Live BlogLAST UPDATE | 11 mins 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.
Election Day polling stations have now opened on the US east coast, kicking off the final opportunity for Americans to cast their ballot.
More than 82 million people have already taken advantage of early voting.
The final opinion polls showed Democratic vice president Kamala Harris and Republican ex-president Donald Trump dead-even.
We’ll be staying on top of all the developments across the day and right through the night.
Who knows, we might even know the result by this time tomorrow? (Perhaps not. It’s complicated).
Updates from Lauren Boland (now), Daragh Brophy and Sadbh Cox (earlier)
'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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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