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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Léonie Chao-Fong (now); Anna Betts, Hayden Vernon and Helen Livingstone (earlier)

Millions of Americans cast their ballots – as it happened

Kamala Harris Donald Trump Elon Musk Abbas Alawieh Joe Biden SpaceX the White House (Organization) Texas FBI Starbase (Organization)
Kamala Harris reacts as she talks on the phone at the Democratic National Committee headquarters on election day.
Kamala Harris reacts as she talks on the phone at the Democratic National Committee headquarters on election day. Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

Summary

Hello, election live blog readers, the country is abuzz and the first polls close at the top of the hour. Stick with the blog for all the news as this momentous evening and night unfolds, we’ll bring you developments as they happen – 24 hours a day.

Here’s where things stand:

  • Abbas Alawieh, one of the co-founders of the Uncommitted movement, which as a national group declined to endorse Kamala Harris for the White House, has just told interviewers on MSNBC that he’s voted for the vice-president in this election. He said this “is a moment of deep pain and frustration” over the war in Gaza and the ongoing sale of US weapons to Israel and yet he was “trying to do the politically savvy thing”.

  • Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person who has become Donald Trump’s most prominent and powerful backer, cast his vote in Texas, in Cameron county, Texas, where his SpaceX’s headquarters are, near Hawthorne, a rural town north of Houston. Earlier in the day, the New York Times reported that Musk would spend the evening of the election with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

  • Kamala Harris made an unexpected stop at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington DC this afternoon, where staffers and organizers were phone banking to get voters to the ballot boxes, in a last push before polls close. According to the reporters trailing her today, Harris arrived carrying a box of Doritos, her favorite campaign trail snack. “We have so much work to do,” she said.

  • The FBI said they are aware of bomb threats to polling locations in several states, many of which, they said, appear to “originate from Russian email domains”. The bureau said in a statement that none of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far. “Election integrity is among the FBI’s highest priorities” the statement reads.

  • A man was arrested by US Capitol police officers at the Capitol visitor center in Washington DC, police said. The man “smelled like fuel” and had “a torch” and “a flare gun” when he was stopped by officers during a screening process at the center, police said.

  • Tim Walz spoke to reporters before boarding a plane from Pennsylvania to Washington DC during which the Democratic party vice-presidential nominee said he was “feeling good about this” election. He also pledged to “shake hands and work for the winner” if Harris loses. Earlier he said the contest for the White House was “razor close”.

  • Donald Trump has been told by some advisers that he should prematurely declare victory on election night if he’s sufficiently ahead of Kamala Harris in key battleground states like Pennsylvania, according to people close to him, though whether he will heed that advice remains unclear. The consensus view is that Trump has nothing to lose by claiming he has won if he has a several-hundred-thousand-vote advantage in Pennsylvania or if his internal pollsters think a victory is plausible even if the results are not fully confirmed on Tuesday night.

  • Before the polls opened this morning, more than 80 million Americans had already voted and cast early ballots, with just under 45 million voting early in person and about 38 million voting early by mail.

  • Trump and Harris have tied with three votes each in Dixville Notch, the tiny New Hampshire town which traditionally kicks off voting on election day.

  • Trump and his wife, Melania, voted in Florida, where he said he felt “very confident”. Asked if he would call on his supporters not to engage in violence, Trump said: “I don’t have to tell them that there will be no violence,” adding his supporters “are not violent people”.

  • Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, cast his ballot in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he told reporters his attitude “is the best way to heal the rift in the country is to try to govern the country as well as we can”.

  • Kamala Harris, who voted by mail ahead of election day, said her first order of business if elected to the White House would be “bringing down the cost of living for folks”.

  • Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger said “non-credible” bomb threats that led to the temporary closure of two polling stations in Fulton county originated from Russia.

  • The FBI warned Americans that two new fake videos bearing the agency’s name and insignia were being “misused in promoting false narratives surrounding the election”.

  • A bipartisan coalition of 51 attorneys general across US states and territories urged people to remain peaceful and pre-emptively condemning “any acts of violence related to the results”.

Updated

Abbas Alawieh, one of the co-founders of the Uncommitted movement, which as a national group declined to endorse Kamala Harris for the White House, has just told interviewers on MSNBC that he’s voted for the vice-president in this election.

He was also a delegate to the Democratic national convention (DNC) and was asked how he came to his decision.

“This is a moment of deep pain and frustration. We are members of the Arab American, Muslim American community, for months have been oscillating between dealing with our grief, dealing with the fact that so many of our family members are there living under the bombs that the US government is sending Benjamin Netanyahu, but also, trying to do the politically savvy thing,” he said.

He added: “For me personally, my decision, I see it as it’s going to be Trump or Harris in the White House, and it’s Harris voters, it’s young voters, it’s Black voters, anti-war voters all across our country who are going to be the coalition that hopefully pressures” the government.

Updated

Elon Musk casts his vote in Texas

Elon Musk, Donald Trump’s most prominent and powerful backer, cast his vote in Texas Tuesday. The billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla tweeted, “Just voted in Cameron County, Texas, home of Starbase!” Starbase is SpaceX’s headquarters, near the US-Mexico border.

Earlier in the day, the New York Times reported that Musk would spend the evening of the election with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

  • This post was amended on 5 November 2024. An earlier version misstated the location of SpaceX’s headquarters in Texas.

Updated

Democrats have been fearful of losing the vote of Michigan’s large Arab American and Muslim American communities over the Biden-Harris administration’s response to Israel’s war on Gaza, and at a polling station in Dearborn there was some evidence that they were right to be concerned.

Although it was a small sample size, none of the Arab American voters the Guardian spoke to had voted for Harris – with her tepid response to Israel’s actions clearly front of mind.

“I’m a Democrat, but I did not give my vote to Harris,” said Gus Tarraf, 51.

“Because my people are getting killed. I’m Lebanese…countries are being destroyed: Gaza, Lebanon. Why would I give my vote to her?”

The Arab American population in Michigan has typically voted Democratic, but Tarraf said he believes that this year Harris will only get “20%” of the community’s vote. Tarraf has always been a Democratic voter himself – he voted for Joe Biden four years ago – but he said the situation in the Middle East forced him to switch parties.

Donald Trump was a staunch supporter of Israel during his presidency, and has said little to suggest he will pursue a different strategy to Biden, but Tarraf said there was an urgency to the vote that meant the Republican could be the lesser of two evils.

“Right now I have to think about this moment. At this moment Harris is helping with killing so why not try another one? You have one who killed your brother and sister and father. And one who they’re saying is worse than her – but she killed. He hasn’t killed yet. If he does the same thing next time, then we’ll vote him out.”

Whitney Groenevelt is in an advanced placement federal government and politics class at her Florida high school, and the senior turned 18 in January.

Ahead of her first vote in a presidential election in Broward county, she has been watching “a ton” of politics on television and the internet, and says she is excited to finally be able to take part in a process she has spent years studying.

“I know the way it’s not supposed to work. There’s not supposed to be a convicted felon in office. A convicted felon shouldn’t be able to vote,” she said, referring to Donald Trump’s 34 convictions from his hush money case in May.

Groenevelt, 18, said the preservation of democracy was among the two top election issues for her, the other being women’s health and reproductive rights.

Supporting Kamala Harris, she said, was the right thing to do.

“I watched the debate, and I’ve watched a ton of TV coverage from both left and right to try to get a balanced perspective,” she said.

Harris says 'we have so much work to do' during phone-banking session

Kamala Harris made an unexpected stop at the DNC headquarters this afternoon, where staffers and organizers were phone banking in a last get out the vote push before polls close.

According to the reporters trailing her today, Harris arrived carrying a box of Doritos, her favorite campaign trail snack.

“This is just the best, best, best and I thank you all very much,” Harris said.

She walked over to a phone and picked it up.

“I am well,” she said. “Have you voted already? You did? Thank you!”

The room cheered.

She made another call, and it appeared a child had answered the phone.

“It’s Kamala Harris – Waiting for you to grow 10 years more,” she said. “It’s so important, we have so much work to do.”

Updated

Leaders of the Uncommitted National Movement, which has pushed Kamala Harris to take a tougher stance on Israel in response to the war in Gaza, described this election day as painful for anti-war voters “who feel let down by our party”.

“While our movement rejects a Trump presidency, the willful silence of Democratic Party leaders on Netanyahu’s war crimes has left a void Trump is exploiting with dangerous lies and fraud,” said Layla Elabed and Abbas Alawieh, co-founders of the Uncommitted National Movement.

“Countless more people have been killed by the Israeli military as a result, and thousands of anti-war Democratic votes were recklessly left on the table in the process.”

In September, Uncommitted leaders decided against endorsing Harris, accusing her of failing to meet their requests or do enough to push for a ceasefire in Gaza. However, they have also been urging their base to vote against Trump.

“The majority of Democrats and Harris voters oppose her stance on unrestricted weapons transfers fueling Israel’s illegal actions,” the leaders said. “If she wins, our plan is for this coalition to demand that she confront this moral and political catastrophe.”

Harris arrives at Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington DC

Kamala Harris has arrived at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington DC to meet with staff and those who are phone banking for her campaign.

Harris spoke with several voters by phone, where she was overheard saying that it’s “so important that everybody participates”.

Updated

Leona Green, an organizer with the Milwaukee grassroots group BLOC — Black Leaders Organizing Communities — has been knocking doors since 8 am.

“During early voting, it was lovely — the line was majority young and first time voters,” said Green.

But she’s been frustrated to hear from men on Election Day who “feel like a woman can’t handle it.”

“I’m getting that from a lot of males, and it’s just crazy,” said Green. “They think that women are too emotional, can’t make decisions. It’s shocking.”

Still, Green says she thinks young and women voters will outweigh the “old school” views of certain men she’s encountered while canvassing.

“I’m claiming it,” she said.

Updated

The FBI has arrested two men in Michigan in separate cases on suspicion of sending political threats online.

Isaac Sissel, 25, of Ann Arbor was arrested after allegedly threatening to commit a violent attack if Donald Trump wins the election.

“I have a stolen ar15 [rifle] and a target I refuse to name so I can continue to get away with my plans,” Sissel allegedly wrote in a message that was sent anonymously to the FBI national threat operations center.

Sissel was arrested Tuesday morning and will appear in court Tuesday afternoon.

Christopher Pierce, 46, of Jackson was arrested after allegedly ending threatening emails to a political action committee (PAC) fundraising for the election.

Philadelphia Democratic party chair Robert Brady said turnout at the polling stations this morning was “extremely high”, adding that a high turnout “is great for us.”

Brady, a former Pennsylvania congressman, told Insider NJ that voter turnout on Tuesday morning was the “highest we’ve ever seen for this point in time”.

“I’ve been doing elections for 50 years and I’ve been chairman for 40 years and right now it’s the highest we’ve ever seen for this point in time,” he said.

Updated

I spoke to a man gathering signatures for America PAC, Elon Musk’s outfit that’s offering people $47 per person they get to sign a petition that supports the first and second amendments.

Those signers then can win a $1m prize.

The man, who said his name is Ryan Johnson, said he’s been gathering signatures for various candidates and causes across the country for eight years, one of many traveling circulators who pop from state to state depending on who’s paying.

He said the America PAC petition is the “highest paying petition ever,” with a typical rate for signatures for a ballot measure or candidates being a few dollars per signature.

He claimed he has made upward of $30,000 on PAC signatures in the past 20 days.

“First of all, I’m gonna put it in the bank and not touch it for 30 days to build the discipline of actually having it. And then once I see that it’s there for 30 days, I’ll allow myself to play with it a little bit,” he said.

“So what I will do is I’ll promote my business. I have a women’s resale clothing business on Poshmark. I’ll push that thing to go, because it already earns me about $40,000 a year. So if I can get that up to 100,000 a year just doing that, that’d be super nice.

“Thank God for America.”

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani appeared outside Donald Trump’s polling place in Palm Beach, Florida this morning before the Republican presidential candidate cast his ballot.

Giuliani showed up in the Mercedes convertible he was ordered to surrender to two Georgia poll workers he was found to have defamed in the aftermath of the 2020 election, the Financial Times reported.

Giuliani said Trump should go after “top people” if he was elected president, adding: “I’d be willing to prosecute them.”

Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s secretary of state, said that as of this morning, people in Michigan were already voting in record numbers.

Benson said at a press conference on Tuesday that 3.3 million people in the state had already cast their ballot in this election before the polls even opened today, representing 45.8% of active registered voters in Michigan.

“We’re on track to break turnout records” Benson said.

Benson said unofficial results from the state of Michigan will begin to be reported shortly after 9pm ET tonight.

Updated

FBI says non-credible bomb threats to polling locations appear to 'originate from Russian email domains'

The FBI said on Tuesday afternoon that they are aware of bomb threats to polling locations in several states, many of which, they said, appear to “originate from Russian email domains”.

The bureau said in a statement that none of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far.

“Election integrity is among the FBI’s highest priorities” the statement reads.

“We will continue to work closely with our state and local law enforcement partners to respond to any threats to our elections and to protect our communities as Americans exercise their right to vote”.

Updated

Reporting from Allentown, Pennsylvania:

Nearly every voter I’ve spoken with today has said the economy is their top issue.

Tiana Peters, a 39-year-old underwriter from Allentown is a Democrat, but she voted for Donald Trump. She also voted for Democrats in lower offices down the ticket.

“The last four years, nothing really good happened,” she said. “Giving away free money to the people that can’t afford houses, financially that doesn’t work, you know.”

“I’ve been wanting to buy a house for years now and … haven’t been able to do that. It’s just like half a million dollars for houses in the Lehigh Valley with four bedrooms. It’s just not doable for a family making middle class money.”

Sharonda Casey, 47, came to vote with her son Jamel, 30, and her mother, Barbara, 72 -- three generations of her family. She said she voted for Kamala Harris. She cited the assistance Harris has pledged for first time homebuyers as one of the reasons she voted for Harris.

“I got a granddaughter. I’m not having more children unless it’s baby Jesus – but I wanted to [vote] for her future and her right to go to the doctor and get care.”

Updated

Elon Musk to spend election night with Trump – report

Elon Musk will spend election night with Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, the New York Times is reporting, citing multiple sources.

The tech billionaire will be among a “small group” of people watching the election results with Trump as they come in, the paper writes.

Musk has spent at least $119m on a Super Pac supporting Trump and the two talk several times a week, it says.

Updated

The voters in line to cast their ballots at the North Las Vegas city hall voting center Tuesday morning exemplified why Clark County, Nevada is such a bellwether in the election.

About half of all Nevada voters live in this region, in a key swing state where elections have been won and lost by exceptionally slim margins.

In a diverse city with a large proportion of non-partisan voters, locals were carrying deeply varied visions for the future with them as they headed to the polls.

Jimmy McDill, 49, who had dressed up for the occasion in a dashing lavender suit, said he was looking forward to voting for Kamala Harris – in large part because he believes she will help protect Medicare.

McDill, who is disabled, said he worries that Donald Trump would slash medical benefits for low income and disabled Americans like him. A registered non-partisan, McDill said he has voted in every election since he was 18, and has supported candidates from both major political parties. Though he can’t remember the last time he’s backed a Republican for president.

“Was Hillary Clinton a Republican?” he said, laughing. “No, no she wasn’t. I just can’t recall the last Republican, then.”

Right in front of him in line, Patricia Bradley, 64, was also planning to cast a ballot for Harris. Abortion was top of mind for her, and she was looking forward to voting for Harris and Democratic senator Jacky Rosen, both of whom have made reproductive rights a key focus of their campaigns.

She was also planning to vote for Question 6, a ballot initiative to enshrine abortion access in the Nevada constitution. “I’m feeling kind of nervous,” she said. “But we need to go do our parts today.”

Meanwhile, Idania Oliva, 45, who had come to vote with her mother and mother-in-law, said she was excited to vote for Trump. “He’s for moral values,” she said. She is deeply opposed to abortions, and trusted Trump to restrict access, and secure the US southern border.

“Trump is for God,” she said. “And God is number one.”

Updated

Police arrest man trying to enter US Capitol who 'smelled like fuel' with 'flare gun'

A man was arrested by US Capitol police officers at the Capitol visitor center in Washington DC, police said.

The man “smelled like fuel” and had “a torch” and “a flare gun” when he was stopped by officers during a screening process at the center, police said.

Officials have canceled public tours of the Capitol for the remainder of the day.

Updated

Reporting from Allentown, Pennsylvania:

Eric Pitre Acevedo is Puerto Rican and was upset by the racist joke a comedian made at Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden late last month.

Acevedo still voted for Trump.

“I feel a little weird voting for him, but I still think he’s gonna be a good president,” he said, standing outside a polling place in Allentown.

“He believes in the family,” he added, expressing concern over how Kamala Harris has handled transgender issues.

Updated

The Harris Walz campaign says the vice-president has called into more drive-time radio stations in key battleground states, timing the interviews to the lunchtime hour to encourage Americans to vote.

Harris called into Wisconsin (101.7 The Truth in Milwaukee), Nevada (KCEP with Lady AK in Las Vegas), and Radio Campesina Network (which is based in Phoenix, Arizona, but is also carried in Nevada, among other states).

The campaign says she will do more radio call-ins later today.

Walz says 'we're feeling good about this'

Kamala Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, spoke to reporters before boarding a plane from Pennsylvania to Washington DC during which he said he was “feeling good about this.”

Walz said he has not spoken with Harris in the last 24 hours but praised her remarks at last night’s final campaign rally in Philadelphia.

Asked if he believes that Donald Trump will concede the election if he loses, Walz said he thought Trump “probably will” concede.

He also pledged to “shake hands and work for the winner” if Harris loses.

Updated

Advisers urge Trump to declare victory prematurely on election night

Donald Trump has been told by some advisers that he should prematurely declare victory on election night if he’s sufficiently ahead of Kamala Harris in key battleground states like Pennsylvania, according to people close to him, though whether he will heed that advice remains unclear.

The consensus view is that Trump has nothing to lose by claiming he has won if he has a several-hundred-thousand-vote advantage in Pennsylvania or if his internal pollsters think a victory is plausible even if the results are not fully confirmed on Tuesday night.

But even Trump’s most pugnacious allies – including the former White House strategist Steven Bannon who spoke with him last week, one of the people said – have suggested he hold off making a pronouncement if the race is any closer by the time he goes to bed, lest it makes him look foolish.

In the final days of the campaign, Trump and his campaign have projected confidence. It has raised expectations among his supporters that he will win, laying the groundwork for baselessly claiming the election was stolen if he loses and Harris takes the White House. Any premature declaration of victory would also probably play into that phenomenon.

Here’s a clip from Donald Trump after casting his ballot in West Palm Beach, Florida, with his wife, Melania.

Trump told reporters he felt “very confident” and that he was “very honored to find out the lines are long, the conservative lines, the Republican lines.”

Kamala Harris is spending the day at the Naval Observatory, the vice-president’s residence in Washington.

The public is not expected to see the Democratic nominee until later tonight, where she is poised to deliver remarks at Howard University, her alma mater, in Washington DC.

After a sprint across Pennsylvania, Harris arrived at her residence hours before polls opened in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

She spent part of her day calling into radio stations in an eleventh-hour Get Out The Vote push for Americans on their way to work who hadn’t yet cast a ballot. More radio interviews were scheduled for lunchtime and the drive home from work, before polls close.

Per her campaign, she has called into radio stations across three battleground states so far – Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina. More are expected throughout the day.

Asked what her first order of business would be if she wins the election, Harris cited lowering costs – the top voting issue this cycle.

“Bringing down the cost of living for folks,” she said in an interview on NewsRadio KDKA, naming several of her economic proposals on housing, healthcare and the child tax credit. She also noted “fixing what’s going on with our broken immigration system,” an issues that has bedeviled presidents of both parties for decades.

Updated

Florida is no longer a swing state in terms of the presidential race, with Donald Trump holding a clear polling lead after winning it in 2016 and 2020.

But a potentially pivotal US Senate race, as well as amendments concerning the state’s six-week abortion ban, and the legalization of recreational marijuana, are helping drive voters to the polls.

At JP Taravella high school in Coral Springs, Mackenzie Nezat, 18, was voting for the first time in a general election, and said women’s reproductive rights was a key issue in her decision to support Democratic candidates, as well as the climate emergency and gun violence prevention.

Taravella is five miles from Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school, where 17 students and staff were killed in a 2018 mass shooting.

“It’s important to have a president that acknowledges the issue of climate change. All of us kids have to grow up with this. I want leaders who are willing to tackle it,” she said. “And I’m not anti-gun, I want to be an owner for protection, but the way in which people can get them should be better.”

Nezat, a first-year neuroscience student at Nova Southeastern University, said the character of a president was equally important to her.

“I care how a president talks, and that they uphold morals and positive values.”

Updated

Here are some of the latest images sent from the newswires across the country on election day:

Updated

Tim Walz: result is 'razor close'

Kamala Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, said the election was “razor close” as he visited a diner in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

“Rule of law matters, constitution matters, the American experiment matters, our neighbors matter,” Walz said.

“And contrary to what this one guy thinks, nobody is above the damn law.”

“Stay calm. Stay with it,” he added, noting that America has “the fairest, the freest, the safest elections.”

Updated

Reporting from Nash county, North Carolina:

We’ve come to talk to voters in Nash county, to the east of Raleigh, which will be closely watched tonight as it could provide one of the earliest clues as to who is prevailing.

In 2020 Nash was one of only 10 counties in the seven battleground states that flipped from Donald Trump to Joe Biden; its count should be done by about 10.30pm ET.

“I’m definitely pro-Trump,” said Randy Parrish, 65, smoking a cigarette in his car before he cast his ballot. He said he was unimpressed by Kamala Harris. “She’s had four years to fix things. It was just empty promises.”

Asked whether he was anxious about the result, he said he wasn’t. “I ain’t that worried, because God’s in control,” he said.

Local businessman John Tomaszewski, 55, had come to the polling place in the aptly named Spring Hope with his wife and daughter, all three of whom voted for Trump. He told a story to illustrate why he is behind the former president.

Before Trump entered the White House in 2017 he would buy plywood for the commercial cabinets he produces from China, as it was $15 per sheet cheaper. After Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese goods the sheets were only $4 cheaper and he could afford to buy American plywood.

“I want my man to win, of course, but I hope God will be in control of whoever wins because we need that back in our lives,” he said.

Amy Sharpe, 45, had just voted for Tim Walz. (She said she voted for Walz, Harris’s running mate, not Harris herself, because she loves “Coach” as she called him. He’s like everybody’s grandpa”.)

As for Trump, “he’s a lunatic. All that Hannibal Lecter stuff!”

She works as a bar tender, and several months ago she laid down a new rule – no talking about politics. “It has gotten physical so fast now, folk pushing and shoving and shouting. So I just said no more politics in the bar.”

Updated

Summary of the day so far

Polls are open all across the country now as Americans cast their ballots for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump in an election that has been cast as an existential fight for the country’s future.

Here’s our hour-by-hour election guide for what to expect tonight. In the meantime, here’s a recap of the main developments:

  • Before the polls opened this morning, more than 80 million Americans had already voted and cast early ballots, with just under 45 million voting early in person and about 38 million voting early by mail.

  • Trump and Harris have tied with three votes each in Dixville Notch, the tiny New Hampshire town which traditionally kicks off voting on election day.

  • Trump and his wife, Melania, voted in Florida, where he said he felt “very confident”. Asked if he would call on his supporters not to engage in violence, Trump said: “I don’t have to tell them that there will be no violence,” adding his supporters “are not violent people”.

  • Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, cast his ballot in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he told reporters his attitude “is the best way to heal the rift in the country is to try to govern the country as well as we can”.

  • Harris, who voted by mail ahead of election day, said her first order of business if elected to the White House would be “bringing down the cost of living for folks”.

  • Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger said “non-credible” bomb threats that led to the temporary closure of two polling stations in Fulton county originated from Russia.

  • The FBI warned Americans that two new fake videos bearing the agency’s name and insignia were being “misused in promoting false narratives surrounding the election”.

  • A bipartisan coalition of 51 attorneys general across US states and territories urged people to remain peaceful and pre-emptively condemning “any acts of violence related to the results”.

Updated

US Senate candidate and Trump ally Kari Lake just stopped by a Scottsdale polling place and told voters waiting in line to “stay in line.”

Her supporters grabbed her for photos and cheered for her. “Did you vote?” she asked them. “Did you vote for Trump? Did you vote for Lake?”

“Kari, you’re the best!” one supporter cheered. “Tell these jackals in the media,” she joked in response.

She got back on to a campaign bus emblazoned with “make Arizona grand again.”

Reporting from Allentown, Pennsylvania:

I’ve just left a polling station in Allentown, which was much quieter than the one I went to in nearby Bethlehem first thing this morning.

One the voters I spoke with was Felix Garcia, a 59-year old mechanic who is Puerto Rican. He said that the racist comments a comic made at a rally about the island wouldn’t sway his vote.

“I decided to vote for him because I’m very concerned with the economy, the border. He said he can bring the companies to implement the jobs over here. I don’t like the things they’re teaching my kids in the school. A lot of bad things,” he said.

“Trump didn’t say [the racist comments about Puerto Rico at his Madison Square Garden rally]. It’s not coming from him. He came to work for all America, not only Puerto Ricans. Not only Black guys. All of them. And I’m happy with that.”

Another vocal Trump supporter was Jim Winburn, 62, who came out of the polling site and said, loudly, “Trump’s already won.”

“Republicans tell me what they’re gonna do, they don’t tell me what the problem with the other people is,” he said.

Updated

Georgia secretary of state says 'non-credible' bomb threats at two polling locations originated from Russia

Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger has confirmed that “non-credible” bomb threats made against two polling stations in Fulton county originated from Russia.

Two polling locations in Fulton county were briefly evacuated on Tuesday morning after they received false bomb threats, county election officials said. The threats targeted five polls in total, they said.

Raffensperger told reporters that the threats originated in Russia but did not elaborate.

“They’re up to mischief, it seems,” he said according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “They don’t want us to have smooth, fair and accurate elections.”

Updated

Voting has been extended in Cambria county, Pennsylvania, for an extra two hours, giving voters an extended time to return to cast their votes after a software malfunction earlier in the day, a court has ruled.

Cambria county commissioners filed an emergency request to extend its voting hours from 8pm ET to 10pm ET due to the malfunction.

“The [electronic voting system] software malfunction threatens to disenfranchise a significant number of voters,” the county board wrote in its court filing.

Updated

Trump says his supporters 'are not violent people'

Donald Trump is asked if he will tell his supporters not to be violent.

“I don’t have to tell them that there’ll be no violence. Of course there will be no violence,” Trump tells reporters in Florida.

He says his supporters “are not violent people … these are people that believe in no violence.”

“I certainly don’t want any violence, but I certainly don’t have to tell [these] great people,” he says.

Updated

Trump says he feels 'very confident'

Donald Trump, speaking to reporters after casting his ballot in Florida, was asked about the possibility that neither he nor Kamala Harris may reach 270 electoral votes by the end of tonight.

“A thing like that should never happen,” the Republican presidential candidate says. Trump says he wants to “bring everybody in, we want to be very inclusive.”

Trump says he feels “very confident”, adding that it looks like Republicans “have shown up in force.” “I hear we’re doing very well,” he says.

Trump casts ballot in Florida

Donald Trump has arrived to vote in Palm Beach, Florida alongside his wife, Melania.

He told reporters he is “very honored” to find out that the lines are long. “This is the best campaign we’ve run,” he said.

His opponent, Kamala Harris, cast her vote by mail ballot to California.

Updated

FBI warns over two fake videos spreading election misinformation

The FBI has warned Americans that two new fake videos bearing the agency’s name and insignia are being “misused in promoting false narratives surrounding the election”.

In a statement on Tuesday, the law enforcement agency said it is aware of a “fabricated news clip purporting to be a terrorist warning issued by the FBI” that urges Americans to “vote remotely”, citing a high terror threat at polling stations.

The second video contains a fabricated FBI press release that claims “five prisons in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona rigged inmate voting and colluded with a political party,” the FBI said.

Both videos are not authentic, the agency warned, adding that “election integrity is among our highest priorities.”

“Attempts to deceive the public with false content about FBI threat assessments and activities aim to undermine our democratic process and erode trust in the electoral system,” it added.

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The bellwether counties that could swing the election

With recent election polling showing a dead heat – or slim victory for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris within the statistical margin of error – seven swing states are all but certain to decide the race.

As pollsters scramble to make sense of these results, amid questions about reliability given bad calls over support for Trump in 2016 and 2020, analysts are taking an even more granular approach in interpreting battleground state voters, focusing on a handful of counties in these hotly contested regions.

They are often referred to as bellwether counties. This effectively means counties that could tip the scale in determining a swing state’s outcome.

Here are the counties that analysts – ranging from seasoned election-watchers to Wall Street financiers – are focused on.

• This post was amended on 5 November 2024 to correct the spelling of Erie in the map.

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Flooding has knocked out power to one Missouri polling site, made it hard for voters to reach another site and closed dozens of roads in the state.

More than 7in of rain have fallen in some areas over the past few days, Associated Press reports.

Flood and flash flood warnings and watches have been issued across a large swath of Missouri, extending from its southwest corner to the St Louis area in the east.

In Jefferson county, the sheriff’s office warned that one polling site was not accessible by many people because of flooding.

In St Louis county, the weather flooded electrical equipment in one suburb, knocking out power to a church that is serving as a polling place, according to local media reports. Poll workers there are now running the elections using a generator, it said.

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Here are some of photographs coming out of the wires as Americans head to the polls:

Reporting from Scottsdale, Arizona:

Political signs littered the roadside entrance to a busy polling place in Scottsdale, Arizona, and more signs went up as voters arrived in the early morning hours to form a steady line – a visual representation of how coveted these voters are for races up and down the ballot.

The Indian Bend Wash polling location saw Republicans in Trump hats and shirts talking to voters outside, while Democrats handed out a voter guide to people as they walked to the line.

Turning Point USA brought out a bright pink party bus with “Trump train” signs on it, which will be used to take voters to other Scottsdale polling places if the lines become too long today. The group also put up signs imploring voters to stay in line: “stay in line, don’t leave your country behind,” one sign said.

A man was also gathering signatures for America Pac, Elon Musk’s group that is paying circulators to sign up other people who could win a $1m prize. “Elon Musk needs our help,” the man told one voter.

We spoke to voters here who chose Donald Trump, Kamala Harris or no one. Jesse Torrez, a 67-year-old independent, voted for Harris, both because of her ideology and because he said Trump did not have any character. “I’m thinking about my grandchildren and what they’re going to need to face in the future and I just have no confidence in the Republican candidate’s leadership or capabilities to lead this country. He’s proven that to me,” Torrez said.

Jessica Mendoza, 35, voted for Trump. “I have two kids and I really just want to see a change for them and a better future,” she said “We’re also Christians so we voted with our morals as well.”

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Harris pledges to bring down cost of living if elected in radio interview

Vice-president Kamala Harris also called into The Big K Morning Show with Larry Richert on NewsRadio KDKA in Pittsburgh this morning.

Harris discussed the economy, immigration, the divide within the country, and more.

At one point, Harris said that if elected, her first order of business would be “bringing down the cost of living for folks.”

“I have a package of plans that address that” she added. “Everything from what we need to do to create, for example of first time national ban on corporate price gouging on groceries, what we can do around tax credits for young families, tax credits and support for small businesses, including what we can do around a $25,000 down payment assistance for first time homebuyers.”

When asked about her plans for election day, Harris said she will be watching the results at her alma mater, Howard University, this evening.

Before that, she will be having dinner with her family, she said, noting that many relatives are staying with her.

Harris stated that throughout the day today she will be engaging with voters and encouraging them to make sure they get out to vote.

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Will the Joe Rogan endorsement make a difference?

Joe Rogan has tended to present himself as receptive and open minded. He endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016, Joe Biden in 2020 and for much of this election he’s been most receptive to the ideas of RFK Jr.

Now the most popular podcaster in history has decided to endorse Donald Trump. But how much of a difference will it make?

In May, pollsters for the New York Times/Siena College analysed their data to see what were the key predictors for why a voter who supported Joe Biden in 2020 might defect to the Republicans in 2024. They found that the No 1 predictor was whether the voter was born in the Middle East, a reflection of the Democrats’ position on the war in Gaza. The No 2 predictor was whether they had a favorable view of Rogan. (Similar polling has not been done since Harris became the Democratic candidate.)

Research from the Young Men Research Initiative from July also suggests that the timing of the endorsement – following a three-hour conversation with Elon Musk – could matter. 36% of young men they polled said they “liked and generally trusted the views of” Rogan. Musk ranked even higher among the group, 45% said they liked and trusted him.

Musk appeared on Rogan’s podcast yesterday to promote conspiracy theories about the Democratic party in a bid to convince Rogan to vote for Trump. He repeated a version of the “great replacement” theory that if Democrats win the election Harris will “legalize enough illegals” so that there will “never be another real election in the US again”. He said “illegal migrants are literally being flown in to the swing states”.

