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Latest: Ballots cast in tight US presidential election

Updated Nov 5, 2024, 4:08pm EST
politicsNorth America
File photos of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
Evelyn Hockstein & Octavio Jones/File Photo/Reuters
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The News

Polling stations opened in the US on Tuesday as voters cast their ballots for the next president. At stake is control of the White House and Congress in a vote with massive national and global implications.

Opinion polls have reflected the closest presidential race in modern American history. Now, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump are vying for victory in seven key swing states that represent their surest path to securing enough Electoral College votes to win the presidency — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona.

Also on some state ballots are hot-button issues like abortion access and minimum wage requirements, while others include highly-contested races for the House, Senate, and governorships.

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Follow this page for key updates and analysis from the campaigns, pollsters, pundits, lawmakers, and voters throughout Election Day. You can also read our hour-by-hour guide on how to watch the election results, as well as the key bellwethers to keep an eye on.

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The View from Pundits

Nate Silver

Polling analyst

Nate Silver’s latest election model published early Nov. 5 forecast Harris winning 50.015% of the time, with the remainder a Trump win or a tie — a scenario that would likely also result in a Trump win, given that the Republican-controlled House would vote to decide the winner. “So if you offered me a bet on the election, who would I pick? Well, I wouldn’t,” Silver wrote. “And not because I don’t like gambling. But at the odds sportsbooks typically offer, you have to win 52.5 percent of the time to have a +EV bet. And Harris’s ‘lead’ is smaller than that.”

Dave Wasserman

Election analyst at The Cook Political Report

A surprise development in this election campaign, wrote Wasserman, is “that there really hasn’t been a huge non-campaign story (natural disaster, border crisis etc.) driving the news, which has put the spotlight on the candidates’ events, personalities and behavior.” This, he said, has “not played to Trump’s strengths.”

Justin Lahart

Economics reporter at The Wall Street Journal

The economy is “the third candidate” in this election, Justin Lahart of The Wall Street Journal wrote — though exactly how it will influence voters is “less than straightforward.” The US economy has rebounded since the COVID-19 pandemic, but high inflation means that the cost of living is higher and housing is less affordable than when Biden took office. “Voters appear to have a longer memory for inflation than they do for economic growth,” Lahart noted. Whether Trump or Harris wins, they will both be able to point to the economy and say, “This is why,” Lahart added.

The Economist

The Economist’s final election forecast saw Harris’ chance of winning rise from 50% to 56%. The lead is “small enough to barely be called a lead at all,” the outlet cautioned, but reflects the perception that Harris “is widely seen to have had a stronger week to end the campaign” than Trump, adding that “the last batch of polls to enter our model bears that out.”

John Zogby

Senior partner, John Zogby Strategies

The final six polls published before Election Day all showed almost the same story as prior polls in October: The race will be won on a “razor thin” margin, said Zogby. Though Harris is “certain” to receive millions of “excess” votes in large Democrat-voting states like California and New York, which will “beef up her total popular vote nationwide,” these will do little for her in key battleground states, all of which are “too close to call” in the final day of voting, Zogby wrote for The Guardian.

Paul Krugman

Columnist for The New York Times

A potential second Trump term should concern not only those who oppose him, but also his cheerleaders, Krugman warned. “The guardrails that constrained him last time are gone,” he wrote. There is a chance that Trump will build a “soft autocracy,” similar to that of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, whom Trump has expressed admiration for, and vice versa.

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The View from The States

Pennsylvania

In Cambria County, poll stations will be open later than usual after issues were found with some of the machines used to scan ballots. Election officials said that “there is a process in place for issues of this nature,” and the malfunction “should not discourage voters from voting at their voting precincts,” CNN reported. Other polling stations in the state also reported some machines that experienced issues, however election officials assured that all votes would be counted. In Luzerne County, polling stations will stay open an hour and a half longer than in the rest of the state after they experienced delays in opening this morning.

