US election live blog

📍 Pinned Michael Hopkin

Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential election

Republican Donald Trump has officially won the 2024 presidential election, passing the required 270 Electoral College votes courtesy of a victory in Wisconsin.

It was a decisive victory over the Democrats’ Kamala Harris, defying the predictions of a long and contentious vote count. Trump is only the second president (after Grover Cleveland in 1892) to win a non-consecutive second term.

That’s where we’ll wrap up our live blog – thanks for your company. We’ll be back tomorrow with more analysis in our free daily newsletter around 7am AEDT. If you haven’t already signed up, you can do so here.

⏺ 6.46pm Michael Hopkin

Trump has described his likely election win as “a magnificent victory for the American people that will allow us to make America great again”, and hailed his MAGA supporters as “the greatest political movement of all time”.

In a surprisingly light-hearted speech compared with his doom-laden campaign speeches, Trump listed many of the states he won, and pointed to Republican majorities in the Senate and likely the House of Representatives. He also thanked his family and running-mate JD Vance.

Vance promised “the greatest economic comeback in our history”.

Trump then turned to his signature hardline view on immigration, saying: “We’re going to have to seal up those borders … we want people to come back in, but they have to come in legally.”

He then spent several minutes expressing admiration for Elon Musk, including a lengthy and rambling digression to describe Musk’s recent SpaceX rocket test and his Starlink satellite network.

⏺ 6.36pm Michael Hopkin

Donald Trump has taken the stage to give his victory speech to supporters in Florida, just seconds after the crucial race in Pennsylvania was called in his favour to put him just three Electoral College votes short of the 270 needed for victory.

⏺ 6.08pm Justin Bergman

We’re still waiting for Donald Trump to speak in West Palm Beach, Florida, where it’s about 2am local time. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is in attendance – it’s speculated he would have a role in a future Trump administration.

⏺ 5.53pm Mitch Costello

No formal result yet, but former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is getting in early.

⏺ 5.08pm David Smith

If Trump wins, as seems likely, this shows the limits of campaigning. Harris’ campaign was better funded, had more volunteers, and reached far more people (according to data from Gallup). Maybe the traditional campaigning tactics the Democrats were using no longer work, or maybe they were facing impossible headwinds given widespread discontent about the economy and direction of the country.

⏺ 4.58pm Prudence Flowers

During the campaign, Donald Trump indicated Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, will be part of the team helping him reduce the size and scale of government. Musk called for $2 trillion to be cut in government expenditures and is clearly feeling good tonight, tweeting a photoshopped image of himself carrying a sink into in the Oval Office (a call back to his takeover of the social media platform Twitter, now X).

⏺ 4.51pm Mitch Costello

We won’t be hearing anything from Kamala Harris tonight.

The co-chair of her campaign, Cedric Richmond, has addressed the crowd at Howard University:

“You won’t hear from the vice president tonight … but she’ll be back tomorrow.”

CNN is reporting that Donald Trump is transporting people from the viewing party at Mar-a-Lago by bus to a convention centre where Trump will later speak.

⏺ 4.47pm Emma Shortis

It’s well past midnight in Washington, so like a lot of other people I’ve left Kamala Harris’ election night party at Howard University. The atmosphere was very subdued, of course. Watching the young students at Harris’ alma mater grapple with what a Donald Trump victory might mean for them – this kind of rejection – is something I’ll never forget.

Harris could still scrape out a victory, and it was clear that many are still holding on to that. But even if she does – and on balance, that seems to be a big “if” – that’s a nightmare scenario for Trump’s election conspiracies. Grappling with what all this means for the future of the United States is no easy task.

⏺ 4.21pm Justin Bergman

Donald Trump is outperforming expectations in some solidly Democratic states tonight.

Virginia and New Jersey are much closer than expected. Harris is projected to win both, but her lead at this point is less than five percentage points in each. Joe Biden won both states by double digits in 2020.

And Minnesota at this point is still too close to call.

⏺ 4.02pm Justin Bergman

Kamala Harris needed to win Pennsylvania to have a shot at victory. And it appears she is not getting the votes she needs in the Philadelphia suburbs to offset Donald Trump’s strength in the rural parts of the state.

With 85% of the votes counted in Chester County outside Philadelphia, for instance, Harris had just a 10-point lead over Trump. Joe Biden won the county in 2020 by 17 points.

Trump, meanwhile, has overperformed in rural areas. In my home county, Westmoreland, he was beating Harris by nearly 35.8 points, with nearly all of the votes counted. Trump’s margin of victory over Biden four years ago was 28 points – a gain of nearly eight percentage points.

⏺ 3.25pm Jared Mondschein

In an era of an unprecedented number of polls, the Selzer Poll in Iowa has been one of the most widely respected.

Run by J. Ann Selzer for the Des Moines Register, the poll has a nearly perfect track record for forecasting how Iowans will vote. The Selzer poll gained nationwide fame after accurately predicting Trump’s victory in 2016 and the exceedingly thin margin for Joe Biden in 2020, when others had Democrats winning decisively in those elections.

Selzer’s accuracy even led folks to call her the “best pollster in politics”. But this status will now likely be questioned after today’s election.

On the eve of the election, a Selzer poll had Harris beating Trump in Iowa by three percentage points. While this buoyed Democratic hopes that Harris would actually overperform across the country – particularly in the Midwest “blue wall” states – the AP has just called Iowa for Trump.

⏺ 3.14pm Michael Hopkin

In news unlikely to surprise anyone, Elon Musk has already used his X platform to declare the election “game, set and match” to Trump.

