How are the results reported?
The election results on this page are reported by the Associated Press. AP will “call” the winner in a state when it determines 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.
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 over 50% of the vote, then the candidate with the fewest number of votes is eliminated and their supporters’ votes will be counted for their next choice. The Guardian has marked these elections where applicable above, and show the results of the final result with redistributed votes.
“Thank you, Delaware! Because of your votes and your values, I am proud to be your next member of Congress,” McBride wrote on X.
“Delaware has sent the message loud and clear that we must be a country that protects reproductive freedom, that guarantees paid leave and affordable child care for all our families, that ensures that housing and healthcare are available to everyone and that this is a democracy that is big enough for all of us.”
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, the New York Times reported.
McBride defeated three other Democratic candidates in September’s primary race to secure her nomination and eventual win. She maintained her lead over Whalen in the race, at one point polling by more than 20 percentage points.
Before Tuesday’s election, McBride spoke about what it would mean to be the first transgender person elected to Congress, telling CBS News: “It is a testament to Delawareans that the candidacy of someone like me is even possible.”
McBride’s election win isn’t the first time she’s made history in her political career. She became the first out trans person elected to a state senate seat in 2020, after becoming a Democratic member of the Delaware senate. McBride was also the first out trans person to intern at the White House in 2012, during Barack Obama’s administration. She later spoke at the 2016 Democratic national convention, becoming the first transgender person to give remarks at the major political event.
Several key lawmakers have championed McBride’s congressional campaign. Joe Biden, the US president and a Delaware native and longtime friend of McBride, publicly congratulated her after her September primary victory. Lisa Blunt Rochester, the current representative for Delaware, also endorsed McBride prior to the primary race.
McBride’s campaign also snagged endorsements from prominent organizations. Everytown for Gun Safety, a non-profit advocating for gun control, endorsed McBride in early August. The Planned Parenthood Action Fund also endorsed McBride in February.
Born and raised in Wilmington, Delaware, McBride expressed interest in politics from a young age, her parents told NBC News. As a young adult, McBride volunteered for several political campaigns, including Beau Biden’s initial campaign and re-election for Delaware attorney general.
In 2011, at the age of 21, McBride came out as a trans woman in her university’s student paper and in a viral Facebook post.
Since then, McBride has worked on LGBTQ+ issues within and beyond her state. She worked on anti-discrimination legislation in Delaware that provided protection to trans people. She later served as the national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group. McBride also taught public policy at the University of Delaware and wrote a 2018 memoir entitled Tomorrow Will Be Different, as her state senate biography notes.
Throughout her campaign, McBride has acknowledged the historic nature of her candidacy, but has said her campaign was focused on other critical issues. “I think that folks know that I am personally invested in equality as an LGBTQ person,” McBride said to CBS. “But my priorities are going to be affordable childcare, paid family and medical leave, housing, healthcare, reproductive freedom.”
McBride added that she hoped her campaign could encourage “empathy” for the trans community, especially amid a rise in discrimination, prejudice and violence, the Human Rights Campaign reported.
“We know throughout history that the power of proximity has opened even the most closed of hearts and minds,” McBride said to CBS News. “And I still believe that the power of proximity taps what I believe to be the most fundamental human emotion, which is empathy.”
A record number of anti-trans bills have also been considered in 2024, as Republican politicians continue to escalate attacks on access to gender-affirming healthcare, trans people’s participation in sports and other rights. There were 661 bills targeting transgender people considered in 2024 compared with 604 bills the previous year, according to data from Trans Legislation Tracker, an independent research organization that tracks anti-trans bills.
The Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, also repeated false, anti-trans claims. His campaign and other Republican groups have spent more than $21m on anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ television ads, ABC News reported. Since August, Republicans overall have spent $65m on such ads in more than a dozen states, the New York Times reported.
Prior to her win, in response to questions about Trump, McBride told CBS: “I wouldn’t be the first person in Congress to be part of a community that Donald Trump has said outrageous things about.”
Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage