LAST UPDATE | 2 hrs ago
AFTER ONE OF the most tumultuous campaigns in recent history, we’re on the final stretch in this year’s race for the White House.
Polls have begun closing across the United States and politicians and pundits are anxious for any indication of who may be their next president.
For the details of the election results as we get them, check out our latest liveblog here.
If you want a rundown of today’s events, from protests in Dublin to Trump casting his ballot, you’ll find the play-by-play below.
Updates by Mairead Maguire, Jane Matthews, Diarmuid Pepper, Daragh Brophy, Lauren Boland, Muiris Ó Cearbhaill and Sadbh Cox (earlier)
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of election day in the US.
Polls opened in several eastern states within the last hour, including Virginia, North Carolina and New York.
Tens of millions of voters are expected to add their votes to the 82 million already cast.
A final outcome may not be known for several days if the results are as close as the polls suggest.
Keen to stay on top of all the results over the next 24 hours, but not sure whether it makes more sense to stay up late or just get up very early? The Journal’s Diarmuid Pepper has been taking a look at when we might start to see significant developments as polls close in vital swing states overnight.
In keeping with the trend set in recent opinion polls, the very first votes cast on election day were evenly split.
The tiny New Hampshire town of Dixville Notch has been the first site in the US to complete in-person voting in a tradition dating back over 60 years.
According to a report on the ballot from PBS:
“After a rousing accordion version of the national anthem, the town’s six voters began casting their ballots at the stroke of midnight and the vote count was complete 15 minutes later.”
The final tally – three votes for Harris, three for Trump.
Last night, on the eve of the vote, Harris went all-in in the swing state of Pennsylvania, rallying on the Philadelphia steps made famous in ‘Rocky’.
“This could be one of the closest races in history — every single vote matters,” the Democrat told the crowd, as she was joined by celebrities including Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey.
Trump cast himself as the only solution to an apocalyptic vision of the country in terminal decline and overrun by “savage” migrants.
“With your vote tomorrow, we can fix every single problem our country faces and lead America — indeed, the world — to new heights of glory,” Trump told his closing rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The former president also picked up a last minute celebrity endorsement of his own in the form of Joe Rogan, who threw his support behind Trump as he released an episode of his podcast featuring Elon Musk.
Both campaigns are making their final pushes to get prospective voters out to the polls.
The Democratic National Convention (DNC) says it is launching an election day persuasion campaign urging people to vote.
It includes more than 100 new billboards in battleground states, including 34 in Pennsylvania and 32 in Nevada, and 300 digital kiosks targeting college campuses in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
In Pennsylvania, voters will see the ads in more than 1,700 convenience stores.
Our columnist Larry Donnelly, writing his final pre-election piece for us at the weekend, took a look at some of the possible scenarios we might see developing overnight and in the coming days.
“It seems to me that the following are three eminently plausible scenarios. First is that Harris vs Trump does turn out to be as tight as is widely forecast. Accordingly, little is established definitively on 6 November; recounts are required in multiple of the key states; lawyers affiliated to the two parties dig in for courtroom jousts; and the threat of civil unrest regrettably looms.
“Second is that the polls are incorrect – perhaps just slightly – and it breaks narrowly, though conclusively in the Electoral College, for Trump. Third is the same, except that it goes in the opposite direction, for Harris. In these latter two, the winner will be identified relatively quickly. When I write here on Wednesday, the picture will be somewhat or a lot clearer.
“I have to repeat my prior admonition that making predictions in this unprecedented race is a fool’s errand. God only knows how events will unfold. And I have to reiterate another warning as the finish line approaches that I’ve issued on more than one occasion: Buckle up, for the final time, because this wild ride isn’t over yet.”
You can read Larry’s full column here.
Here are some photos from Dixville Notch, the first town to cast their vote on election day.
The ballots only took 12 minutes to count, with Donald Trump and Kamala Harris earning three votes each.
There are just six registered voters in the tiny New Hampshire town, which has had the honour of launching the US election day since 1960.
It’s coming up to 2pm now in Ireland. In the US, that’s nearly 9am on the east coast; most eastern and central states have opened up their polls.
It’ll be another hour until California and Idaho start voting, with Washington and Alaska still two hours away. By Irish time, it won’t be until 5pm this evening when Hawaii starts voting that polling will officially be underway across the entire US.
