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???? Pinned Justin Bergman, International Affairs Editor
Welcome to our live blog of the US election, where we will be posting the latest news, results and snap analysis from some of our top academic experts, as well as the politics editors at The Conversation, throughout what will no doubt be a long, drama-filled day. (Perhaps a couple of days…)
Here’s what to expect: the results will start coming in after 10am AEDT when the first polls close. Then, there will be a deluge of results every hour after that. We will wait for The Associated Press to call individual states. And we’ll update our interactive map and our Electoral College vote count tracker as the day goes on. Remember: it’s 270 electoral votes to win.
⏺ 12.30pm Amanda Dunn
The early numbers in the swing states are all over the place, which the experts have long warned us will happen. Hopefully in the next couple hours we’ll have a clearer sense of which way the presidential wind is blowing.
⏺ 12.19pm David Smith
As we saw in the 2022 midterms, Florida seems to be moving further and further to the right. Trump is outperforming his numbers in previous elections, and Senator Rick Scott looks like he will be re-elected comfortably. Florida is the state where Republicans have had the most success with Latinos, appealing with social conservatism tough foreign policy stances against Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
⏺ 11.50am Mitch Costello
Where are Kamala Harris and Donald Trump watching the results tonight?
Harris is hosting her election night watch party at her alma mater, Howard University in Washington DC. Meanwhile, The New York Times has reported that Trump will be spending his election night with Elon Musk, among others, at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
⏺ 11.32am Prudence Flowers
Exit polls should always be taken with a liberal helping of salt, but if these NBC polls reflect trends on the ground then Donald Trump should be worried on multiple fronts. As David and Jared have pointed out, democracy ranking so highly is a net win for Democrats and Kamala Harris. But it’s also highly significant that abortion, likely a key mobilising issue behind the incredibly high turnout among women voters, is ranked above immigration, which was been the major weapon Trump and JD Vance have relied on to foster their politics of grievance
⏺ 11.30am Debrin Foxcroft
Some polling places in Georgia have stayed open longer after bomb threats forced them to close for an hour. The threats were later deemed to be hoaxes.
The FBI told the media the emails appeared “to originate from Russian email domains,” though that wouldn’t necessarily prove they were coming from Russia. The threats targeted Fulton and DeKalb counties, which both have large Black populations.
⏺ 11.23am David Smith
Early exit polls suggest democracy is a major issue for voters at this election. This was certainly the message Democrats were trying to get across, but many Republicans also feel that democracy is a major issue, believing the last election was compromised. Unsurprisingly, the economy is the other major issue showing up in election polls.
⏺ 11.20am Jared Mondschein
Kamala Harris hopes democracy is on the ballot, but be wary of exit polls confirming that. As someone who conducts polls, it pains me to say this, but I would encourage folks to not pay too much attention to early exit polls.
NBC is currently running a story saying the state of democracy was the most important issue for voters, according to preliminary results from its exit poll. NBC said 34% of voters ranked democracy as the most important issue to them, while 31% said the economy.
If that preliminary result was representative of the country, that would be a fantastic outcome for the Harris campaign. On the issues where Harris leads Trump, abortion and democracy have continued to rank highly.
Trump, on the other hand, leads on the issues of the economy and immigration. The economy, in particular, remains the most dominant issue in the election – it’s the only issue a majority of Americans can agree is extremely important.
Democracy will likely remain a top issue for voters, but it’ll be pretty surprising if voters end up ranking it higher than the economy.
⏺ 11.13am Emma Shortis
The Trump campaign’s strategy was always to appeal to men, and white men in particular - that’s the point of engaging with high profile figures in the “manosphere” (hi Prudence!) like Elon Musk and Joe Rogan. They’re still doing it:
⏺ 11.03am Mitch Costello
Americans have been casting ballots from all over the world – and even from outer space. Astronauts voted through a special electronic voting booth inside the International Space Station. According to NASA, astronauts have been able to vote from orbit since 1997.
⏺ 10.57am Matthew Ricketson
Donald Trump has tried everything to bully the American people into re-electing him president. This may sound like a statement of the bleeding obvious, but it is actually extraordinary, and shows how this election differs from so many others in American history.
