While most of the focus has been on the seven incredibly competitive battleground states, these other locations – nine states and two congressional districts – are worth keeping an eye on. These are all rated as ‘Likely’ for Trump or Harris in the final Consensus Electoral Map. However, for the most part, polling margins are in the mid-to-high single digits. For more results, visit the Live Electoral College Map >.
These are ordered by final poll closing time and state.
All times Eastern (ET). Where states span multiple time zones, no winner will be projected before all polls have closed. Vote counts and race projections provided by Decision Desk HQ.
Seven states – worth 93 electoral votes in 2024 – have dominated this presidential election cycle seemingly from the beginning. In the final Consensus Electoral Map, six of these seven states remain toss-ups.
The polls have largely agreed as well, with neither candidate separated by more than 2% in any of these seven states. That said, keep in mind that polling errors are often correlated. Given that all of these states are within a normal polling error, it is quite possible that either Harris or Trump could end up winning most or all of them.
On this page you will find live results for these battleground states. We’ve divided them into three geographic groups which – conveniently – also closely corresponds with when the polls close in those states. For more results, visit the Live Electoral College Map >.
All times Eastern (ET). Where states span multiple time zones, no winner will be projected before all polls have closed. Vote counts and race projections provided by Decision Desk HQ.
Sun Belt – East
Georgia – 16 Electoral Votes
Consensus Ranking
Polling Average
Toss-up
Trump 48.7%, Harris 47.5% (R + 1.2%)
Polls close at 7:00 PM ET.
North Carolina – 16 Electoral Votes
Consensus Ranking
Polling Average
Toss-up
Trump 48.6%, Harris 47.3% (R + 1.3%)
Polls close at 7:30 PM ET.
Rust Belt
Pennsylvania – 19 Electoral Votes
Consensus Ranking
Polling Average
Toss-up
Trump 48.2%, Harris 48.2% (TIE)
Polls close at 8:00 PM ET.
Michigan – 15 Electoral Votes
Consensus Ranking
Polling Average
Toss-up
Harris 48.6%, Trump 46.8% (D + 1.8%)
Polls close at 8:00 PM ET, except 9:00 PM ET for a portion of the Upper Peninsula that observes Central Time.
Harris will have dinner with her family before watch party at alma mater
Workers start to build out the Harris-Walz campaign election stage and event space at Howard University on November 03, 2024 in Washington, DC.
Kent Nishimura | Getty Images
Harris shared her plans for election day today on The Big K Morning Show with Larry Richert on NewsRadio KDKA. Her campaign headquarters for the night will be at her alma mater Howard University, and before that she plans to have dinner with family members.
“I have a tradition of having dinner with my family, and so we will do that. I have a lot of my family staying with us,” Harris said. “Then during the day, I’ll be today, all day, talking with folks and reminding them to get out to vote.”
The Dow was up more than 300 points, or about 0.8%. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite climbed 0.9% and 1.1%, respectively.
Risers among S&P 500 stocks outnumbered declining names by more than 3-to-1, with industrial and energy stocks performing well.
U.S. equities have an unusually strong election year so far. The S&P 500 is up about 20% year to date and is within striking distance of a record high.
— Jesse Pound
Closely watched New York Times ‘needle’ might not move due to engineers’ strike
The New York Times 2020 Election Needles.
Source: New York Times
The New York Times “Needle,” which freaked out Hillary Clinton supporters in 2016, and dismayed Trump supporters in 2020, might not move much even as the votes roll in tonight.
The Needle, a speedometer-like graphic that represents the statistical likelihood of a presidential candidate winning, needs data from computer systems maintained by Times engineers — who are currently on strike.
The Times’ Election Analytics team said, “We will only publish a live version of the Needle if we are confident those systems are stable.”
“If we are not able to stream the Needle’s results live, our journalists plan to run its statistical model periodically, examine its output and publish updates in our live blog about what they see,” the team wrote.
— Dan Mangan
Rudy Giuliani ordered to court to explain missing property owed to election workers
Former mayor of New York City and former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani reacts at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum during a rally held by Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump, in Uniondale, New York, on Sept. 18, 2024.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
Former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was ordered to appear in federal court in New York City at noon to explain why personal property of his that two Georgia election workers have been authorized to sell off to satisfy a fraction of a $146 million defamation judgment against him is missing.
The order came on Monday, shortly after a lawyer for the workers, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea’ Moss, notified Manhattan U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Liman in a jaw-dropping letter that Giuliani and his lawyer “have refused or been unable to answer basic questions about the location of most of the property.”
Giuliani “apparently emptied the contents of” his New York apartment a month ago, without telling the women’s lawyer.
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., last year found the former New York mayor and top federal prosecutor liable for defaming the women by falsely accusing them of committing ballot fraud during the 2020 presidential election, when he was Trump’s top election lawyer. A jury later said he should pay them $146 million in damages.
— Dan Mangan
National Guard activated for election help across the country
Twenty states, including the District of Columbia, have put National Guard troops on state active-duty or prepare-to-activate orders to provide election support, NBC News reported.
The number, which is likely to grow, translates to about 350 troops across both categories.
The troops are mostly available to provide cyber, law enforcement or general support for the election.
— Kevin Breuninger, Courtney Kube, NBC News, and Mosheh Gains, NBC News
How social media platforms are combating disinformation today
Dilara Irem Sancar | Anadolu | Getty Images
Trump Media & Technology shares jump on Election Day
The Truth social network logo is seen in this photo illustration on 04 December, 2023 in Warsaw, Poland.
It’s the latest swing for shares of the company, which operates Truth Social and is majority-owned by Republican nominee Trump. Some investors have seen the stock as a way to bet on the former president’s reelection odds.
Shares of the stock rallied more than 110% in October alone, marking its first positive month since March. The stock has gained another 10% since the start of November.
Trump Media & technology
Voting machines are malfunctioning in Pennsylvania’s Cambria County
A man votes in the 2024 U.S. presidential election on Election Day, at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S., November 5, 2024.
Quinn Glabicki | Reuters
Vote-scanning machines are down in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, causing some complications for morning voters in a deep red county of the major swing state.
The Pennsylvania State Department said it is “in contact” with the county officials and is working to clear up the technical difficulties.
In the meantime, voters at the affected precincts are casting paper ballots, which are being stored in a secure location to be scanned once the machines are up and running.
In 2020, Trump won Cambria County by roughly 37 points against Joe Biden.
A couple of other instances of technical difficulties have been reported in other states, which have caused some voting delays, but the issues do not appear to be connected.
— Rebecca Picciotto
Trump can still vote in Florida despite his New York hush money conviction. Here’s why
Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media after voting at a polling station setup in the Morton and Barbara Mandel Recreation Center on March 19, 2024, in Palm Beach, Florida.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images
Florida has led the country in disenfranchising citizens with felony records. But Donald Trump, the only former president ever to be found guilty of criminal charges, should have no trouble casting his ballot in the Sunshine State.
That’s because Trump was convicted in New York.
Under Florida law, an out-of-state felony conviction makes a person ineligible to vote only if they would also be ineligible in the state where they were found guilty.
Trump on May 30 was convicted by a New York jury of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money scheme to pay porn star Stormy Daniels for her silence ahead of the 2016 election.
A New York law passed in 2021 allows for convicted felons to register to vote if they are not incarcerated. It also restores the voting rights of convicted felons upon their release from incarceration.
On Sept. 6, Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan ruled that Trump will not be sentenced in the hush money case until Nov. 26 — three weeks after Election Day.
Trump traveled back to Florida on Tuesday, and he is expected to cast his ballot near his Mar-a-Lago home in West Palm Beach.
— Kevin Breuninger
Former Obama campaign manager Messina: “This is the closest race I have seen since 2000”
Trump 2024 senior economic advisor Stephen Moore and Former Obama campaign manager Jim Messina joined CNBC’s “Squawk Box” to share their expectations for the presidential race and discuss the candidates’ plans for the economy and businesses.
“This is the closest race I have seen since 2000, and I think anyone who tells you they know what’s going to happen tonight is drunk,” Messina said.
Moore said he is “not a big fan” of Trump’s highly contested universal tariffs plan and claimed that while he thinks he would implement “very stiff tariffs on China,” these proposals will be more akin to “negotiating tactics” with other countries.
— Ece Yildirim
No major incidents affecting U.S. election infrastructure so far, CISA says
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency logo.
Source: Wikipedia
As of 9:30 a.m. ET on Tuesday, federal cybersecurity officials have not identified any significant national-level incidents affecting the security of U.S. election infrastructure, Cait Conley, senior advisor to the director at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told reporters in a briefing.
“We are tracking instances of extreme weather and other temporary infrastructure disruptions in certain areas of the country, but these are largely expected, routine and planned-for events,” Conley said.
— Ashley Capoot
Financial advisors urge investors to take a long-term view
Voters line up outside of a polling station at Donegan Elementary School as the polls open on Election Day in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on Nov. 5, 2024.
Samuel Corum | AFP | Getty Images
Many investors worry how the markets may react based on who is elected president on Election Day, but experts at top financial advisory firms tell clients not to make any sudden moves in reaction to uncertainty.
In the long term, markets generally tend to do well, no matter who occupies the Oval Office.
Investment research company Morningstar recently evaluated how the S&P 500 has performed starting Nov. 1 in the past 25 U.S. presidential elections. Forward one-year returns were positive for 10 of the 13 elections where Democrats won, and in nine of the 12 contests where Republicans won, the firm found.
Forward four-year returns were positive for Democrats in 11 out of 12 terms, compared to Republicans who had positive returns in nine out of 12.
“Presidential elections historically have not been nearly as important to markets as most people think,” said Mark Motley, portfolio manager at Foster & Motley in Cincinnati, which is No. 34 on the 2024 CNBC Financial Advisor 100 list.
— Lorie Konish
Vance votes at Ohio polling site
Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance arrives to vote at the St. Anthony of Padua Maronite Catholic Church on Election Day in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Nov. 5, 2024.
Carolyn Kaster | AP
Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, just voted at a polling site in Cincinnati.
Accompanied by his wife, Usha, and his children, Vance cast his ballot at St. Anthony of Padua Maronite Catholic Church.
“I of course voted for Donald Trump and myself. So did my wife,” Vance told reporters after voting.
“I feel good. You never know until you know, but I feel good about this race.”
— Kevin Breuninger
Scaramucci, Ramaswamy spar over Harris’ and Trump’s economic plans
“The stock market’s at an all-time high. We have great economic growth. The unemployment numbers are around 4%, and the economy’s doing quite well after Covid,” SkyBridge Capital’s Anthony Scaramucci said, making the case for Harris.
The former Trump White House official joined Strive Asset Management’s Vivek Ramaswamy on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” to debate Harris’ and Trump’s economic records.
— Josephine Rozzelle
Biden declares victory in end of Boeing’s 53-day strike
Members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 751, embrace at a union hall after learning that union members voted to approve a new contract proposal from Boeing in Seattle, Washington, U.S. November 4, 2024.
David Ryder | Reuters
President Joe Biden declared victory in Boeing machinists’ approval of a new labor deal, ending a 53-day strike that halted most aircraft production at a top U.S. exporter and military contractor and dented the last jobs report before Tuesday’s presidential election.
The deal “was achieved with the support of my economic team, including Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard,” Biden said in a statement.
“Over the last four years, we’ve shown collective bargaining works. Good contracts benefit workers, businesses, and consumers—and are key to growing the American economy from the middle out and the bottom up,” he said.
The new Boeing contract for its 33,000 unionized machinists, mostly on the U.S. West Coast, includes 38% raises over four years, a $12,000 and a deal with the company that it builds its next aircraft in one of the unionized factories in the Seattle area. Workers go back on the job as early as Wednesday, though the company isn’t out of the woods with several delayed aircraft programs including the late-arriving Boeing 747s that will serve as the next Air Force One airplanes.
—Leslie Josephs
Trump will host an exclusive Mar-a-Lago dinner for top donors tonight
Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida on Aug. 8, 2024.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images
Trump will host an exclusive election night dinner at Mar-a-Lago for club members and his top political donors, a source who received an invitation confirmed to NBC News.
The dinner is scheduled to take place after the Republican presidential nominee casts his vote in person. He then plans to call in to several tele-rallies, a person familiar with the planning told NBC News.
In the late afternoon, Trump will huddle with an inner circle of advisors, friends and donors, another source told NBC News.
When the race results start becoming more clear, the former president then plans to leave the resort and go to the Trump-Vance watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida.
— Rebecca Picciotto
Bernie Marcus, Home Depot co-founder and Trump megadonor, dies at 95
Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus appears on “Cavuto: Coast to Coast,” with anchor Neil Cavuto, on the Fox Business Network, in New York, Monday, June 24, 2019.
Richard Drew | AP
Bernie Marcus, the billionaire co-founder of Home Depot and a major supporter of Trump’s political career, has died at 95, the company confirmed.
Marcus led the Home Depot for more than two decades, both as its first CEO and as chairman of the board. His net worth at the end of his life topped $11 billion, according to Forbes. The company now boasts more than 2,300 locations and employs more than 500,000 people.
Marcus was an outspoken supporter of Trump and other Republicans. His philanthropic vehicle, the Marcus Foundation, donated $10 million to the pro-Trump Preserve America PAC in the 2020 election. His family foundation gave $7 million to a pair of pro-Trump super PACs in the 2016 election.
In the 2024 cycle, Marcus said he preferred Trump’s Republican primary rival, Nikki Haley.
— Kevin Breuninger
Pollster Frank Luntz: Nevada, Pennsylvania will still be too close to call tomorrow
Pollster and political strategist Frank Luntz on CNBC’s Squawk Box this morning said he thinks Pennsylvania and Nevada will be too close to call on Wednesday morning, and that the general public will not know the results of presidential election until “either late Friday or early Saturday.”
“If Trump loses either [Georgia and North Carolina], it will be a Harris victory. If Trump wins either Pennsylvania or Michigan, it will be a Trump victory,” Luntz said.
Other metrics that Luntz is “watching keenly” are the Latino vote in Nevada and Arizona, whether conservative older woman will vote slightly more for Harris than they normally do for a Democratic candidate, younger women who are “more pro-Harris than any Democratic group,” and whether or not today’s polls will see a record-setting turnout, which would be “good news for Trump.”
— Ece Yildirim
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy explains how Trump could win tonight
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy joined CNBC’s “Squawk Box” this morning to talk about his expectations for tonight. McCarthy claimed polls are underestimating support for Trump in Wisconsin, and laid out how he thinks Harris is faring in Pennsylvania.
— Ece Yildirim
First results are in from a small New Hampshire town — it’s a Harris-Trump tie
A voter walks with his dog after casting his ballot in the First-in-the-Nation midnight vote for the New Hampshire primary elections in the Living Room of the Tillotson House at the Balsams Grand Resort in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, on January 23, 2024.
Sebastien St-Jean | AFP | Getty Images
Harris and Trump tied the midnight race in Dixville Notch, an unincorporated community in a small New Hampshire township where there are six registered voters this year.
Three of those voters went for Harris while the other three went for Trump. The polls opened at midnight and closed at 12:07 a.m. E.T.
Since 1960, Dixville Notch voters have followed the tradition of submitting their votes in person in a wooden box just after midnight, before the results are announced minutes later.
Though the Dixville Notch result is not a predictive measure, the tradition has kicked off Election Day events for decades of night owls.
This year, the Harris-Trump tie happens to mirror the dead-heat race that polls have been reporting over the past several months. In 2020, President Biden received all five of the Dixville Notch votes cast before winning the overall race.
— Rebecca Picciotto
Trump Media shares are popping in pre-market trading
Republican presidential nominee former U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during an 11th Hour Faith Leaders Meeting in Concord, North Carolina, U.S., October 21, 2024.
Brian Snyder | Reuters
Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group are trading higher this morning as investors make some of their final bets on the former president’s company in his final hours in the race against Harris.
The DJT stock was up roughly 9% at one point before the market opened.
The meme stock tends to fluctuate, but over the course of the election, it has often been viewed as a proxy gauge for Trump’s chances at a second presidential term.
Wall Street analysts listed it as a stock to watch going into Election Day.
Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump holds up a fist at a campaign rally at the Santander Arena on November 04, 2024 in Reading, Pennsylvania.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images
Trump closed out his campaign on Monday with four rallies in three swing states: Two in Pennsylvania, plus one each in North Carolina and Michigan.
On Election Day, the only officially announced event is the Trump-Vance watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida.
— Kevin Breuninger
More than 77 million have cast early votes
Duke University students wait in line with residents of Durham County to cast their ballots at a polling site on campus during the penultimate day of early voting in the state, in Durham, North Carolina, U.S. November 1, 2024.
Jonathan Drake | Reuters
More than 77 million Americans have already cast their ballots by mail or in person, according to NBC News’ tally of the early vote.
That’s far less than in 2020, when more than 100 million Americans voted early. But those results came in the middle of the deadly Covid-19 pandemic, when many Americans avoided public gatherings and states had greatly expanded absentee and early voting rules.
Trump criticized early voting in 2020 — a stance that may have helped President Joe Biden clinch several key swing states.
While Trump has at times waxed nostalgic about single-day voting in the 2024 cycle, both his campaign and Harris’ have mostly encouraged their supporters to vote as soon as they can.
NBC’s data, provided by TargetSmart, show Democrats slightly leading Republicans in the early vote tally, 41% to 39%.
Among the seven key battleground states, more registered Democrats appear to have voted early in three — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — while registered Republicans lead in Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia.
Voters fill out their ballots for the presidential election during early voting ahead of the polls closing November 5 at the Detroit Elections Office in Detroit, Michigan, U.S. October 28, 2024.
Rebecca Cook | Reuters
What it all means for the final result is far from clear.
While early-vote figures are often viewed as a signal about certain voters’ enthusiasm or expected turnout, it’s hard to predict how many more voters will show up on Tuesday. It is also difficult to know ahead of time whether a party’s early vote share is “cannibalizing” its Election Day turnout.
An NBC analysis found that among early voters in 2024 who did not vote in 2020, Democrats outpace Republicans in Pennsylvania, and female Democrats are the biggest group of new voters in the state.
In Arizona, however, there were more Republican new voters than Democratic ones, and male Republicans led the way.
— Kevin Breuninger
What’s Kamala Harris doing on Election Day?
Democratic presidential nominee U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris smiles during her campaign rally, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, U.S., November 4, 2024.
Eloisa Lopez | Reuters
After storming Pennsylvania on Monday, Harris’ Election Day schedule is relatively sparse — at least for now.
The only item on her agenda is an election night watch party at Howard University, her alma mater in Washington, D.C.
The campaign will hold an event at “the Yard,” the main quadrangle on campus.
Walz and his wife, Gwen Walz, are also set to participate in a political event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, NBC News reported.
Over the last 25 years, Americans have regularly found themselves up into the early morning hours waiting for news organizations to make the decisive call of the last state needed to put a presidential candidate in the White House, and to learn who controls Congress.
A moment like this on election night in 2000 led to our common language of Republican states as red states and Democratic states as blue states, as the US watched the Meet the Press host Tim Russert on NBC talk late through the night about what was happening in Florida.
It’s extremely unlikely that we’ll know the winner of the presidential contest on election night, as Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are virtually tied in the polls, and the odds that the race comes down to a small number of swing states is high.
So when will we know who won the US election?
Well, that depends on how close things turn out to be. Four swing states – Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – have absentee ballot procedures that can require days to conclude. But if Harris has decisively won the other swing states, it is enough to declare her the victor. Any other result will take time.
Why do US news organizations make the call?
News organizations call a winner. They do not determine a winner. Officials in elections offices who count votes and certify election results determine the winner. That certification happens days or even weeks after an election.
News organizations convey the moment it has become plain from what those elections offices have said that the mathematical results of the vote count show a winner.
“Our standard is absolute certainty,” said David Scott, head of news strategy and operations at the Associated Press. “We don’t declare a winner until we are 100% confident that the trailing candidates can’t catch up.”
The Guardian follows the Associated Press in calling an election.
How do news organizations make their calls?
The AP and other election night news organizations such as CNN, NBC, ABC and Fox News maintain a “decision desk” and use a model to project how the vote count will unfold, state by state. Some are now relying on Decision Desk HQ, an independent organization set up specifically for this task.
“News organizations have gotten a lot more nervous about making early calls because they don’t want to have to take a call back like they did in 2000,” said Mike Whener, a professor studying elections at the University of Wisconsin.
The decisions about when to call are made by statisticians, not news anchors.
“It’s not Sean Hannity making that determination,” Whener said. “It’s not Rupert Murdoch making that determination early. It’s the people in the room doing the analysis, making that determination about whether, whether the election can be called.”
The calls of different networks may differ in timing because each uses a model that is independent of others. Different analysts may make conclusions at different times.
When did we know the results in 2020?
Joe Biden was declared the winner on Saturday 7 November – four days after the election. The president crossed the electoral vote threshold that day when media outlets called Pennsylvania and Nevada. Michigan and Wisconsin were both called the day after the election, but Arizona wasn’t called until 12 November, North Carolina until 13 November, and Georgia on 19 November, after a recount.