From Dublin, good afternoon. It’s Lauren Boland here with you now for the next couple of hours. We’ll be liveblogging throughout the day and into the night to bring you all the important updates on the American election.
JD Vance: Trump’s running mate JD Vance, who would serve as vice president if Trump is elected, is casting his vote right now in his home state of Ohio.
Ohio is known for usually voting for the winning candidate – it backed Obama in 2008 and 2012 and Trump in 2016, and so on and so forth in nearly every previous presidential race. Its 2020 result, however, was an outlier; Trump took 53.18% of Ohio’s votes but the country overall ultimately favoured Joe Biden.
LIVE: Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance votes in Ohio https://t.co/HL4H3GHU1w
— Reuters (@Reuters) November 5, 2024
Early voting: A feature of US voting that we’re not accustomed to in Ireland is early voting.
Through postal votes and early-voting stations, nearly one-third of voters had already turned in their ballots before today – more than 80 million people.
The New York Times has tracked the percentage of early votes in each state. North Carolina, Florida, Arkansas and Georgia saw the highest share of registered voters cast their ballot early. Two of those – North Carolina and Georgia - are battleground states that both swung narrowly to Biden in 2020.
Speaking outside a voting station in Cinncinati, Ohio in the last few minutes, Trump’s running mate JD Vance has said: “We do expect to win but no matter who wins, half the country is going to be at least partially disappointed.”
“My attitude is that the best way to heal the rift in the country is to try to govern the country as well as we can, create as much prosperity as we can for the American people, and remind our fellow Americans that we all fundamentally on the same team however we voted,” Vance said.
Vance cast his vote in his home state of Ohio before leaving to travel to Florida, where the Trump campaign is basing itself for its viewing of the results.
'If you vote the wrong way, I'm still going to love you.'
— Sky News (@SkyNews) November 5, 2024
Donald Trump's running mate JD Vance answers questions in Cincinnati after casting his ballot and urges people to 'be kind and treat each other with respect, regardless who we vote for.'https://t.co/tdUR4EYvcV pic.twitter.com/NLcmb2IxLg
Campaign portraits: On election day, here’s a snapshot of how the Harris and Trump campaigns are using their websites to try to pull in as many votes and contributions as they can:
Pictured: Newspapers in Paris, France this morning lead with headlines about the election in ‘Les États-Unis’.
Swing states:
Polls are now open in California and Idaho. That mean voting is underway in nearly all 50 states – but analysts have their eyes trained on just seven swing states that will likely decide the election.
Some of the country’s states are firmly red or blue, but certain others teeter in the middle, tipping to one side or the other in different election cycles.
The seven battleground states of this election are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
You can read more about the significance of the swing states here on The Journal.
Here’s a map from 270ToWin.org that shows which states are likely to vote Democrat, which are likely to vote Republican, and ‘toss-up’ states).
(Most analysis includes Arizona as a swing state, but this one puts it as leaning towards Republicans as of yesterday.)
Ireland’s Harris: Speaking to media today, Taoiseach Simon Harris said that he has “very strong views on the US presidential election” and “personal views” about the outcome he would like to see but hastened to add that he is “very conscious not to interfere in an election in another country”.
“It’s entirely a matter for people in the United States. I wish the candidates well,” he said.
This will be a consequential election no matter who sits in the Oval Office. There’s no doubt about that.
“Ireland has shown an ability to work with administrations of all political backgrounds over the years and of course we’ll continue to do that, whoever wins the election,” the Taoiseach said.
Video: A queue of voters moving slowly but surely outside a polling station in Salem, New Hampshire.
That’s it from myself, Lauren, for now – handing you over to my colleague Muiris Ó Cearbhaill.
Howdy!
It’s Muiris Ó Cearbhaill here taking you through the latest on this US polling day.
Voters in Birmingham, Alabama are queing in the rain this morning as lines get longer around the country.
Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has told reporters at a press conference that lines are moving very quickly in his state and that all is going well.
The state was targeted by Donald Trump in 2020 after it swung towards the Democratic party.
Trump had falsely claimed that there was widespread voter fraud in the state.
Asked how prepared the state officials are for this year’s ballot, Raffensperger said: “We’re battle-tested … we’ll make sure to follow along and report the results accurately.”
ABC News is reporting that Donald Trump is likely to call the election in his favour sometime this evening – regardless of how the results are looking.