It’s not clear how influential such a late endorsement will be, but there is probably a group of men who don’t engage with traditional news sources for whom Musk’s falsehoods – and Trump’s appearance on the podcast last week – may be key to their decision.

Updated

Vice-president Kamala Harris called into Atlanta radio station V-103’s The Big Tigger Morning Show this morning.

“We gotta get it done” she said. “Today is voting day and people need to get out and be active.”

“We wanna encourage everyone in Georgia to get out and vote,” she said, adding that her focus is “making sure everybody knows the power of their voice through their vote.”

Updated

Reporting from South Raleigh, North Carolina:

Lavar Turner, 46, who runs a burger joint, was also motivated to vote for Harris over Trump’s role in overturning the right to an abortion. Also like Johnson, he had problems deciding.

Initially he was tempted to vote for Trump, but he wasn’t sure. “So I sat and prayed about it, and as I was praying Kamala’s face came into my mind, and I knew she was the one.”

He went on to research her policies, abortion especially, and was convinced that was the way to go. “I don’t like them taking away women’s rights – without women, men wouldn’t be here.”

His wife, Beverly Turner, 51, had a more robust way of explaining her vote. “Trump can take his Project 2025 and shove it all the way up his ass.”

Before we leave the polling station, we are given a lesson in the historical importance of the Black vote in the South. A 96-year-old Black woman walking by with the help of a frame stops to speak to us having just voted for Harris.

She is flanked by four generations of her family who have all done likewise.

The woman, who is dressed in a tweed, was too private to give her name. But she did share that she remembers growing up as a little girl under Jim Crow segregation.

“That was the law back then – being colored I couldn’t vote,” she said.

Reporting from South Raleigh, North Carolina:

There’s a steady flow of voters at a polling station in the Black neighborhood of South Raleigh. This is a key demographic for Kamala Harris – she needs to squeeze out every last vote if she is to take this neck-and-neck state.

Latoya Bailey, 38, who works in a shelter for homeless families, said she was all-in with Harris because of “history, representation and inclusion. I feel change can come if we all come together.”

Black women have been important to Democratic victories in recent cycles, and Bailey has done her part, holding watch parties for the presidential debates to try and engage relatives and neighbors. “A lot of people in our community think our votes don’t matters,” she said.

Male voters expressed having struggled with the decision. Marty A Johnson, 41, who hosts his own hip-hop YouTube show, said until recently he was “up in the air” about whether he would vote at all.

What swung it for him was when his son, who has just turned 18, told him he wasn’t going to vote either. “When I thought about my kid not voting, that felt wrong, and that inspired me to vote myself.”

He voted Harris, mainly because he doesn’t like what Trump has down to “women and what they can do with their bodies”, he said.

Updated

Reporting from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania:

At a polling site in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Joanne Kelchner, 77, called Trump a “big daddy” and said she voted for him. “He’ll smack you if you’re an asshole.”

Debbie Probus, a retired 61-year-old, said she was undecided but ultimately decided to vote for Trump.

“Because of what’s going on overseas. I figure he’s a lot more authoritative. Even though he’s not classy. He’s a lot more authoritative and trying to keep people in line. I think Kamala is, in my opinion, too sweet, just from her way she projects on TV, she’s always laughing like it’s a game. It’s not a game. And what’s going on is terrible,” she said.

There’s a bake sale going on at the school and lots of voters are walking out with pies and other baked goods. They are looking quite appealing this morning.

Updated

Reporting from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania:

I’m here at a polling site in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania where voters have been coming out of a local school after counting their ballots.

Bethlehem is in Northampton county, which is considered a major bellwether of how Pennsylvania will go.

I’ve spoken with seven voters so far, and five of them said they voted for Donald Trump.

“He’s strong. When you look at him he’s a strong person. I mean he takes action on what he does. The way he speaks, everything about him. I feel like he’s gonna stand up for our country and make it strong again,” said Stephen Super, a first-time voter.

Jake Moser, 22, another voter, said he voted for Kamala Harris.

“I think a large part of it is ethics. It was really tough for me to vote for somebody who had said so many negative things about the American people. I think the thing about being president is that being in that office means that you need to bring people together and not push them away. And I think dividing the country is just something that personally I couldn’t agree with. So that’s why I voted for Kamala,” he said.

Updated

Reporting from Saginaw, Michigan:

The Harris campaign might find some satisfaction in a Guardian straw poll of voters in one part of the bellwether county of Saginaw in swing state Michigan.

More than 30 people lined up in the dark on a wet morning outside the Bethel AME church before the polls even opened, mostly to be able to vote and get to work on time.

Of the first dozen women to vote, nine said that women’s rights, and access to abortion in particular, was their primary issue. The other three mentioned it alongside the economy and fear about what Donald Trump would do if he is returned to power.

Among them was Cheyanne Laux.

“Trump obviously has proven in the past that he clearly doesn’t have the rights of women in his mind. The abortion issue, that’s the main thing for me, so voting Democratic lines up with keeping that right,” she said.

The Harris campaign has flooded the airwaves in Michigan and other battleground states with ads attacking Trump as a continuing threat to women’s rights in the hope of persuading ambivalent female voters to go to the polls or women who have previously voted Republican to switch sides.

Laux said she thought the supreme court’s striking down of abortion rights would be decisive for a lot of other female voters in this election.

“We’ve been seeing the repercussions from Trump’s actions against the abortion since it happened a couple years ago. It’s a constant thing that I keep seeing. So I definitely think that’ll be a driver for young women, for sure,” she said.

Deborah Adams said she was particularly disturbed that, even though Michigan recently enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution, other states have passed laws criminalising terminations in almost every case.

“I feel that a person shouldn’t have control over a woman’s body. I got a daughter. I got granddaughters. If it’s a matter of life or death, and they’re stopping doctors from doing what they got to do, to me that’s evil stuff,” she said.

Updated

The first election results came in early this morning, from the tiny village of Dixville Notch, in New Hampshire, which has a population of six residents.

The results ended in a deadlock: three votes to Kamala Harris and three for Donald Trump.

Read more about Dixville Notch here.

Americans in 10 states are voting this election on whether to enshrine the right to abortion into their state constitutions.

The states include Florida, Colorado, Maryland, Arizona, Montana, Nebraska, Missouri, Nevada, New York and South Dakota.

Read about the proposed ballot measures in each state here:

When do the polls close tonight?

The first polls tonight will close at 6 pm ET and are in the eastern counties of Indiana and Kentucky.

At 7pm ET, polls will close in Georgia, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, parts of Florida, and the rest of Indiana and Kentucky.

Thirty minutes later, at 7:30pm ET, polls in North Carolina, Ohio and West Virginia will close.

At 8pm, polls will close in Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, the District of Columbia, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Missouri, parts of Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota and Texas, and the whole of Florida.

By 9pm ET, polls will close in Arkansas, as well as Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Wisconsin, Wyoming, the whole of Texas, Michigan, South Dakota and North Dakota.

At 10pm ET, polls in Montana, Nevada and Utah will close. At 11pm ET, polls in California will close, as well as Idaho, Oregon and Washington.

At midnight ET, polls in Hawaii will close and finally, at 1am ET, polls will close in Alaska.

Updated

Bernard Marcus, the billionaire Home Depot co-founder and a Republican megadonor, has died, the company announced today.

In a statement on Tuesday from the Home Depot company, Marcus was described as an “inspiration”, “a master merchant” and “a genius with customer service”.

”More than anything, he deeply believed in the company’s core values, particularly that of giving back” the statement reads. “He never lost sight of his humble roots, using his success not for fame or fortune but to generously help others. In business and in charity, Bernie was unparalleled in generosity and goodwill.”

In recent years, Marcus has been an outspoken supporter of former president Donald Trump and Republicans.

He has donated millions of dollars to the campaigns of various Republican politicians, including the late John McCain, current Florida governor Ron DeSantis, and Trump, as reported by CNN.

In an interview last year, Marcus criticised President Joe Biden, calling him the “most divisive president we’ve ever seen”.

According to Forbes, Marcus’ net worth was approximately $11bn.

Updated

JD Vance casts his ballot in Ohio

Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance cast his ballot in-person this morning at his polling place in Cincinnati, Ohio.

CNN reported that the Ohio senator “appeared in good spirits” as he arrived at Saint Anthony of Padua church to vote. Vance was with his wife, Usha, and their children.

“We do expect to win” Vance told reporters outside the polling station. “But obviously no matter who wins, half the country is gonna be at least partially disappointed, I think my attitude is the best way to heal the rift in the country is to try to govern the country as well as we can.”

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A coalition of current and former local, state, and national bar association presidents published a letter on Monday night ahead of the election, reminding lawyers and the public that the courtroom is “not a theater for unsubstantiated claims”.

The letter cautions and urges fellow lawyers filing election-related lawsuits this election against presenting false information in their court filings.

“Filing election-related lawsuits without a solid factual and legal foundation endangers the very institutions lawyers are oathbound to defend” the letter states. “In a functioning democracy, lawsuits are not weapons to spread distrust – they are tools for justice.”

After the 2020 election, Donald Trump and his team of lawyers filed numerous lawsuits in various states, claiming fraud in the election.

The lawsuits were overwhelmingly unsuccessful and several lawyers connected to the cases were disbarred or had their licenses suspended, the coalition of lawyers wrote.

“These lawyers not only lost their licenses and tarnished their reputations, they also betrayed their communities and the American public,” the letter adds.

Updated

Voting under way in most of US, including all battleground states

It’s just gone 9am Eastern Time, and voting is under way in most states across the country.

As of 9am ET, voting is now open in Arizona, Iowa, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Nebraska, Arkansas, New Mexico, Utah, Mississippi, some areas of Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota.

This is in addition to the polling sites that opened earlier this morning, which included Alabama, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, New Hampshire, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Rhode Island and Wyoming.

In an hour, election day voting will open in California and Idaho. At 11am ET, voting will open in Washington and Alaska, and polling stations will open in Hawaii at noon ET.

Updated

This morning, some individuals are reporting delays and issues at polling stations, such as machines not accepting ballots and systems being down at polling stations.

In Wayne county, Ohio, the local board of elections announced on Tuesday morning that they experienced some equipment issues at the Kidron Community Center polling station. Although voters were still processed, these problems resulted in some delays.

By 8.30am ET, Wayne county officials reported that the issues had been resolved, and the polling location was “back to full force”.

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Attorneys general issue statement urging ‘peaceful transfer of power’

A bipartisan coalition of 51 attorneys general across US states and territories released a statement on Tuesday urging people to remain peaceful and pre-emptively condemning “any acts of violence related to the results”.

A peaceful transfer of power is the highest testament to the rule of law, a tradition that stands at the heart of our nation’s stability. As Attorneys General, we affirm our commitment to protect our communities and uphold the democratic principles we serve.

We call upon every American to vote, participate in civil discourse and, above all, respect the integrity of the democratic process,” they wrote. “Violence has no place in the democratic process; we will exercise our authority to enforce the law against any illegal acts that threaten it.”

Updated

Donald Trump expected to vote in person in Florida before Palm Beach watch party

Donald Trump is planning to spend the day in Florida, where he is expected to vote in person, according to the Associated Press.

This evening, the Trump campaign will host an election night watch party in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Updated

Governor Tim Walz, along with his wife, Gwen Walz, will take part in a political event this morning in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, according to the Harris campaign.