Will results be faster or slower than 2020?
That depends on the margins in each state. According to Protect Democracy, a non-partisan group, we’ll generally see results faster than in 2020 if the margin in a state is greater than 0.5%. They draw this conclusion because there will be significantly fewer mail ballots than in 2020, and states will be able to count them faster. Three states also expanded the pre-canvassing of mail ballots before election day that didn’t in 2020 (Arizona, Georgia and Michigan) and three states have an earlier deadline for when mail ballots must arrive than they did in 2020 (North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania).
Protect Democracy said in a recent report that its best guess was that results will be called in Michigan and Wisconsin one full day after polls closed – the same speed as 2020. It also guesses that Pennsylvania will be called faster than in 2020, when it took four days; Nevada will be called in the same amount of time or faster than 2020, when it took four days and Arizona will also be called in the same amount of time or faster than 2020, when it took nine days. North Carolina and Georgia will both be called faster than 2020, the organization guesses.
What could prolong results?
If the margin in states is smaller than 0.5% or if any states require recounts, results could be prolonged. News outlets will generally not call states until the results of a recount.
For Arizona and Nevada in particular, “it’s very unlikely anybody’s going to call those races on election night,” McCoy said. “That’s the way those states have worked for a very long time, and so that’s very much expected.” If another swing state is as close as Georgia was in 2020, “you’re just waiting. That’s not something you’re going to get ahead of and make a projection that’s just too close to call. And so you’re just waiting for the votes to come.”
Pennsylvania is particularly challenging because by law, local elections offices can’t begin opening envelopes and tallying mail-in ballots until the day of the election. Wisconsin, another swing state, has a similar restriction and may not report complete results until early Wednesday morning.
Some states permit absentee ballots to be counted as much as 10 days after election day. Of the swing states, only Nevada has a meaningful delay; it can accept mail-in ballots up to the Saturday after election day, as long as they are postmarked by 5 November.
If there are legal battles over which ballots to count, that could also delay results. There are currently numerous pending lawsuits in a number of swing states concerning the canvassing of certain ballots, including late-arriving ballots and overseas ballots.
If a state has results like Florida in 2000, where a three-digit number separates two candidates, the result may come down to military absentee ballots and possibly provisional ballots. Typically, only about half of provisional ballots count, but in a close race we’ll see a mad scramble by political teams to find the people who cast those ballots to “cure” them, which usually involves bringing proof of identification and registration to an elections office.
What states will provide results first this year?
It’s likely that news organizations will call several east coast states first where one candidate has a clear advantage over the other.
“Obviously, there are some states that are going to be basically called at full closing,” said Drew McCoy, president of Decision Desk HQ. “There’ll be some that are called, you know, once you sort of start to see the first votes come in and that it tracks with historical precedents.”
What is the ‘red mirage’ and the ‘blue shift’?
The phrases “red mirage” and “blue shift” refer to the same phenomenon in which a Republican candidate appears to have a lead early in the evening, only for that edge to disappear as more votes are counted.
In 2020, mail-in ballots heavily favored Democrats, while Republicans were far more likely to vote in-person. On Wednesday at noon on the day after the election, Donald Trump had an 11% lead, which Joe Biden overcame over the next two days as elections workers counted 2.7 million voters’ mail-in ballots. The AP and other news organizations knew how many absentee ballots voters had returned, and knew how many had been requested by registered Democrats, and refrained from calling the race for Biden until those ballots were counted.
On the Friday before election day, Wisconsin had received more than 1m absentee ballots, with more on the way.
“In the two most populous counties, they don’t finish counting until 1am or 2am,” Whener said. “And so several hundred thousand votes come in, you know, under the cover of darkness, and they happen in the two most liberal counties in the state. The Democrat always picks up a ton of votes in the middle of the night in Wisconsin, because, by law, they can’t start counting until then. It’s a petri dish for conspiracy theories, even though they’re doing things exactly the way they’re required to do them.”
The opposite phenomenon occurs in Arizona, where mail-in ballots received before election day are counted – and reported – first. In 2022, the Democratic senator Mark Kelly had a 20-point lead over Republican Blake Masters at the start of the night. Kelly ultimately won with a five-point margin.
But mail-in ballots received on election day cannot be processed until after the polls close. In 2020, that was a significant number – about 320,000 ballots in Maricopa county alone.
