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      Donald Trump poised to win election after string of crucial swing state wins

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      After notching a string of wins in crucial swing states, Donald Trump was poised to return to the White House after a momentous presidential election in which democracy itself had been at stake and which is likely to take the United States into uncharted political waters.The Republican nominee took North Carolina surprisingly early, the first battleground state to be called, and later he took Georgia and then Pennsylvania. He was strongly positioned in Arizona and Nevada, other key contests.The race between Trump, a former president, and the current Democratic vice-president, Kamala Harris, had been a frenetic contest and it finally approached its conclusion amid scenes of celebration in the Trump camp.At 1.20am, at Trump’s election watch party in Palm Beach, Florida, a prolonged, almighty roar went up as Fox News had called Pennsylvania for Trump. “It’s over!” screamed one man, amid the noise, at what felt like the point of no return. A young man in a black Trump hat shouted: “Fuck Joe Biden! Fuck her!”The euphoric crowd chanted: “USA! USA!” They gathered near the stage, waiting for Trump to speak.At 1.47am, Fox named Trump president-elect, though the Associated Press – which the Guardian follows – has not yet put Trump over the finish line.The man who incited the deadly attack at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, earning (and surviving) a second impeachment; the man who was this year convicted on 34 criminal charges; the man who faces multiple other criminal counts and who has been ordered to pay millions in multiple civil lawsuits, including one over a rape claim a judge deemed “substantially true”. The man at the centre of all of that whom senior military aides called a fascist and a danger to the republic was preparing to head for the White House again.Eventually, past 2am, Trump emerged to speak, to the strains of God Bless the USA, the Lee Greenwood country anthem plastered on Bibles that Trump hawks for sale. Trump was surrounded by his family, by close aides, and by JD Vance, the hard-right Ohio senator he made his vice-presidential pick.“This is a movement like nobody’s ever seen before,” Trump said. “This is I believe the greatest political movement of all time. There’s never been anything like this in this country and now it’s going to reach a new level of importance, because we’re going to help our country heal.View image in fullscreen“We’re going to fix our borders. We’re going to fix everything about our country … I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe and prosperous America that our children deserve, this will truly be the golden age of America.”Trump reveled in battleground state victories and said he would win them all. He claimed to have won the popular vote, which had not yet been decided. He described “a great feeling of love” and claimed “an unprecedented and powerful mandate”, celebrating Republicans retaking the Senate. He said it looked like Republicans would keep control of the House of Representatives – again, undecided at that point.Trump saluted his wife, Melania, his family, and Vance, who he invited to the podium to speak. Vance buttered up the boss, promising “the greatest economic comeback in American history under Donald Trump’s leadership”.Trump referred to the assassination attempts against him. “God spared me for a reason,” he said.At Harris’s watch party, at Howard University in Washington, the mood became somber, as hopes Harris could become the first president from a Historically Black College and University began to flicker and dim. Around 1am, Cedric Richmond, a former congressman and Harris campaign co-chair, told supporters they would not hear from Harris.“Thank you for believing in the promise of America,” Richmond said. “We still have votes to count. We still have states that have not been called yet. We will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken.”Attendees rushed out, the mood swinging to despair. Eight years after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in a similar fashion, few attendees seemed surprised or shocked. Many declined to comment. “What more is there to say,” one woman shrugged as she shuffled out.Strewn water bottles and other litter were all that was left after the crowd was gone.Before 1am, the Republicans had retaken the Senate. A West Virginia seat went red as expected but the die was cast when Sherrod Brown, a long-serving progressive Democrat, was beaten in Ohio by Bernie Moreno, a car salesperson backed by Trump. Democrats had held the chamber 51-49. Other key races went right. In Maryland, Angela Alsobrooks provided a point of light for Democrats, joining Lisa Blunt Rochester, of Delaware, as the third and fourth Black women ever elected to the Senate.The House remained contested, Democrats seeking to retake the chamber, to erect a bastion against a Republican White House and Senate. The House can hold a president to account but the Senate controls federal judicial appointments. Further rightwing consolidation of control of the supreme court, to which Trump appointed three hardliners between 2017 and 2021, looms large.In June 2022, that Trump court removed the federal right to abortion. Campaigns for reproductive rights fueled Democratic electoral successes after that but on Tuesday such issues seemed to fall short of fueling the wave of support from suburban, Republican-leaning women Democrats had hoped for and pundits predicted.A measure to enshrine abortion rights in the Florida constitution, which Democrats hoped would help boost turnout, fell short of the 60% needed for approval. Nebraska, won by Trump, voted to uphold its abortion ban, which outlaws the procedure after 12 weeks of pregnancy. Abortion-related measures did pass in New York, Maryland, Colorado, Missouri, Nevada and Arizona.A huge gender gap opened. A CNN exit poll showed Harris up by 11 points among female voters, Trump up 10 among male voters. Other polls showed dominant concerns over the economy and democracy. According to the AP Votecast survey, four in 10 voters named the economy and jobs as the most important problem facing the country, a hopeful sign for Trump. Roughly half of voters cited the fate of democracy, a focal point of Harris’s campaign.Wednesday will bring jitters in foreign capitals. Victory for Trump’s “America first” ethos can be expected to boost rightwing populists in Europe and elsewhere – and to place support for Ukraine in jeopardy as it fights Russian invaders.At home, America lies divided. Harris centered her campaign on Trump’s autocratic threat while he ran a campaign fuelled by grievance, both personal and the perception of an ailing America, baselessly painting Biden and Harris as far-left figures wrecking the economy with inflation and identity politics. Though he was the subject of two assassination attempts, in Pennsylvania and Florida, he stoked huge divisions and widespread fears of violence.Trump told supporters “I am your retribution” and threatened to prosecute political foes, journalists and others. He suggested turning the US military against “the enemy from within”. He put immigration and border security at the heart of his pitch, painting a picture of the US overrun by illegal immigration, with language that veered into outright racism and fearmongering. He referred to undocumented people as “animals” with “bad genes … poisoning the blood of our country”.He vowed to stage the biggest deportation in US history, to replace thousands of federal workers with loyalists, to impose sweeping tariffs on allies and foes alike.On election night, he said he would govern “by a simple motto: Promises made. Promises kept. We’re going to keep our promises. Nothing will stop me.”Additional reporting by Sam Levine in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Hugo Lowell in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Asia Alexander in Washington DCRead more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      A polarized America goes to the polls: ‘I’m in a house divided’

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      America had previously always been “somebody else’s country,” said Christopher La Rose, a health researcher, as he waited just before 7am in Pine Lake, a village that’s too small for postal delivery just outside of Atlanta, Georgia.But that changed recently for La Rose, who is of Guyanese descent, when he became an American citizen. He had the jitters on Monday night, before using his first-ever vote in a US election to back Kamala Harris.View image in fullscreen“I am sincerely concerned about the way that the country could devolve if the other chap got into office,” La Rose said. “I’m concerned about the political party that has coalesced around him, and how they have, in my mind, lost their way, and I’m voting to protect my kids.”Georgia is one of the seven swing states where election results are close enough to fight over and voters in all of those states say they definitely feel fought over.At a busy polling place in Scottsdale, Arizona, the conservative youth organization Turning Point brought out a bright pink party bus adorned with “Trump train” signs, which they will use to take voters to other Scottsdale polling places if the lines become too long. The group also put up signs imploring voters to stay put: “stay in line, don’t leave your country behind,” one sign said.View image in fullscreenA 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.Musk’s controversial effort to drive turnout is late to the race. In many swing states, most people who are going to vote have already done so. More than 80 million people cast ballots before election day across the country, with 4 million in Georgia alone – 80% of Georgia’s 2020 vote total.Georgia’s in-person votes will be counted and announced about an hour after polls close at 7pmlocal time, elections officials said last week. Georgia officials have meticulously tried to avoid giving election integrity denialists something to wrap a grievance around this year. The election interference attempts of 2020 still resonate.View image in fullscreenGabriel Sterling, election operations chief for Georgia’s secretary of state, at midday on Tuesday that all polling locations were working smoothly, with an average wait – if there is a wait – of two minutes and an average check-in time of 49 seconds.Cyndi Keen, a lifelong Republican, voted a straight Republican ticket on Tuesday. “When it comes down to looking at having a better life for my children, for my grandkids and for myself, I like the Republican policies better,” she said. She thought the results will be close – and her household had voted for different candidates. “I’m in a house divided, my sweetie went the other way. He’s straight Republican but he voted for Harris.”View image in fullscreenCathy Garcia, an activist with the Working Families party from Santa Fe, New Mexico, flew to Atlanta this week. Tuesday morning with eight hours to go, she was beating on doors in Atlanta’s south-eastern suburbs, looking to put the last voter in line. She was accompanied by a far-flung team visiting from safe Democratic states – Massachusetts, California, New York – putting in work where it might count the most.They wrestled with the cellphone app showing them where to find clusters of registered voters who had not yet voted. The apartment complex in south DeKalb county gave them some density to work with, but low-income people tend to be more transient … and less likely to be at home in the middle of the day.Their effort demonstrates the effort the campaigns are making to get every last voter they can to a poll.Kamala Harris was spending the day on Tuesday at the Naval Observatory, the vice-president’s residence in Washington. The public is not expected to see the Democratic nominee until Tuesday night, where she is poised to deliver remarks at Howard University, her alma mater, in Washington DC. But she has been blitzing radio stations with calls across the country in a last-effort push for votes.Trump has ratcheted up outrage in the waning days of the election, wrapping himself and Republican voters in the politics of extreme grievance over descriptions of himself and his supporters as “garbage”, Nazis and fascists. And yet, his comments at rallies have included increasingly strident attacks on undocumented people, who he has called “animals” and “monsters”, and personal attacks on Harris.Trump partisans have cheered him on and adopted his tone.