Later in the evening, the Harris-Walz campaign is scheduled to host an election night event at Howard University in Washington DC, the alma mater of Vice-President Kamala Harris.

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Joe Biden will watch election results in the White House

President Joe Biden will watch the election results from the White House residence alongside first lady Jill Biden, longtime aides, and senior White House staff, according to CNN.

Biden does not have any public events scheduled for today and is expected to receive regular updates as races are reported nationwide.

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About 80m Americans voted early in 2024 election

Before the polls opened this morning, about 80 million Americans had already voted and cast early ballots.

According to the Election Lab at the University of Florida, 82 million Americans voted early, with just under 45 million voting early in person and about 38 million voting early by mail.

Updated

Steve Bannon has told CBS that the now infamous Trump “war room” will be revived at the Willard Hotel in Washington DC tonight.

Key members of the Trump campaign, including Bannon, were in the hotel on 6 January 2021, as the Capitol insurrection unfolded nearby.

That “war room” had specific goals: to help pressure then vice-president Mike Pence to refuse to certify Biden’s election win and send it to the House of Representatives in a contingent election, or failing that, delay the joint session beyond 6 January 2021.

“Unlike in 2020, we will secure Trump’s victory this time,” Bannon told CBS today.

An Indiana journalist reported issues with voting in Hamilton county that now appear to be fixed.

Angela Ganote said technical issues had delayed voting for about 17 minutes across the county.

Updated

Pennsylvania has 19 electoral votes – the most of any swing state – and the pathway to getting 270 electoral votes winning the election is more complicated for the candidate who does not win it.

Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris crisscrossed the state during the final week of campaigning and yesterday held rallies about an hour apart in the Lehigh valley, one of the most competitive parts of the state. Harris dedicated the entirety of the final day of the campaign to Pennsylvania, making four stops in the state.

Residents in the state have spoken about wielding the power of a vote that could decide the election.

“I’m quite terrified,” said Sonny Berenson, 20, a student at Muhlenberg college who attended Harris’s rally there on Monday. “This is probably the most contentious election in American history and we’re living in a state that can decide it. So I feel very powerful and very scared, but obviously I hope and pray Kamala wins.”

Danielle Shackelford, 68, a worker for the Pennsylvania lottery from Allentown, said she was optimistic Harris would win. She said abortion was a top issue for her and that there were many women who were silently supporting Harris over the issue. “They are fighting with everything inside of them to fight against what has been put out there,” she said. “What Trump has done, he has unleashed the wrath of women.”

Rene Diaz, Jr, a 36-year-old machinist said his top issues this election were the economy, foreign policy and the border. “We are drowning in so much debt that we shouldn’t be helping fight two wars and sending countries to fight two wars and help fund other programs,” he said. “I have children and it’s important that my children get to grow up with the life that I have.”

Elizabeth Slaby, an 81-year-old from Allentown, arrived at Harris’s rally in Allentown at 6.00am on Monday with her son and grandson. She said that she had been a Republican for more than 50 years but changed her registration five days after January 6.

It’s 5 November today – a day when the British traditionally let off fireworks to celebrate the foiling of the plot by Guy Fawkes to blow up parliament and kill King James I over four hundred years ago.

Marina Hyde has written a bit comparing Britain’s own insurrectionist to someone more contemporary …

Updated

And here is some footage of those first in-person votes getting underway:

Here are some of the first images coming out of the wires as polls open:

Updated

Polls open in swath of states across the US

It’s just gone 7am Eastern Time and voting has just begun in a number of states across the US, including in the battleground states of Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan (some sites open at 8am ET).

Voting has also opened in: Alabama, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida (8am ET in parts of the Florida Panhandle on Central time), New Hampshire (Opening times vary by county with the earliest starting at 7am ET), Illinois, Indiana, Kansas (Varies by county; check with your local election office for polling hours), Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Rhode Island (Polls in New Shoreham open at 9am ET), South Carolina and Wyoming.

Alarm grows over Trump and Musk's false voting claims

Alarm is growing over the blizzard of false voting misinformation being peddled by Donald Trump and his top allies, such as Elon Musk.

Reprising his 2020 playbook of claiming that Democrats were trying to steal the election before he lost to Joe Biden and cried fraud, Trump has flatly and without evidence declared that Democrats are a “bunch of cheats”.

Musk has become a leading purveyor of falsehoods and conspiracies to his 200 million followers on X, the social media platform he owns.

Musk, the world’s richest man, has asserted without evidence that Trump’s campaign is heading for a “crushing victory” over Harris, and been chastised by key election officials in Arizona and Georgia.

Besides Musk, other key Trump allies such as Turning Point USA chief Charlie Kirk have reached their large rightist audiences via podcasts and public events and pushed bogus claims about Democratic election fraud.

Updated

The race to become the 47th president of the United States is on a razor-thin margin, pollster John Zogby writes.

Three of the final last six public polls were ties; one has Kamala Harris ahead by three points; the others have Donald Trump up by one point and two points.

My own firm, John Zogby Strategies, just released a final survey for our clients of 1,005 decided voters nationwide showing Harris leading with 49.3% of the vote and Trump polling at 45.6% of the vote – a margin, or difference, of 3.7 percentage points.

That is close, and even more of a squeeze because of the current relationship of the popular vote to the electoral college. Harris is certain to receive millions of “excess” votes in large states such as California, New York, Illinois and Massachusetts which will beef up her total popular vote nationwide but not do anything for her in key battleground states such as Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – all of which are too close to call as we approach election day.

A Donald Trump staffer who worked as a regional field director for the western Pennsylvania Republican party was fired on Friday after it was revealed that he was a white supremacist, Lorenzo Tondo reports.

Politico reported it had identified Luke Meyer, 24, a Pennsylvania-based field staffer who worked for five months for the former president, as the online white nationalist who used the pseudonym Alberto Barbarossa.

Meyer reportedly co-hosts the Alexandria podcast with Richard Spencer, the organiser of the 2017 white nationalist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia and regularly shared racist views.

After being presented with evidence by Politico linking him to the Barbarossa alias, Meyer admitted the connection and confessed that he had been concealing his online identity from fellow members of Trump Force 47, the arm of the Trump campaign overseeing volunteer mobilisation efforts.

More here:

It’s extremely unlikely that we’ll know the winner of the presidential contest tonight, 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 find out?

It 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.

Last time round, 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.

What about this time? 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 organisation guesses.

You can read more about when and how we will find out who the next US president is in the story below:

Updated

US election under way in Vermont

The US election is officially under way. Polls opened in certain locations in Vermont at 5am Eastern Time, so about 50 minutes ago.

According to CBS, here’s when polls open across the country:

6am ET – Connecticut, Kentucky (Polling sites in the west open at 7 a.m. ET), Maine (Polling locations open between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. depending on town population), New Jersey, New York, Virginia.

6.30am ET – North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia

7am ET – Alabama, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida (8am ET in parts of the Florida Panhandle on Central time), Georgia, New Hampshire (Opening times vary by county with the earliest starting at 7am ET), Illinois, Indiana, Kansas (Varies by county; check with your local election office for polling hours), Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan (Polling sites in four Upper Peninsula counties open at 8am ET), Missouri, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island (Polls in New Shoreham open at 9am ET), South Carolina, Wyoming

8am ET – Arizona, Iowa, Minnesota (Counties with a population of less than 500 are not required to open until 11am ET), Mississippi, Oklahoma, North Dakota (Polls start opening at 8am ET and vary by county), South Dakota (Polling locations in the west open at 9am ET), Tennessee, Texas (Polling sites in three western counties open at 9am ET), Wisconsin

8.30am ET – Arkansas

9am ET – Colorado, Montana (Polling sites in counties with less than 400 registered voters can open as late as 2pm ET), Nebraska, Nevada (Polling sites open at 10am ET with the exception of City Hall in West Wendover), New Mexico, Utah

10am ET – California, Idaho (Polling locations in the north open at 11am ET)

11am ET – Washington (Most voting is done by mail, so times vary by county), Alaska (Polling sites open at 11am ET with the exception of Adak)

12pm ET – Hawaii

Polls then begin to close in eastern states from 6pm US Eastern Time on Tuesday.

Updated

Candidates close election campaign with competing visions for future of US

As the election campaign drew to a close last night, the candidates laid out their competing visions for the destiny of America. Donald Trump attacked his critics and vilified migrants, while Kamala Harris laid out a positive vision for America.

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 by a scene in the film 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 trade tariffs on all imports from Mexico unless it stopped people from entering the US. The Republican candidate also held hours-long events in North Carolina and Michigan, wrapping up at about 2am local time.

Here’s a video round-up of the final campaign push by Trump and Harris:

Updated

Republican lawyer seeks to unseat Georgia prosecutor who brought charges against Trump

A Republican lawyer who interned in the White House under Donald Trump is challenging Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis, the Georgia prosecutor who brought charges against the former president over efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, AP reports.

Courtney Kramer worked in the White House counsel’s office during the Trump presidency and is active in GOP organisations. She’s the first Republican to run for district attorney in Fulton County since 2000.

Fulton County, which is home to 11% of the state’s electorate and includes most of the city of Atlanta, is a Democratic stronghold.

Willis took office in January 2021 after beating her predecessor — and former boss — longtime district attorney Paul Howard in a bitter Democratic primary fight in 2020.

She made headlines just a month into her tenure when she announced in February 2021 that she was investigating whether Trump and others broke any laws while trying to overturn his narrow loss in the state to Democrat Joe Biden.

Two and a half years later, after an investigation that included calling dozens of witnesses before a special grand jury, she obtained a sprawling racketeering indictment against Trump and 18 others in August 2023.

Four people have pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors. Trump and the remaining defendants have all pleaded not guilty to the charges against them.

When she entered the district attorney’s race in March, Kramer said the Trump prosecution was a politically motivated case and a waste of resources. She said if she becomes district attorney she will recuse herself from that case because she worked with two of the defendants.

Updated

Republicans could take Senate, with Democrats winning control of the House

As well as who will become US president, control of the US Congress is at stake in today’s elections that could flip both the House of Representatives and the Senate, Reuters reports.

The outcome will play an important role in determining how easily the winner of Tuesday’s US presidential election will govern until the next congressional elections in 2026.

Nonpartisan analysts say Republicans stand a good chance of taking back the Senate, where Democrats hold a 51-49 majority. But Republicans could also lose their grip on the House, where Democrats only need to pick up four seats to take back control of the 435-seat chamber.

As in the presidential election, the outcome will likely be determined by a small slice of voters. The battle for the Senate hinges on seven contests, while fewer than 40 House races are seen as truly competitive.

“It’s incredibly close,” said Erin Covey, who analyses House races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

Voters do not seem to be indicating a clear preference for either party. An October Reuters/Ipsos poll found 43% of registered voters would back the Republican candidate in their district, while 43% would back the Democratic candidate.

Updated

Polling guru foresees super-tight race

Leading forecaster Nate Silver released his final election forecast overnight – and the race looks almost as tight as it could possibly be. He said that Harris won in 40,012 out of 80,000, or 50.015% 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 maintained a lead over Harris in betting markets, but odds had narrowed somewhat.