The Republican candidate on Sunday said that he wanted the result of the election to be announced by 9pm EST, before polls on the West Coast close.
Depending on how close the races are – particularly in the seven swing states – either candidate might call themselves the winner if they win the key battleground states if they believe their lead is strong enough.
However, the process to count postal votes in states Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin could take days to complete – meaning the media and political world’s attention could be turned to just a handful of regional polling stations for a few days.
Separately, Vox has article here about how American news organisations call the winner of elections. You’ll likely to hear a lot about these various ‘calls’ over the next 24-30 hours, so read up now before it’s too late!
Donald Trump has just cast his vote in West Palm Beach, Florida.
The former president is speaking to reporters at the polling station. We’ll have more on his comments shortly.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, in the remote Indian hamlet of Tamil Nadu, people have been praying for a Harris victory.
The community is the ancestral village of Kamala Harris in India.
“People are waiting anxiously for the result. We will perform a few rituals and burn firecrackers if she wins,” N Krishnamurthi, who we’ve been told has become something of an authority on Harris in recent years, told The Journal’s Ayushmaan Pandey today.
The community there is rooting for her victory, he said. Large posters and banners featuring her image have been hung across the village.
The tiny village gained attention after Harris became the Vice President of the US in 2020. Her maternal grandfather, PV Gopalan, was born here in 1911 and Harris visited as a child.
Harris’s mother, Shayamala, was one of Gopalan’s four children who moved to the US when she was 19 to study at Berkeley. She met Harris’s father Donal Harris, an immigrant from Jamaica, and Kamala was born to the couple in 1964.
Gopalan Balachandran, Harris’s 80-year-old uncle, also spoke to The Journal today. He is currently in Mexico but said he’s keeping a close eye on the polls – you can read an interview with him carried out earlier this year here.
Speaking as he cast his vote a few minutes ago, Trump said he feels confident about winning back the White House.
“I feel very confident,” he told reporters, adding he believes he “ran a great campaign”.
Speaking after casting his vote, Trump said he would be prepared to concede defeat “if it’s a fair election”, while again raising concerns about the use of electronic voting machines.
“If I lose an election, if it’s a fair election, I would be the first one to acknowledge it… So far I think it’s been fair,” Trump told reporters after voting in Florida.
He reiterated previous criticism of electronic voting machines, suggesting they were less secure than paper ballots and would delay the outcome being known.
“They spend all this money on machines… If they would use paper ballots, voter ID, proof of citizenship, and one-day voting, it would all be over by 10 o’clock in the evening. It’s crazy,” he told reporters in West Palm Beach.
He added: “Do you know that paper is more sophisticated now than computers? If it’s watermarked paper you cannot… It’s unbelievable what happens with it. There’s nothing you can do to cheat.”
Asked about fears of unrest after the election and whether he would call on supporters to avoid violence, he criticized the question.
“I don’t have to tell them that, that there’ll be no violence. Of course there’ll be no violence. My supporters are not violent people,” Trump said.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has said the bomb threats which were made against multiple polling places this morning were “non-credible”.
He added that the threats, which briefly disrupted voting at two Georgia polling places, originated from Russia.
“We identified the source; it was from Russia,” he said.
Kamala Harris’s running mate Tim Walz has been meeting voters in Pennsylvania and before boarding a plane to Washington DC, he said: “We’re feeling good about this”.
The Minnesota governor added that the US has the “freest, most secure elections”.
He noted however that it may take some time to get results.
In the past half hour, the US Capitol police in Washington DC said its officers arrested a man who was “stopped during our screening process at the Capitol Visitor Center (CVC)”.
In a post on X, the US Capitol police said: “The man smelled like fuel, had a torch and a flare gun.
“The CVC is closed for tours for the day, while we investigate. We will provide more information when we can.”
The FBI has said it is “aware of bomb threats to polling locations in several states”.
It added that many of these threats “appear to originate from Russian email domains” and that “none of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far”.
“Election integrity is among the FBI’s highest priorities,” it said in a statement in the past 20 minutes.
“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.”
Good evening!
It’s Jane Matthews here, taking over the Liveblog for the next little while while my colleague Diarmuid gets some well-deserved sustenance.