You can see the bullying behaviour in numerous ways. First, in Trump’s refusal to campaign for anyone other than his devoted MAGA base; he makes little effort to persuade independent and unaligned voters even though his base has never amounted to a majority of Americans, and he relentlessly insults and vilifies Democrat supporters.
Second, in his campaign’s strategy, conducted overtly and covertly, to undermine confidence in the legitimacy of the electoral process. Polls are showing how fearful people are of what Trump’s supporters might do if he loses the election.
Third, in Trump’s cowing of many billionaires who slammed Trump for his behaviour over the capitol riot on January 6 2021 but who, fearful of retribution from a second Trump administration, are now giving him their support.
Fourth, in his cowing of the news media. Two leading newspapers, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, have abandoned their regular practice of endorsing a candidate in an editorial. The Post’s former editor, Marty Baron, has called this an act of cowardice even as he laments how the newspaper’s proprietor, Jeff Bezos, firmly resisted Trump’s bullying and targeting of Bezos’ company, Amazon, during his first administration. The media has coined the term “sanewashing” to describe how Trump’s dangerous, anti-democratic behaviour has been sanitised while at the same time so much of the media has perpetuated the problem.
This is also why I’ve needed to devote most space here to Trump rather than the Democrats’ Kamala Harris, who in a more normal election would have merited far more attention. She is the first black female candidate for the presidency. Also, she has run a strong, agile campaign since winning her party’s nomination after president Joe Biden’s last minute but seemingly inevitable decision not to run again.
⏺ 10.52am Justin Bergman
We’re about to start seeing results in several east coast states, including the battleground state of Georgia. The polls close in Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia at 11am AEDT.
It’s worth keeping an eye on the so-called “blue shift” or “red mirage” today, which Emma Shortis explains here.
We may see one candidate take an early lead in individual states as the votes are counted, only to have that lead gradually disappear. This is completely normal! Mail-in votes are counted much more slowly than votes cast in person on Election Day. We will be waiting for The Associated Press to call each state for Harris or Trump throughout the day.
⏺ 10.23am Amanda Dunn
Will women decide this election? Reports coming in of women significantly outnumbering men at polling booths, which may well hearten the Harris campaign. But it’s still very early, so we shall see.
⏺ 10.19am Emma Shortis
We’re in a bit of a holding pattern here in Washington as we wait for polls to close in the eastern states. All eyes will be on Georgia and North Carolina first.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has expressed confidence Georgia will have a result tonight.
It also looks like turnout in the critical battleground states of Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania will surpass 2020. It’s not clear who this will advantage yet, but I suspect – after waiting in the longest line I’ve ever seen last night for a Harris rally in Pennsylvania – that it might favour Harris. Especially if (as my colleague Prudence has pointed out) this turnout is driven by women.
The Harris campaign has just announced the vice president will hold an election night rally here in DC, so that’s where I’ll be heading next.
⏺ 10.07am Prudence Flowers
Donald Trump has spent the last week of the election pushing disinformation about voter fraud in Pennsylvania. Now on election day, before the polls have even closed, he’s falsely claimed that ‘cheating’ is so bad in Pennsylvania that police will have to intervene.
Trump is focused on Pennsylvania because the vote count will take longer there, and so the goal is to generate doubt and chaos if it seems like he is losing. And it’s no coincidence that much of this messaging is happening on Truth Social, the Trump owned alt-tech “social media platform” that the New York Times has dubbed a “conspiracy theory machine”.
⏺ 9.50am Justin Bergman
We can probably guess which way Bette Midler is voting:
⏺ 9.41am David Smith
Reports suggest both Georgia and North Carolina, two key swing states, are on track for record high voter turnout. This is notable because parts of them were recently devastated by Hurricane Helene, and there were fears people would be unable to cast votes. But Herculean efforts by election officials to ensure everyone can vote may actually be helping drive turnout to record levels.
⏺ 9.33am Emma Shortis
I jumped on a train to Philadelphia last night in a failed attempt to get into Kamala Harris’ last big rally on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (made famous in the 1976 movie Rocky).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a longer line of people – we walked for 20 minutes just to find the end, and it kept on growing! The line was full of young people, and young women in particular. They were all full of quiet joy – there was no grumpiness about the long wait. But the good vibes were underpinned by a real anxiety about what might happen today.
Voting turnout does appear to be very high in Pennsylvania:
⏺ 9.20am Justin Bergman
When are the polls closing across the US today? The first big results will start coming in at 11am AEDT. We’ve got an hourly guide for watching in Australia here.