Silver earned his reputation as a forecasting guru by correctly calling 49 out of 50 states in the 2008 presidential election. He also predicted the outcome of the 2012 and 2020 elections. In 2016, however, he gave eventual winner Trump just a 28.6% chance of becoming president.

Updated

Security agencies warn of foreign interference in US election

Yesterday, several US security agencies released a joint statement on foreign interference in the election.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said they had been observing foreign adversaries, particularly Russia, conducting additional influence operations intended to undermine public confidence in the integrity of US elections and stoke divisions among Americans.

The agencies warned that they expect these activities to intensify through election day and in the coming weeks, and that foreign influence narratives will focus on swing states.

“Influence actors linked to Russia in particular are manufacturing videos and creating fake articles to undermine the legitimacy of the election, instill fear in voters regarding the election process, and suggest Americans are using violence against each other due to political preferences, judging from information available.

“Iran also remains a significant foreign influence threat to US elections. As noted in a prior update, we have assessed that Iran has conducted malicious cyber activities to compromise former president Trump’s campaign.

“Iranian influence actors may also seek to create fake media content intended to suppress voting or stoke violence, as they have done in past election cycles.”

Updated

Trump 'should play golf' if he loses, says UK ally Farage

Donald Trump should concede defeat and “go and play golf” in Scotland if he loses to Kamala Harris, Nigel Farage has said, but added that the Democratic candidate should pardon Trump to “dampen down” the threat of unrest.

Farage, a friend of Trump who has spoken at the former president’s rallies in the past, said he hoped Harris would look “magnanimous” if she secured a “clear and decisive” victory.

The Reform UK leader is in the US for the election but said he hoped there would be no unrest after the result. Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts and is facing sentencing later in November for falsifying business records over payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels days before his victorious 2016 election.

Farage, who has criticised Labour activists for travelling to campaign for Harris, said: “If she gets in on Tuesday I hope she pardons him. She could look magnanimous and it would dampen down potential tensions.

“If it was clear and decisive then maybe it’s time to go and play golf at Turnberry,” he said. “It’s all hypothetical and I still think he is going to win.”

Farage attended Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania on Monday, a key swing state where both candidates held rallies the day before the election.

Updated

An incumbent president stepping down late in the campaign, a guilty verdict in a criminal case for one of the candidates and a couple of assassination attempts – this election campaign has been a wild ride.

Here are 15 moments that defined the US election campaign:

The influential podcast host Joe Rogan endorsed Donald Trump for president, writing on social media that his choice had been influenced by “the great and powerful Elon Musk”.

Musk “makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way”, Rogan wrote on X. “For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump.”

Rogan, 57, described recently by Bloomberg as “widely accepted as the most popular podcaster on Earth”, has an overwhelmingly male audience. He recently interviewed Donald Trump on the show, and, as recently as last week, was negotiating for a sit-down with the Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, though no interview went ahead.

Trump’s interview on Rogan’s show ten days ago currently has 45m views on YouTube, while JD Vance’s interview has 14m views.

With a fairly hefty time difference, the US election will play out at different times of the day depending on which side of the pond you are on. Archie Bland breaks down how the race for the White House will unfold for British viewers.

Harris and Trump tied in tiny New Hampshire town that kicks off election-day voting

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump tied with three votes each in the tiny New Hampshire town that traditionally kicks off voting on election day.

Since the 1960s, voters in Dixville Notch, close to the Canadian border, have gathered just after midnight to cast their ballots.

Votes are then counted and results announced – hours before other states open their polls.

According to CNN, four registered Republicans and two undeclared voters took part in the vote just after midnight on Tuesday.

Leslie Otten was seemingly the disaffected Republican voter that backed Harris in the six-person ballot. “I’ve been a Republican most of my life, but I find myself in conflict with the Republican Party at this time,” he said. “It’s been loudly said by Trump that I’m now an enemy because I don’t back him.”

Updated

The Guardian’s video team has made an explainer on the feisty history of US political mudslinging. In it, they argue that the insults didn’t start with Trump:

The video is part of It’s Complicated, a new YouTube channel dedicated to all forms of explanatory journalism, helping bring clarity, context and understanding in a complicated world.

Updated

Streeting also spoke about Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK who was at a Trump rally last night.

Farage last night tweeted a clip from the rally where Trump was speaking about their relationship – which perhaps didn’t start as a resounding endorsement of the Reform leader, but ended up there.

“We have a man from Europe, I don’t know if he’s here, I saw him backstage.

“What he is doing is sort of what we did a few years ago. He’s doing a great job, he’s a fantastic … he’s always been my friend for some reason. He liked me, I liked him and he’s shaking it up pretty good over there. He was the big winner of the last election.”

Streeting said of the Reform leader: “To be fair to Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform Party who is currently State-side, he is a firm supporter of Donald Trump.

“He was reflecting overnight that whatever some of the noise we’ve heard about, you know that legal action or indeed things that that we said about president Trump in the past, that we’ll be able to work effectively together as partners and and as allies.”

Updated

'We're not ideological bedfellows with Trump,' senior UK politician admits

The UK government has been working to ensure the “deep ties” that bind the UK and the US will be “as strong as they have ever been”, whatever the outcome of the US election, the UK’s health secretary Wes Streeting said, PA reports.

Wes Streeting told LBC Radio: “The prime minister, the foreign secretary and others have been working hard to make sure that whatever the outcome of the US presidential election, the deep ties that bind our two nations are as strong as they have ever been.

“I think that is particularly important in a world in which we see war on the continent of Europe, in Ukraine, war in the Middle East, wider geopolitical risks and threats where the US and the UK have common history, but also common cause in terms of the future we want to build, in the future of democracy.

“The American people will decide who their president is and we will work with whoever they choose.”

He added: “I think it’s fair to say that we may not be ideological bedfellows with President Trump, but if he’s returned as president of the United States, there will be a really good working relationship.

“And I think we saw that with the warmth of the exchange between president Trump and the prime minister after they met recently.”

Updated

US judges have denied requests from the Republican-led states of Missouri and Texas to block the federal government from sending lawyers to their states on election day to monitor compliance with federal voting rights laws, Reuters reports.

Both states are among the 27 that the US Justice Department (DOJ) said it would send staff out to monitorvoting locations, as it has done regularly during national elections.

Federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ordered the DOJ early on Tuesday to confirm that “no observers” would be present in polling locations in Texas but denied issuing the restraining order the state had requested.

“The Court cannot issue a temporary restraining order without further clarification on the distinction between ‘monitoring’ and ‘observing’ on the eve of a consequential election,” Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee, said in the ruling.

Texas attorney general Ken Paxton had earlier said that sending monitors “infringes on States’ constitutional authority to run free and fair elections.” The lawsuit argued that “under Texas law, the list of persons who may be present in voting locations or central counting stations does not include federal authorities.”

District judge Sarah Pitlyk in Missouri also denied that state’s request for a temporary restraining order, saying late last night: “the harms that the State of Missouri anticipates are speculative.”

Missouri’s lawsuit had accused the DOJ of making an 11th-hour plan that intended to “displace state election authorities” by sending poll monitors to locations throughout St. Louis.

The DOJ said two election monitors were in Missouri to monitor one polling station in St. Louis.

While some of the locations the DOJ will monitor on election day include key counties in the seven battleground states expected to help decide the election, it is also sending personnel to other locations such as counties in Massachusetts, Alaska, South Dakota, and New Jersey. Neither Missouri nor Texas are considered among the seven battleground states.

AP reports on a tiny Indian village where Kamala Harris has ancestral roots that is praying for her victory.

There’s little to distinguish the village of Thulasendrapuram from any other rural community in Tamil Nadu, except its connection to a woman who could become America’s first leader with South Asian roots.

As millions of Americans vote, Harris has people rooting for her from thousands of miles away in a village surrounded by rice paddies and coconut trees, where her mother’s family has ancestral ties. They talk about her at the local tea shop. Banners and billboards bearing her face are seen throughout the community.

“Our deity is a very powerful God. If we pray well to him, he will make her victorious,” said M. Natarajan, the temple priest that led the prayers in front of the image of Hindu deity Ayyanar, a form of Lord Shiva.

Harris’ maternal grandfather was born in the village, about 350 kilometers (215 miles) from the southern coastal city of Chennai, more than 100 years ago. As an adult, he moved to Chennai, where he worked as a high-ranking government official until his retirement.

Harris has never visited Thulasendrapuram and she has no living relatives in the village, but people here still venerate the family that made it big in the US.

“Our village ancestors’ granddaughter is running as a US presidential candidate. Her victory will be happy news for every one of us,” Natarajan said.

Harris hasn’t visited India much — particularly not since becoming vice president — but she has often spoken emotionally about her ties to her late mother’s country of birth. On Tuesday, she released a campaign video highlighting her mother, who arrived in the US at age 19 and became a cancer researcher.

Titled “Mother,” the video ends with a narrator saying: “This daughter of Shyamala, this daughter of the American story, is ready to lead us forward.”

Village residents also prayed for Harris’ victory in 2020, and set off firecrackers when she became the US vice president.

Last night The Guardian reported that betting markets had narrowed on the eve of the election.

The Trump campaign and its supporters had been pointing to Trump’s lead over Harris at leading bookmakers as a more accurate forecast than tight polls that were too close to call in the run up to the election.

But the odds have narrowed somewhat, as the below data visualisation shows:

The current odds on the Betfair betting exchange still favour Trump – giving him about a 60% chance of winning the election to Harris’ 40%.

Updated

'People say God saved me in order to save America,' Trump tells rally

The Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt provides some analysis on Trump’s final rally ahead of the election …

Trump said this was his “last rally”, and if that’s true, it was a somewhat ignominious end. More than half the crowd left during a meandering, nearly-two hour long, speech that saw Trump attack Kamala Harris, criticise the thickness of Adam Schiff’s neck, and muse that god may have saved him from an assassin’s bullet so that he could become president.

“Kamala, she is a very low IQ person and we don’t need a very low IQ individual. We’ve had that for four years and our country is going down the drain,” Trump said early in his rally, one of a series of typically vicious critiques on his opponent.

Trump arrived almost two hours late for the rally, and by the time he started speaking about how divine intervention saved him from an assassination attempt, people had already begun to leave.

“Many people say that god saved me in order to save America,” Trump told the crowd. “It’s a beautiful expression and I think it might be true.”

Away from the reverie on god, this “last rally” offered up much of the grievance and doom that has characterised Trump’s politics.

“Some of the greatest criminals in the world are pouring into our country,” Trump said, mirroring his very first campaign rally, at Trump Tower on June 16 2015.

As well as blasting Harris, he called Nancy Pelosi a “crazy horrible human being”, adding: “She’s a sick crazy… oh no… it starts with a b but I won’t say it.”

Trump continued: “These are bad people. Adam shifty Schiff. I call him pencil neck.” He said of the California Democrat: “He’s an unattractive guy in and out.”

At 2.10am, with the audience bleary eyed, Trump finally left the stage after declaring, without specifics, that he would fix all America’s ills. The now familiar sound of Village People’s YMCA played the former president out, and now only time will tell whether he wins re-election.