Later tonight I will be heading out to a couple of watch parties that are taking place in Dublin to get a sense of how Americans in Ireland are feeling as the polls start to close.
We will be bringing you updates from that here, but in the meantime, for those of you who are planning on staying up for the long haul, here’s a reminder of some of the key timings for the night ahead.
Polls will begin closing at midnight Irish time in a handful of states, but the key one to watch here will be Georgia, one of the battleground states, where 16 electoral college votes are up for grabs.
Other battleground states will see their polls closing at the following Irish times:
12.30am – North Carolina
1am – Pennsylvania
2am – Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin
3am – Nevada
If you start winding down now you can get a pretty decent nap in before the excitement starts…
If you are planning on staying up, there is a *Donald Trump voice* huge amount of coverage to choose from.
There are the obvious American choices like CNN, Fox and MSNBC but RTÉ, BBC and Channel 4 all have interesting panels and reports planned too.
Channel 4 has what I am going to dub the most eclectic mix of guests lined up, with Stormy Daniels, Boris Johnson, Sean Spicer and (Succession star) Brian Cox all set to appear in studio throughout the night.
You can read a more comprehensive list of what is on offer here, helpfully compiled by Diarmuid yesterday.
Some tweets from Elon Musk, the billionaire Trump backer and owner of X (formerly Twitter), Tesla and Space X, that are worth noting:
The cavalry has arrived.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 5, 2024
Men are voting in record numbers.
They now realize everything is at stake.
A couple of hours ago he wrote: “The cavalry has arrived. Men are voting in record numbers. They now realize everything is at stake.”
An hour before that he retweeted another account that stated “men are showing up in huge numbers” to vote.
This is a massive sea change https://t.co/aACHYvTwqf
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 5, 2024
We have no exit polling data yet, so let’s wait and see what they say. CNN is expecting its first batch in about an hour.
The FBI has commented on “non credible bomb threats” of “Russian origin” and US Capitol police also arrested a man who has a flare gun at Capitol in Washington DC.
Maine police have now said they are aware of “swatting calls at schools” throughout the state “and the country”.
Swatting involves making a hoax call to the police with the intention of provoking an emergency response.
Many schools are being used to host polling stations and Maine State Police says there is “no threat to the public”.
Wall Street stocks rose today and bounced back from the prior session’s declines in a benign session held as voters go to the polls.
Forecasters have for weeks pointed to a neck-and-neck contest between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump.
“What the market is saying is that the economy has continued to hold up even in the face of all this uncertainty that we have,” said Victoria Fernandez, chief market strategist at Crossmark Global Investments, who pointed to a host of potentially market-moving policy areas affected by the results.
Dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters have staged a demonstration outside a US election event in Dublin.
Activists were protesting over the holding of a “watch party” for the early stages of the election results, which was being staged by the US embassy in Dublin at the Guinness Storehouse.
The event is being hosted by US Ambassador to Ireland Claire Cronin.
Activists partially disrupted passing traffic as a queue of taxis dropped off some of the expected attendees from the 1,000-long guest lists.
The demonstrators were raising concerns about the US state’s support of Israel during its ongoing war in Gaza and the expanding nature of the conflict in the Middle East.
Waving Palestinian flags and using megaphones, they chanted: “Genocide supports, shame on you.”
Mairead Maguire here, clocking in for the overnight shift. I’ll be with you for the next couple of hours, right up until polls start closing.
If you’re just joining us, here’s the latest.
We don’t have any exit poll numbers just yet and it’s set to be a nail-biting several hours, as we likely won’t have a good indication of who could win until late tomorrow morning, and even then it’s not certain.
Donald Trump is looking rather deflated down in Palm Beach, Florida, but taking questions from reporters. He has assured them that if things don’t go his way, he will accept defeat.
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris seems to be in high spirits, taking phone calls and chatting with supporters at her election headquarters in her alma mater Howard University, Washington D.C.
Here in Ireland, our reporter Jane Matthews is out at Dublin watch parties, one of which was crashed by dozens of pro-Palestine protestors. One demonstrator told The Journal that he was there to object to Irish support of the American Ambassador.
An NBC exit poll has laid out the issues at the forefront of voters’ minds. In first place it’s the “state of democracy” (35%), followed closely behind by the economy (31%). Unsurprisingly, abortion is also a hot topic, with 14% of those polled saying it was the most important issue for them when deciding who to vote for.