But that’s seemingly all part of the plan. We’ve just published this analysis from QUT digital media expert Timothy Graham, who says Musk and Trump have a clearly discernible strategy to try and use X to secure victory.

The two-step strategy involves flooding the zone with pro-Trump commentary, while also fuelling the conspiracy theories that the election is being stolen from Trump.

It’s a strategy that could bear fruit regardless of whether Trump wins or loses the actual election. As Graham explains, it’s “a backup plan in case of a Trump loss, designed to encourage the public to participate in a grand re-wiring of reality”.

⏺ 3.11pm Debrin Foxcroft

No matter the final result, the Democrats will be asking if it is time to give up on the “blue wall” strategy. The New York Times is predicting Republican wins in Wisconsin and Michigan, with Pennsylvania leaning towards Trump.

These three states have long been considered key to winning the presidency. But this year, Harris has struggled to gain traction with key constituencies – including Arab and Muslim Americans (particularly Michigan), blue-collar workers and young men. Biden won all three states in 2020.

⏺ 3.08pm David Smith

There is a good chance that Republicans could win the House of Representatives and Senate as well as the presidency. But in recent years, presidents have often struggled to achieve anything even when their party controls all levels of government.

⏺ 2.36pm Mitch Costello

The New York Times’ election predictor needle is now forecasting a win for Trump. The needle has been slowly but steadily moving towards Trump for a few hours now. The Times is also forecasting likely Trump wins in Georgia and North Carolina, two battleground states, but neither have been called yet by the AP.

⏺ 2.18pm Emma Shortis

I’m here at Howard University, where Kamala Harris is holding her election night party, and the atmosphere is pretty tense. People are mostly subdued, with the occasional loud cheer erupting when something is called in Harris’ favour.

It’s packed and people keep filing in, and I think half the world’s media is here (the other half is, I guess, at Mar-a-Lago, although some media have reportedly been banned from Trump’s party!).

⏺ 2.03pm Mitch Costello

There was a huge line of young people waiting to vote today near the University of Arizona, in one of the key battleground states. The Arizona secretary of state says if they are in line by 7pm local time, they’ll still be able to vote.

Could this election have a record turnout for young voters?

⏺ 1.55pm Prudence Flowers

Democrat Sarah McBride has become the first out transgender person to be elected to Congress, winning Delaware’s seat in the House of Representatives. In addition to making history, her victory stands out because Donald Trump and the Republicans have run a highly transphobic campaign. Although trans people make up approximately 0.5% of the population and transphobic appeals are actually seen as backfiring with independent voters, Republicans have spent almost $215 million on anti-trans television advertising and messaging.

⏺ 1.52pm Justin Bergman

The election will be won or lost in Pennsylvania, as we’ve all been hearing.

So, as the results start coming in, we should be watching the Philadelphia suburbs closely. Kamala Harris spent considerable time there, trying to win over Republican college-educated voters who are turned off by Donald Trump. In particular, her campaign was trying to pick up voters who backed Nikki Haley in the Republican primary.

I’m from the other side of the state – Westmoreland County, an hour east of Pittsburgh. This county is indicative of Trump’s support in the middle of the state – it’s more rural and reliably red. Trump won the county by 30 points in 2020; he’ll need to see similar, if not higher, numbers this time around.

There’s also a sizeable Latino vote in cities like Reading, which is 69% Latino. This piece about Trump’s support there is very interesting. A recent poll showed Harris ahead here, but Trump closing ground since 2020.

Trump, JD Vance and Tucker Carlson all visited Reading in the last few months; Harris stopped in the city on Monday. I wonder if she should have spent more time in Reading and other heavily Latino cities, and if this will make a difference.

⏺ 1.26pm Amanda Dunn

This graphic from the Washington Post shows just how significant the gender divide is – it will be fascinating to see how this plays out when all the counting is done.

⏺ 1.25pm Debrin Foxcroft

Both campaigns will be carefully watching the results coming out of Michigan, where the polls just closed. If Kamala Harris wins the state, it will boost Democrats momentum and shore up the traditional “blue wall”.

But if she loses, questions will be raised about whether Harris did enough to reach out to the state’s large Muslim population, who have struggled with President Joe Biden and Harris’ ongoing support for Israel.

Michigan was won by Donald Trump in 2016, shocking the Democrats. Biden narrowly won the state in 2020.

According to an average of 88 polls in the final days of the campaign, Harris had a 0.4% lead over Trump.

⏺ 1.21pm Jared Mondschein

David Smith’s highlighting of just how Republican Florida has become also mentioned how successful Republicans in Florida have done with Hispanic groups. I can’t emphasise enough how significant the shift in demographics has been in this election.

In addition to this election’s gender divide being more prominent than any in recent history, the decreasing ethnic divide is also ahistorical. While his detractors regularly accuse him and his surrogates of racism, Trump is expected to fare better among Black and Hispanic voters than any other Republican presidential nominee since the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

A deeper dive into that support indicates a significant gender divide in those Black and Hispanic groups – in some ways even more prominent than the broader divide – but the development is still a significant one.

⏺ 1.13pm Justin Bergman

With most US broadcasters now using these giant wall maps to zoom in on individual counties, the Onion has taken it a step further…

⏺ 12.58pm Prudence Flowers

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, every time reproductive rights have been on the ballot abortion opponents have lost, even in conservative states like Kansas and Kentucky. However, enough votes have now been counted to know that Florida’s abortion rights ballot initiative has failed because only 57% of voters supported it. And no, you didn’t misread that - unlike most states, Florida requires a supermajority or 60% of the vote to “pass” this type of inititative, the highest threshold in country. This defeat leaves in place Florida’s six-week abortion ban.

⏺ 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.