Updated

Donald Trump continued to attack Kamala Harris and gave dark warnings about a dystopian future under the vice-president in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Speaking in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump also mused that god may have saved him from an assassin’s bullet so that he could become president, as he claimed that he has a “95% chance or something” of winning the election.

Trump has said he will not run for president again, and if this is to be Trump’s last rally, it was a somewhat ignominious end. More than half the crowd left during a meandering, nearly-two hour long, speech that saw Trump attack Nancy Pelosi, criticise the thickness of Adam Schiff’s neck, and demonise immigrants.

“Kamala, she is a very low IQ person and we don’t need a very low IQ individual. We’ve had that for four years and our country is going down the drain,” Trump said early in his rally, one of a series of typically vicious critiques on his opponent.

“If you vote for lying Kamala you’ll have four more years of misery, failure and disaster our country may never recover from,” Trump added, to loud jeers.

Trump arrived almost two hours late for the rally, and by the time he started speaking about how divine intervention saved him from an assassination attempt, people had already begun to leave.

This “last rally” offered up much of the grievance and doom that has characterised Trump’s politics.

“Some of the greatest criminals in the world are pouring into our country,” Trump said, mirroring his very first campaign rally, at Trump Tower on June 16 2015.

That day the then-reality tv host descended on an escalator to announce what was seen as a long shot run for the presidency. He offered grave, racially charged warnings about immigration, characterised cities as crime-addled hellholes, made vague, hyperbolic promises about how only he could fix the country, and launched vicious attacks on political rivals.

Fast forward November 2024, and little has changed.

As well as blasting Harris, he called Nancy Pelosi a “crazy horrible human being”, adding: “She’s a sick crazy… oh no… it starts with a b but I won’t say it.”

At 2am, as the rally drew to a close, he returned to the dark motifs that have been such a hallmark of his political career. Trump’s first rally and his last rally may have been nine years apart. But at this final event, held hours before voting begins in what could be one of the most consequential elections in modern history, it was clear that little has changed.

Updated

Kamala Harris welcomed a slew of celebrities to her rallies in the closing moments of the election campaign, PA reports.

Oprah Winfrey, Katy Perry, Will.i.am, Lady Gaga, Jon Bon Jovi and Christina Aguilera were among the superstars lending their voices to support Harris.

Lady Gaga was one of the stars who performed at Harris’ multi-city rally on the evening before the election, where she sang God Bless America before warning the audience “the country is depending on you”.

Meanwhile, talk show host Winfrey said she travelled across the country to appear at the rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, wearing a t-shirt that read “Yes she can”.

“If we don’t show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again,” the TV star warned.

Black Eyed Peas singer Will.i.am performed his Harris endorsement song titled “Yes she can”, which includes the lyrics: “So register and vote for your life, do it for your daughters and your sons and your wife.”

It came moments after Gaga’s performance at the rally, where she told the crowd: “For more than half of this country’s life, women did not have a voice … But tomorrow, women will be a part of making this decision.”

“Today, I am holding in my heart all the tough, tenacious women who made me who I am. I cast my vote for someone who will be a president for all Americans.”

Updated

Crowd size has been a persistent talking point for Trump, right from the beginning of his political career more than eight years ago. But Democrats have recently been mocking him over his obsession, pointing out that people have been leaving his lengthy rallies early and that seats at some rallies have been empty. AP has this report:

Donald Trump has spent nearly a decade bragging about his crowds. Lately, he’s been making the same boasts to swaths of empty seats.

In his third presidential bid, Trump for the first time is facing an opponent who stages her own massive rallies, calling further attention to the fact that his crowds, however enthusiastic they are, sometimes have failed to fill large venues and often thinned out as he spoke.

In North Carolina this weekend, the former president and Republican nominee spoke at First Horizon Coliseum in Greensboro, where the lower level of the 22,000-seat arena remained unfilled, with the upper level blocked off altogether.

“We’ve had the biggest rallies in history of any country. Every rally’s full,” he falsely claimed anyway. “You don’t have any seats that are empty.”

He began Monday, the eve of the election, in Raleigh, North Carolina, where a late-arriving crowd came close to filling the venue but left a smattering of empty seats. In Reading, Pennsylvania, Trump took the stage in Santander Arena, where there were sections of empty seats in the 7,200-seat arena. The campaign hung a large American flag near the back of the arena, blocking the view of several seating sections that remained unfilled.

He then went to PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, where the upper level seating was again blocked off.

The former president’s crowds still routinely number in the thousands and they roared regularly as he spoke. And his supporters this year remain engaged enough that his final event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was inside a packed arena even though it started after 12:15 am Tuesday, nearly two hours late. Some rallygoers told a reporter they arrived at 7 am the day before.

But the occasional scenes of empty seats offered a notable contrast to Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ biggest events this fall — and to the volume and vibe of Trump’s crowds eight years ago when he sought and won the presidency for the first time …

The former reality television star and consummate showman clearly remains invested in the performative aspect of presidential politics and obviously concerned that Harris, unlike Democrats Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Joe Biden in 2020, can match and even exceed his signature campaign tactic. Harris, for example, recently filled the large coliseum in Greensboro.

And as the clock approaches 2.10am in Michigan, Trump has finally ended his final rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. After ranging further through various topics including promises to defend religious liberty, the right to keep and bear arms, “keeping men out of women’s sports” and building up our borders, he says:

We will never ever surrender, together we will fight fight fight and we will win win win! …

November 5, today, will be the most important day in the history of our country.”

And finally, he ends:

“I love you all, God bless you, God bless you Michigan, God bless the United States of America!” and dances out to the tune of YMCA.

Trump appears to be winding up and is talking about his “favourite word: tariff!” and repeats his threat to put “large scale” tariffs on goods coming from Mexico and Canada if they don’t prevent fentanyl made by China coming into the US.

He then makes even more imflammatory comments about immigration claiming, without any evidence, that “Crime is plummeting all over the world” because they’re sending their “criminals”, “mental patients”, “prison populations” and others to the US.

He also talks again about putting a missile shield around the US.

Updated

Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump take the mic next, urging people to get out and vote.

“You are going to save democracy in the United States and keep peace in the world,” Eric says of his father.

Then Tiffany says a few brief words before Trump returns. “They’re my kids but I’ll tell you they’re very good people,” he says.

Updated

After touting Joe Rogan’s endorsement of him, Trump has invited his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, the co-chair of the National Republican Committee, to take the mic.

She says “we send a loud and clear message” to “the mainstream media” and “the swamp” among other people “that it is we who get to choose the president”.

She says it has been “a very special night for our family”, adding “it has been my honour to be a part of this family, to be out speaking on behalf of a man whom I love … who is going to save this country and is going to save the world.”

It’s approaching 2am in Michigan.

Trump has now called his family up to the stage, including his sons Eric and Donald Jr, Tiffany Trump and her husband Michael Boulos and Eric’s wife Lara, who is the co-chair of the National Republican Committee.

His daughter Ivanka Trump, who was a White House advisor to him during his first term, and his wife Melania, are notable by their absence.

Trump has given shoutouts to a list of people supporting him, including Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the ambassador to Germany during his time in office, Rick Grenell.

He goes into a story about former chancellor Angela Merkel, saying that when Grenell “was taken out it was the happiest day of her life”.

At one point he adds as an aside, “We can’t let them forget that we stopped that big Chinese plant in Mexico!” and “Let’s put it this way if they build it theyre going to lose their ass”. It wasn’t clear who or what plant he was referring to – see our earlier post.

The crowds are reportedly beginning to thin out at Trump’s rally in Michigan. He’s been talking for over an hour now.

It’s 1.30am in Michigan and Trump has now moved back to talking about cutting energy prices and the cost of groceries again.

He tells a familiar story about an old woman going into a shop to buy three apples but only being able to afford two and having to put one back in the fridge (“refrigeration”). It’s not clear where or when this happened.

“That shouldn’t be happening in our country,” he says.

After some more insults hurled at Kamala Harris and California governor Gavin Newsom, Trump begins making further inflammatory remarks about immigration, accusing Harris of wanting open borders and of allowing an “invasion” of immigrants including those from “mental institutions”.

“The day I take office the migrant invasion ends,” he says, later adding that we “live in an occupied country”.

He also repeats his call for the death penalty for any illegal immigrant who kills and American citizen and his plan to ban sanctuary cities.

Trump has promised to restore and expand his most controversial immigration policies, including the travel ban aimed at mostly Muslim countries. He has consistently promised to stage the “largest deportation operation in American history”.

Trump talks briefly about groceries (“People say ‘groceries,’ right? I haven’t used tha … it’s such a sort of an old term.”)

Then he talks for a while about the attempt to assassinate him in Pennsylvania in July. He calls his survival a “miracle” and at one point mentions that “illegal immigration saved me” although I didn’t catch how.

He then moves into an anecdote about visiting Abraham Lincoln’s bedroom with Melania Trump. He says that the assassinated president suffered from “melancholia” and adds that: “He was very tall, he was six foot six, that’s the equivalent of a Barron Trump today … the bed was very long.”

After a few asides about Melania’s book, he returns to the theme of the attempt on his life.

Trump has returned to the theme of plants and Mexico, telling a convoluted story about a businessman friend and China’s intention to build a plant in Mexico which was going “to destroy Michigan”.

He says that his threats to “put a 100% tariff on every single car coming out of that plant” had led to a decision not to build the purported plant.

“I saved Detroit and Michigan a lot and I did that without even being president,” he claims.

It’s not clear what plant he’s referring to. Newsweek has previously reported after similar remarks he made at the end of last month that his campaign could not confirm what plant it was but that it appeared to be one planned by auto manufacturer BYD and that there was no evidence the claim was true.

Trump and Harris get three votes each as election kicks off in New Hampshire

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have tied with three votes each in the tiny New Hampshire town which traditionally kicks off voting on election day.

Since the 1960’s, voters in Dixville Notch, located close to the border with Canada, have gathered just after midnight to cast their ballots. Votes are then counted and results announced – hours before other states even open their polls.

According to CNN, four Republicans and two undeclared voters participated took part in the vote just after midnight on Tuesday.

Trump then launches into some familiar insults of Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton of whom he says, “She called me and conceded [presumably eight years ago] and then spent seven years saying how she was a good sport.”

He calls Harris a “low IQ person” and then begins on a long story about Elon Musk and his rockets.

Trump insults opponents at final Michigan rally

In Michigan, Trump then goes on to talk insultingly about President Joe Biden, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and representative Adam Schiff, the lead investigator in Trump’s first impeachment.

“Joe Biden in one of his crazy moments said that we were all garbage,” Trump remarked adding “They stole the election from a president,” in apparent reference to Biden’s dropping out of the campaign to be replaced by Harris.

He then says of Pelosi “she’s a crooked person … evil, sick, crazy b… oh no! It starts with a ‘b’ but I won’t say it! I wanna say it.”

He said of “Adam Shifty Schiff”: “He’s got the biggest head, he’s an unattractive guy both inside and out.”

Updated

In Michigan, Trump claims to have done 930 rallies during his campaign, which I can’t confirm. Then he continues:

If you make one slip up and you know I wrote a beautiful speech I haven’t even gotten to it yet ... rarely do they ever catch me making a mistake!

Those ellipses are covering for a series of meandering comments which included remarks on his use of teleprompters and the state of the country.