This is also good for tracking the battleground states:
⏺ 8.43am Matthew Ricketson
What I’m looking for in the coverage of the vote count is for all the networks and outlets, but especially Fox news, to be brave as well as accurate in their calling of the seats.
That is, they must not be cowed by any efforts of Donald Trump and his team to delay calling the result of a swing state, or if they do call it for Kamala Harris, as Fox News’ decision did for Joe Biden in Arizona in 2020, not to be persuaded by Trump to change their call.
For whatever reason, Fox News and the Murdochs held firm under enormous pressure from Trump’s team in 2020. That needs to happen again, for the simple reason that the news media’s job is to report quickly, accurately and without fear or favour. Sounds like an idea from a bygone age, doesn’t it. Let’s hope not.
⏺ 8.15am Prudence Flowers
This election I’m closely watching early voting and exit polls for two groups, white women and young people.
While women of colour are consistently Democratic voters, for decades white women have skewed Republican in presidential elections.
In the past two elections, a majority voted for Donald Trump – in fact, he increased his share of white female voters in 2020. This year, things look radically different. All year, abortion has been one of the top election issues for women, and Harris has made reproductive rights the heart of her campaign.
New voter registrations, record-breaking fundraising efforts, and poll results all seem to hint that white women, who make up 30% of the electorate, will turn out for Harris. This would have significant consequences in battleground states with abortion bans, like Georgia and North Carolina, or those voting on abortion ballot measures, like Arizona and Nevada.
While voters aged 18-29 have favoured the Democratic candidate since the 2008 election, they also have historically had much lower voter registration and turnout rates than older voters. This year, both candidates are both closely courting this demographic.
Trump has focused on young men via overtures to the conservative online “manosphere”, while Harris has run a meme-heavy TikTok campaign and, with running mate Tim Walz, engaged in significant college campus outreach.
Early voting among young people in battleground states is already breaking records. What we don’t know is whether Trump’s focus on young men who are “low propensity voters” will pay off, or whether the youth vote will reflect the vast ideological “gender gap” that exists among Gen Z men and women.
⏺ 7:45am David Smith
One of the reasons it took days before Joe Biden was declared the winner in 2020 was because so many more Democrats than Republicans voted early or by mail – and in some key states, those votes took a long time to count. This year, Republicans and Democrats are voting early in more even numbers. In fact, Republicans are leading Democrats in some swing states.
This could mean we may know the winner within hours instead of days (as we did in 2016). Republicans have been talking up their early voting advantages, but Democrats note about 53% of early voters have been women, among whom Harris has a significant polling advantage.
Republican women could be the group that decides the election. Harris is hoping the large number of Nikki Haley supporters in the Republican primary can be persuaded to vote against Trump again. A lot of her campaign has been directed at them.
⏺ 7.00am Jared Mondschein
More than anything else I’m watching Pennsylvania today. Out of the seven battleground states, it has the biggest population (13 million) and the most Electoral College votes (19). And it was decisive for electing both Donald Trump in 2016 (he won by fewer than 45,000 votes) and Joe Biden in 2020 (a margin of 80,000 votes).
Yet, as closely as everyone will be watching it, the state does not start counting mail-in ballots until the morning of election day. In 2020, it took four days for The Associated Press to call the state for Biden. We may have a similarly long wait in Pennsylvania again.
⏺ 6.30am Emma Shortis
It was too perfect - when I got in the Uber that was taking me to the Harris rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Saturday, Taylor Swift was playing on the radio.
Cos I’ve got a blank space baby, and I’ll write your name
There were so many women at the rally. They absolutely adored Kamala Harris, and saved their biggest cheers for her lines on reproductive freedom. If Harris wins, it will surely be via women’s turnout – the Black women who were there in huge numbers, alongside the suburban white women who could have been mistaken for Elizabeth Warren’s sister.
That’s why I’ll be watching the exit polls for the swing states of Georgia and North Carolina so closely on election day – both states with draconian abortion bans. Women’s turnout in those states will give us a very good idea of what’s to come.
The day before I went to Charlotte, I did a tour of the Capitol building in Washington, DC. As the guide pointed out to us – the Statue of Freedom that sits atop the Capitol dome is a woman.