Why is this so complicated? Why doesn’t the country just add up all the votes and see who has more?
A reminder: in the presidential election contest, the popular vote nationally does not determinethe result. Each state counts its votes separately. With two exceptions – Nebraska and Maine – the winner of a state gets all of its electoral votes, regardless of whether the state was won by 537 votes out of about 6m cast, as in the presidential contest in Florida in 2000, or the 1.5m-vote margin Reagan won California by in 1984.
Each state has a number of electors based on the number of congressional districts it has, plus two additional votes representing the state’s Senate seats. Washington DC has three electoral votes, despite having no voting representation in Congress.
It takes 270 electors to win.
Biden won by a 51-47 percentage in 2020, a margin of about 7m votes. The electoral count was 306-232, winning about 57% of the electors.
When will we know who controls Congress?
Individual congressional races will be called as votes come in, but with 435 races across the country, some are bound to be too close to call on election night. Depending on how many, it may not be obvious for some time which party controls Congress, McCoy said.
“There’s always kind of like one or two races that are just, you know, ridiculously close, and it just goes to a recount, or whatever the process may be,” McCoy said. “It’s very much about waiting for the data and seeing what it tells you, not getting in front of that. That’s our biggest rule, is never getting in front of the data.”
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris delivered their closing arguments, holding duelling rallies across the battleground states well into the night, on the last day of campaigning before the US election.
Harris was in Pennsylvania, the biggest swing state and crucial to the Democratic campaign. She held the final rally of her campaign at the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, made famous in the movie Rocky. Introduced by Oprah Winfrey and Lady Gaga, Harris emphasised her message of hope. “We finish, as we started, with optimism, with energy, with joy,” she said. “We need to get to work.”
Trump struck a darker tone in the same state, with threats to put tariffs on all imports from Mexico unless it stopped migrants from entering the US – though he interrupted himself at one point to celebrate his endorsement from podcaster Joe Rogan. The Republican candidate also held hours-long events in North Carolina and Michigan.
Leading forecaster Nate Silver has released his final forecast, and said that Harris won in 40,012 out of 80,000, or 50.15% of, simulations run using his model. Polls released on Monday found Harris had a marginal lead in Michigan but was tied with Trump in Pennsylvania and other key swing states. Trump has held on to a lead in betting markets but one that is eroding.
Here’s what else happened on the last day of the 2024 election campaign:
Donald Trump election news and updates
Trump held his final rally of the campaign in Grand Rapids, Michigan – the same place where he closed his 2016 and 2020 campaigns. “With your vote tomorrow, we can fix every single problem our country faces and lead America – indeed, the world – to new heights of glory,” he told the crowd.
The former president started the last day of campaigning in North Carolina, launching personal attacks on a number of high-profile Democratic women,then travelled to Reading, Pennsylvania, where he painted migrants as dangerous criminals. “November 5, 2024 will be Liberation Day in America,” he said. “And on day one, I will launch the largest deportation program of criminals in American history.”
In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Trump praised the Green party presidential candidate, Jill Stein, as “one of my favourite politicians” and relished the prospect of a return to the White House: “Only one day – does that sound nice – one day from now. We’ve been waiting four years for this.”
JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, was once again condemned for misogyny after repeatedly calling Kamala Harris “trash” at campaign rallies. The Republican vice-presidential nominee compared Harris to trash at a New Hampshire rally on Sunday, then did it again on Monday in Flint, Michigan, and Atlanta, Georgia.
Kamala Harris election news and updates
The vice-president started the day in Scranton, Joe Biden’s childhood home town, where she told supportersto “get this done”. Biden did not appear with Harris in Scranton, continuing her campaign’s effort to put a gap between the candidate and her former running mate.
Harris reached out to the Puerto Rican and Latino population of Pennsylvania, visiting a Puerto Rican restaurant in Reading with congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and governor Josh Shapiro and appearing at an Allentown rally with rapper Fat Joe, who ripped Trump for his treatment of Puerto Ricans and Latino voters: “[If] you’re not decided, where’s your pride as a Latino?”
Harris went doorknocking in Reading and held a rally in Pittsburgh, supported by pop star Katy Perry. The vice-president sought to strike a positive tone, saying it was time to move past the “fear and division” of the past decade and, drawing a contrast with Donald Trump without mentioning his name. “It is time for a new generation of leadership,” she said.