Trump starts his rally in Michigan apparently talking about his first election run, saying “we were given a three per cent chance” in Michigan and then begins a series of rambling remarks about Detroit, (“I’ve heard a lot about Detroit”) and adds “We killed the plant in Mexico”. It’s not clear what he was referring to.

He then moved on to immigration, saying the US was suffering the “invasion of some of the biggest criminals in the world… we’re going to end that immediately.”

“We don’t have to live this way,” he adds.

Then he moves on to Kamala Harris, mocking her and claiming, “Nobody knew who the hell she was.” He then made some more inflammatory comments about transgender people .

Updated

Trump has finally arrived at his final rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, almost two and a half hours behind schedule.

A few dozen conservative voters gathered at a Phoenix park to launch a canvass with Turning Point Action the night before the election, pulling up an app to get names and locations of voters they could talk to and convince to head to the polls.

Turning Point, the conservative youth organization, has run its “chase the vote” program in Arizona and Wisconsin to reach low propensity voters. Monday’s “super chase” canvass involved a data-driven approach to a part of town that the group says has right-leaning voters who haven’t yet turned in ballots.

“We actually modeled this program around a lot of what the Democrats have built in years prior,” said Andrew Kolvet, the group’s spokesman.

People from 47 states have come to Arizona and Wisconsin to volunteer with the group to turn out voters, Kolvet said. At the Phoenix park, teams of at least two – often wearing red Maga hats and toting clipboards – set off to knock some doors.

“The job is not to convince a swing voter necessarily, or to convince a Democrat to vote Republican,” Kolvet said. “These are people that we know are probably our people that just haven’t got their vote in.”

Registered Republicans have so far turned in more ballots than their Democratic counterparts in Arizona, a reversal of the last two cycles when Republicans trailed in early voting (though Republicans before 2020 often had a lead in early votes).

“We’re feeling as good as we could feel,” Kolvet said. “I’m not predicting victory. I’m just saying we have done the hard work and set the state up to have a really good day tomorrow. Anything could happen.”

Harris ends campaign 'with energy, with joy' at final rally in Philadelphia

Dispatch from Philadelphia: Kamala Harris has run a remarkable 107-day presidential campaign, the shortest in modern political history.

It began on a Sunday morning with a call from the president saying he was stepping down. On election eve, hours before polls opened, she finished the final speech of a campaign she cast as a fight for American democracy.

But Harris has also sought to inject hope and optimism into her campaign.

“Tonight, then, we finish, as we started with optimism with energy, with joy,” she said.

“Generations before us led the fight for freedom, and now the baton is in our hands,” she said.

“We need to get to work and get out the vote,” she concluded.

Updated

Georgia poll worker arrested over bomb threat, prosecutors say

A Georgia poll worker was arrested on Monday on US charges that he sent a letter threatening to bomb election workers that he wrote to appear as if it came from a voter in the presidential election battleground state. Reuters reports:

Federal prosecutors said Nicholas Wimbish, 25, had been serving as a poll worker at the Jones County Elections Office in Gray, Georgia, on Oct. 16 when he got into a verbal altercation with a voter.

The next day, Wimbish mailed a letter to the county’s elections superintendent that was drafted to appear as if it came from that same voter, prosecutors said. The letter complained that Wimbish was a “closeted liberal election fraudster” who had been distracting voters in line to cast ballots, according to charging papers.

Authorities said the letter, signed by a “Jones county voter,” said Wimbish and others “should look over their shoulder” and warned that people would “learn a violent lesson about stealing our elections!”

Prosecutors said the letter ended with a handwritten note: “PS boom toy in early vote place, cigar burning, be safe.”

Wimbish was charged with mailing a bomb threat, conveying false information about a bomb threat, mailing a threatening letter, and making false statements to the FBI, prosecutors said. A lawyer for Wimbish could not be immediately identified.

Georgia is one of seven closely contested states expected to decide the outcome of Tuesday’s presidential election match up between Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

Concerns about potential political violence have prompted officials to take a variety of measures to bolster security during and after Election Day.

Dispatch from Grand Rapids, Michigan: They just showed a video here of Donald Trump shaving the head of Vince McMahon, the former CEO of WWE, during a wrestling event. It happened in 2007.

Needless to say, Trump hasn’t arrived yet.

Harris emphasises her message of unity in her remarks in Philadelphia, drawing a contrast with Donald Trump without mentioning his name, saying: “Instead of stewing on an enemies list I will work on my to-do list.”

She then lists some of the things she would do in office including banning corporate price gouging on groceries, cutting taxes for workers and middle class families and lowering the cost of health care, adding: “access to health care should be a right and not just a privilege of those who can afford it.”

She also mentions women’s right to control their own bodies and her determination to sign into law protections for women’s reproductive freedom.

She then goes back to her message of unity saying: “I pledge to listen to those who will be impacted by the decisions I make”. She also repeats comments she has made previously about listening to experts and giving people who disagree with her a seat at the table.

Updated

Harris take the stage in Philadelphia

Harris came onstage to Beyoncé’s Freedom. She hugged Oprah before beginning her remarks.

Harris said her campaign started “as the underdog and climb to victory,” she said gesturing to the Rocky steps behind her.

“This could be one of the closest races in history,” Harris said.

“You will decide the outcome of this election Pennsylvania,” she said. “Make no mistake: we will win!”

The crowd begins chanting “We will win.”

Updated

More from the Harris rally in Philadelphia: In a white pants suit, Oprah Winfrey laid the stakes pretty bare for the audience. She told a story about meeting a woman on a hike who said she wasn’t planning to vote this election.

“We don’t get to sit this one out, Oprah said. “If we don’t show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again.”

She said those were the “dangers” of not electing Harris on Tuesday.

Updated

Kamala Harris is taking to the stage in Philadelphia now for her final rally before election day, after an introduction by Oprah Winfrey.

Security agencies say Russia election disinformation efforts risk inciting violence

Russia-linked disinformation operations have falsely claimed officials in battleground states plan to fraudulently sway the outcome of the extraordinarily close US presidential election, authorities have warned hours before Election Day. AFP reports:

Success in the seven swing states is key to winning the White House for rivals Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, and those states have previously been the focus of unsupported accusations of election fraud.

“Russia is the most active threat,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said Monday.

“These efforts risk inciting violence, including against election officials,” they added, noting the efforts are expected to intensify through Election Day and in the following weeks.

It was the latest in a series of warnings from the ODNI about foreign actors - notably Russia and Iran - allegedly spreading disinformation or hacking the campaigns during this election.

Tehran and Moscow have both denied such allegations in the past.

More from Philadelphia, where Doug Emhoff just praised his wife, Kamala Harris as the “right president for this moment in our nation’s history.”

He joked that she will lead with her “laugh and that look.” Emhoff has been crisscrossing the country for Harris’s campaign.

Donald Trump was supposed to start speaking at 10.30pm local time in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Well, he didn’t - he isn’t even here yet - and according to a police officer I just spoke to it’s probably going to get to midnight before Trump actually appears.

In the meantime the campaign is desperately filling time. We’ve had an appearance from a local congressman – “Who the hell is that?” a Trump supporter behind me commented – and some lackeys just wheeled out a sort of T-shirt machine gun, which entertained people for a bit.

In contrast to Trump’s other rallies today, the Van Andel Arena, in downtown Grand Rapids, is actually almost full. “And let me tell you,” one of the speakers said just now, “There’s the same number of people waiting outside who couldn’t get in!”

I was a bit bored so I got up and went and looked outside. There is not a single person out there.

Updated

Lady Gaga has just arrived on stage. She takes a seat at the piano and belts God Bless America.

She said she cast her vote for Harris – but there is little chance Lady Gaga is a battleground state voter. Instead she encourages everyone in the audience to vote and then brings out the future “first First Gentleman,” Doug Emhoff.

Updated

Opening summary

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage as the US is set to vote in the 2024 presidential election.

With just hours to go before polls open, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have been making their final pitch to voters, honing in on the crucial battleground states of Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Polls continue to show the contest could not be closer, with both candidates tied in a number of key swing states.

The two candidates laid out starkly contrasting visions for America’s future on the eve of election day. Trump rambled through dark and dystopian speeches painting migrants as dangerous criminals while also launching personal attacks on a number of high-profile Democratic women. Harris delivered a more positive closing argument, shifting focus away from the threat posed by the ex-president, who is not mentioned in her final ad, and insisting “we all have so much more in common than what separates us”.

The polls are set to start opening on the US east coast in less than six hours time, with the rest of the country following in the hours after. Millions of Americans are set to vote across the day, but the outcome remains far from certain.

Here’s what else has been happening over the last 24 hours:

  • Kamala Harris put all her chips on the key battleground state of Pennsylvania on Monday, as polls indicate an extremely close contest. She held several rallies and events including a stop at a Puerto Rican restaurant with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and directly joined canvassing in a residential area in Reading, telling voters at one home: “I wanted to go door-knocking!”’

  • Harris sought to strike a positive tone, saying she wanted to be a “president for all Americans”. A sign of a “strong” leader is someone willing to listen to the experts, the stakeholders and those who disagree, she said at a rally in Pittsburgh.

  • Donald Trump meanwhile held rallies in Raleigh, North Carolina, two in Pennsylvania, but his tone was much darker, focusing on painting migrants as dangerous criminals while also launching personal attacks on a number of high-profile Democratic women. “They’re killing people. They’re killing people at will,” he said at one rally, giving gruesome details of specific murders allegedly committed by undocumented migrants. In North Caroliana he called Democratic congresswoman Nancy Pelosi a “crazyass bedbug” and attacked former first lady Michelle Obama, saying: “She hit me the other day. I was going to say to my people, am I allowed to hit her now? They said, take it easy, sir.”

  • The influential podcast host Joe Rogan endorsed Donald Trump for president, writing on social media that his choice had been influenced by “the great and powerful Elon Musk”. Musk “makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way”, Rogan wrote on X. “For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump.”

  • The $1m-a-day voter sweepstakes that Elon Musk’s political action committee is hosting in swing states can continue through Tuesday’s presidential election, a Pennsylvania judge ruled on Monday. The common pleas court judge Angelo Foglietta – ruling after Musk’s lawyers said the winners are not chosen by chance – did not immediately give a reason for the ruling.

  • A political action committee (Pac) linked to Elon Musk is accused of targeting Jewish and Arab American voters in swing states with dramatically different messages about Kamala Harris’s position on Gaza, a strategy by Trump allies aimed at peeling off Democratic support for the vice-president. Texts, mailers, social media ads and billboards targeting heavily Arab American areas in metro Detroit paint Harris as a staunch ally of Israel who will continue supplying arms to the country. Meanwhile, residents in metro Detroit or areas of Pennsylvania with higher Jewish populations have been receiving messaging that underscores her alleged support for the Palestinian cause.

  • The Republican mega-donors Dick and Liz Uihlein, who are the third largest donors in this year’s US presidential election, have sought information about who employees at their company Uline will be voting for in Tuesday’s ballot. A screenshot seen by the Guardian shows how employees at the private Wisconsin paper and office products distributor were asked to take part in what was called an anonymous survey to track who the employees were voting for on 5 November.

Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage:

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