Trump was asked, given that he refused to accept his defeat in the last election, will he accept the result of this one.
He said people who think he won’t are “crazy”.
“If I lose an election, if it’s a fair election, I’d be the first one to acknowledge it.”
REPORTER: What do you say to people who think you won't concede the election?
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 5, 2024
TRUMP: I think they're crazy pic.twitter.com/TtYy8AteDx
Pennsylvania is arguably the most crucial of the swing states, holding the most Electoral College votes at 19.
Here’s a flavour of what voters there are saying.
This is interesting: NBC News has done an exit poll and found that the biggest issues that impacted on how people voted were democracy and the economy.
More than one third (35%) of voters said that democracy was the issue that mattered the most to them as they voted, followed by 31% who said the economy. Abortion was in third place (14%) followed by immigration (11%).
The results are preliminary – more interviews will be conducted over the course of the night, so these figures can shift, but they give a clear indication of what voters were thinking about as they cast their ballots.
Do these results benefit either candidate?
The exit poll found that roughly 75% of voters said they think democracy in the US is threatened, which suggests that Kamala Harris’s message that a second Trump presidency could imperil democracy in America has landed with voters. At the same time, one of Trump’s biggest messages in his campaign was that he would fix the economy after the Biden presidency, which also cut through.
So overall, the mood of voters is clearly pessimistic, with large numbers saying they’re dissatisfied and angry with the way things are going in the country. How does that translate to votes? We’ll know in just a few hours.
Trump said earlier he’d accept the results of the election if it was “fair”, but he’s already planting seeds of doubt about its legitimacy, posting on his social media platform Truth Social that there is “talk about massive CHEATING in Pennsylvania”.
PA is one of the most important swing states and, historically, candidates who don’t manage to secure those Electoral College votes struggle to win to get win the race.
However, the Philadelphia Police Department told CNN they were not aware what Trump was referring to and did not know of any issues with voting that required a law enforcement response.
— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) November 5, 2024
Our political correspondent Jane Matthews has an update from a watch party in Dublin, where it’s pints and politics:
Inside the Storehouse, you would have no idea that there was a protest against genocide taking place outside.
Approximately 1,000 guests, including government ministers, US and Irish diplomats and tv personalities, are spread across the venues five floors.
Guinness is (unsurprisingly) flowing and trays of hotdogs, burgers and corn seem to never be far from hand.
Multiple cardboard cut outs of the candidates are dotted around the venue for guests to take photos with, while on one floor a giant screen airing CNN dominates the room.
US Ambassador Claire Cronin is set to address the crowd shortly.
Former Taoiseach Simon Harris and Justice Minister Helen McEntee have been spotted among the guests.
We are just minutes out from polls beginning to close across America. Here are the key timings in GMT.
At midnight – just 10 minutes away – polls in Georgia (a swing state), Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Vermont, and Virginia will close.
Georgia is the one to watch, with 16 electoral college votes are up for grabs.
Other battleground states will see their polls close at the following Irish times:
12.30am – North Carolina
1am – Pennsylvania
2am – Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin
3am – Nevada
Others will follow throughout the early hours, while Alaska and Hawaii will be the last states to close polls – 5am Irish Time at the earliest.
It may be early days, but panels of pundits and personalities are already giving their analysis across TV channels.
There’s something about a US election that brings together strange assortments of people and, perhaps, forges new friendships..?
On Channel 4 this evening, Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels are meeting in person for the first time ever.
(Reminder: Cohen was sentenced for three years for paying Daniels hush money on behalf of his ex-boss.)
They are sitting beside Martin Luther King III, son of the civil rights leader. Yes, those words are all correct and in order.
Understandably, host Krishnan Guru-Murthy totally fluffs his first question after introductions.
“Let’s start with this sort of bizarre turnaround in… in events… I mean, um, Michael Cohen, where do you… where do you, eh…. sort of become friends again,” he asks, while pointing to the pair limply. Cohen helpfully cuts in to say they were never enemies in the first place.
That’s it, folks! Goodnight!
Only joking. But since polls have begun to close, we are wrapping up this liveblog.
Don’t worry though, we’ll still be bringing you live updates throughout the night on the latest figures and analysis, which you can find over on our fresh liveblog.
Thank you for joining us this evening! Please enjoy these sculptures of the candidates.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say