Harris headed home to Number One Observatory Circle in Washington in the wee hours of Tuesday morning after her final Philadelphia rally. She will spend Tuesday calling into local radio stations in the seven battleground states to reach the remaining voters, her communications director told reporters.
Harris’s running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, campaigned across his home state before visiting Wisconsin, where he struck a hopeful tone: “Look at the movement, and look at the energy that Kamala Harris has built in 107 days – imagine what she can do for the next eight years.”Walz ended Monday in Michigan, appearing with Jon Bon Jovi, and told supporters women will send a message to Trump tomorrow “whether he likes it or not”.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail
A Pennsylvania judge rejected legal challenges to Elon Musk’s $1m giveaway, allowing the billionaire’s voter sweepstakes to continue through Tuesday’s presidential election.
Republicans also had a win in their legal battle over vote eligibility, after Georgia’s highest court ruled absentee ballots must be returned by election day. As legal challenges play out across the country, the Harris campaign told reporters it was prepared to combat any efforts by Trump to discredit the outcome.
The Harris campaign expects “near complete results” on election night from Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan, along with partial results from Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona, according to campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon.
Officials have begun preparing for a feared escalation of political violence on election day and beyond. More than two dozen states are willing to send national guard troops to Washington, national guard officials said, while election officials in one Nevada county said polling places have installed “panic buttons” in the wake of surging threats. A group of Democratic secretaries of state have asked social media companies how they will moderate inflammatory content as violent threats and disinformation spread.
Sunday, July 28 marks 100 days until the November 5 presidential election.
Interest in the election – at least in terms of visits to 270toWin – has picked up significantly since the debate in late June, and has accelerated since President Biden’s subsequent withdrawal from the race last Sunday. July visitor traffic has doubled since the same month in 2020.
As a nice round number, there will be no shortage of articles mentioning ‘100 days until the election’. Here are links to a few of them.
Polls
There have been quite a number of Harris vs. Trump polls released in recent days. Broadly speaking, Trump still holds a small edge, but the race seems to have tightened since Biden’s withdrawal and endorsement of the Vice President.
On 5 November 2024, millions of Americans will head to the polls to choose between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump for president of the United States. The two candidates have offered starkly different visions for the future of the nation. As the election enters the final stretch, the Guardian US is averaging national and state polls to see how the two candidates are faring.
Latest polls
Polling average over a moving 10-day period
Guardian graphic. Source: Analysis of polls gathered by 538.
Latest analysis: Nationally, Harris has a one-point advantage, 48% to 47%, over her Republican opponent, virtually identical to last week. Such an advantage is well with the margin of errors of most polls. The battleground states, too, remain in a dead heat.
But in a fractured political landscape that has featured threats of retribution from Trump, accusations of fascism and racism from Harris, and warnings that democracy itself is on the ballot, the bigger picture – that uniformity, over a prolonged period – has seasoned observers scratching their heads.
Polling average over a moving 10-day period. Each circle represents an individual poll result and is sized by 538’s pollster rating
Notes on data
To calculate our polling averages, Guardian US took a combination of head-to-head and multi-candidate polls and calculated a rolling 10-day average for each candidate. Our tracker uses polls gathered by 538 and filters out lower-quality pollsters for national polls. Our state polling averages use a lower quality threshold for inclusion due to the small numbers of state polls. If there were no polls over the the 10-day period, we leave the average blank. On 11 Oct Guardian US began rounding averages to the nearest whole number to better reflect the lack of certainty in the polling figures.
Polling averages capture how the race stands at a particular moment in time and are likely to change as the election gets closer. Averages from states with small numbers of polls are also more susceptible to errors and biases. Our averages are an estimate of the support that the candidates have in key swing states and on the national stage. The election is decided by the electoral college, so these averages should not be taken as a likelihood of winning the election in November.
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.”
An Early Voting sign and a “No Campaigning within 150 feet of Polling Place” sign seen the polling station, Oct. 31, 2024, in Stockbridge, Ga. (AP Photo/Jason Allen, File)
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.
Trump rebounded from disgrace to the Republican nomination
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.
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
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.
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.
Harris gets an unexpected opportunity at redemption
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.
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris takes a photo with supporters during a campaign rally at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, Wis., Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
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.
The battle between Trump and Harris will reshape the country
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.
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump watches as Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during an ABC News presidential debate, Sept. 10, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
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.