Nevada

Nevada’s Secretary of State warned Tuesday that there appear to be several thousand rejected ballots in two of the state’s largest counties, Clark and Washoe, with many showing signatures that don’t match driving license records — “It’s mostly the fact that young people don’t have signatures these days.” The state allows voters to fix (“cure”) their ballots through Nov. 12, which could delay a final call on which candidate wins the state.

Georgia

Two polling stations in Fulton County reportedly closed temporarily early this morning after receiving threatening calls that were investigated by local law enforcement. They have both reopened. Speaking later on Tuesday, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger said that Russian actors appeared to be behind several non-credible threats made on polling stations, while the FBI said they had also detected “non-credible” threats of apparent Russian origin.

Washington, DC

US Capitol police officers arrested a man who allegedly smelled like fuel, and was carrying a torch and a flare gun while entering the Capitol Visitor Center. The incident is being investigated.

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The View From The Trump Campaign

Trump wrote on X that election day “will be the most important day in American History,” saying that voting would take a long time because “Voter enthusiasm is THROUGH THE ROOF.” After casting his vote in Palm Beach, the former president said he felt “confident” about the election, and that if he lost, he believed there would be no violence, because his supporters “are not violent people.”

Meanwhile his running mate JD Vance urged Americans to “treat each other with respect” after casting his ballot in Cincinnati, Ohio. He said that the Trump campaign “feels very good about the energy, but ultimately the ball is in the courts of the Americans.”

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Tech billionaire Elon Musk, who has donated an estimated $120 million to help elect Trump, will spend election night at Mar-a-Lago, The New York Times reported, and will be part of “a small group” of people watching the results.

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The View From The Harris Campaign

Vice President Kamala Harris published several posts on X urging Americans who have not yet voted to head to the polls. “America, this is the moment to make your voices heard,” she wrote, urging supporters to “write the next chapter of the greatest story ever told.”

Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz, a former high-school football coach, turned to a sporting reference on X, posting: “It’s game day. Let’s win this.” Speaking to a crowd in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, Walz said the US’ elections are “the fairest, the freest, the safest,” and urged voters to keep calm.

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Former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama released videos urging people to vote, including one featuring several celebrities who emphasized that the election could, as in 2020, be decided by razor-thin margins, while former President Bill Clinton also posted on X urging people to cast their ballots for Harris and “finish strong.” Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016, emphasized the importance of protecting women’s reproductive rights, an issue the Harris campaign hopes to capitalize on today.

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The View From Congress

The chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Suzan DelBene sounded optimistic that her party would be able to flip the House, telling NBC News that voters “are tired of the chaos and dysfunction and extremism from Republicans.”

Minnesota’s Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar told MSNBC that she had been surprised to hear from women in Republican-leaning states that they’d be voting for Harris. Klobuchar said that she’d heard from the business community that they didn’t want “to see the chaos in the economy” that some of Trump’s proposed tariff and tax plans would bring.

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The View From Voters

Swing state voters express concern:

Ahead of Election Day, voters in battleground states expressed a sense that “their nation was coming undone,” The New York Times reported, with many expressing fears over the potential for violence both during and after the election. Others said they were relieved the campaign was coming to an end. Voters in swing state Georgia told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution also expressed concern about what might happen after the election. One, an 18 year old man — a key demographic the Trump campaign has sought to reach but which doesn’t usually turn out to vote, said he was voting because “everyone should participate in this.”

The first local results are in:

Voters in the New Hampshire town of Dixville Notch — of which there are six — cast their ballots shortly after midnight on Tuesday, resulting in a tie, a reflection of what opinion polls have suggested for months: “It’s really close,” Politico’s Lisa Kashinsky wrote. The tiny community unanimously voted for Joe Biden in 2020, and some were surprised by the result this time: “I didn’t see that coming,” Scott Maxwell told The New York Times.

Astronauts voted early from space:

NASA astronauts voted early from the International Space Station. They cast their vote in Texas’ Harris County. Space ballots get beamed to Earth through NASA’s constellation of satellites that communicate with antennas on Earth, according to CNN.


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