“He’s a big daddy. He’ll smack you if you’re an asshole,” said Joanne Kelchner, 77, a retiree from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, who voted for Trump had harsh words for Harris. “Why is she not proud of her Brahmin heritage?” Kelchner asked. “I mean the elite class of India and pretending that she’s not Black, whatever … God bless us all.”View image in fullscreenBut partisan rancor abounds.“Donald Trump is crazy. I mean, he’s a lunatic and the people I think that vote for him are lunatics because he is crazy,” said Jeannie Strickland, a retiree from Georgia. “He’s trying to get people revved up to fight for him. I think if they put his butt in jail, like they should have done at least two years ago, it might calm him down a little bit, but they don’t do anything to him. I’m scared he’s going to win, and I might have to find an island somewhere and go live somewhere else, because he likes Hitler, and he liked the things Hitler did.”View image in fullscreenBoth sides have armies of lawyers in anticipation of legal challenges on and after election day. And law enforcement agencies nationwide are on high alert for potential violence.Tensions briefly flared outside a polling site in a library in downtown Phoenix, where a group of men decked out in American flag T-shirts had gathered to wave “Union Yes for Harris Walz” signs. As another man in a truck drove past, he hollered at the men: “Fuck you!”Angel Torres Pina, a 21-year-old who serves in the military and who voted for the first time on Tuesday, wanted politics to become less divisive and fear-based. He was somewhat nervous about voting at the library at all. “Am I making the right decisions? Am I making the wrong decisions? Are people gonna bad-talk about me because I voted for what I believe in?” said Torres Pina, an independent who voted for Harris. “I keep seeing on the news about these riots, these protests, these chaos, and it makes me a bit scared for if I’m voting right or wrong.”While many Americans have described how stressful this election is, Dawn Alter, a 50-year-old sales representative from New Berlin, Wisconsin, was in good spirits on Tuesday morning. Alter was supporting Harris, and thought the vice-president stood a chance in Wisconsin – a key swing state.Alter believes Trump has shed support here since 2020, and viewed herself as evidence: she abandoned Trump after supporting the former president in 2020, saying she was tired of the division and “negativity” he has sowed.“It’s a lot of discord, there’s too much misinformation,” said Alter. “There needs to be change and unity – I think those are the two biggest things for me.”In 2016, Wisconsin voters elected Donald Trump by less than a percentage point, and in 2020, the state flipped for Joe Biden by a similarly narrow margin. Polling suggests the presidential race in Wisconsin is essentially a toss-up, and voters were acutely aware of the uncertainty they face.View image in fullscreenMatt Steigerwald, a college lecturer from Wisconsin, said he was “cautiously optimistic”, adding: “Wisconsin is probably going to be pretty tight.” Steigerwald, who joked that he was a “bleeding-heart liberal”, said that even as a left-of-center voter, he found Trump “especially abhorrent”.“I just don’t know how you can support somebody who’s said and done so many awful things, who treats women so poorly, who treats people of different races so poorly – he’s just an awful human being from my perspective,” said Steigerwald. Additional reporting by Carter Sherman, Alice Herman, Sam Levine and Rachael LeingangRead more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      Red or blue? The bellwether counties that could swing the US election

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      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 in effect 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.Maricopa county, ArizonaIn 2020, Joe Biden beat Trump in Arizona by a mere 10,000 votes. Biden’s victory was bolstered by voters in Maricopa county, which encompasses the Phoenix metro area.View image in fullscreenFour years ago, Maricopa comprised more than 60% of Arizona ballots. Biden won Maricopa by 45,000 votes – with 50.3% of voters casting their ballots for him – underscoring just how important this county is. The Associated Press explained the importance of this: “In states where voters are so overwhelmingly concentrated in a single county, even a narrow win can produce big shifts in the statewide numbers.”Also worth pointing out: Maricopa has large proportion of demographics both campaigns have courted aggressively, such as centrist suburban Republicans, Latino voters, and senior citizens, per US News & World Report.Miami-Dade county, FloridaThe Sunshine state has taken a sharp right turn in recent election cycles. Trump boasts almost a double-digit advantage over Harris. Florida, once a purplish swing state, is bright red.Analysts are keeping an eye on Miami-Dade county, which includes Miami and many surrounding communities. Long a Democratic stronghold, with Hillary Clinton winning the county by a 30-point margin in 2016, it has since moved right.View image in fullscreenBiden beat Trump by seven points in 2020. But, the state’s most populous county is expected to post results “relatively early” after polls close at 7pm, Reuters notes.Some analysts believe Miami-Dade could foreshadow Harris’s overall results. If she underperforms, especially among Latinos, this could bode poorly for her overall, the news outlet said.Metro Atlanta counties in GeorgiaThe Atlanta, Georgia, metropolitan area is considered by virtually every analyst as integral to deciding this swing state. Some have focused on Forsyth county, located 40 miles from Atlanta, as the decisive county, while others have insisted that a collection of suburban and exurban counties will determine the race.In addition to Forsyth, analysts have pointed to Cobb, Gwinnett, and DeKalb counties as potentially decisive. Of course, Fulton county, which encompasses Atlanta, is seen as key.View image in fullscreenOn a recent episode of Pod Save America, NBC’s election expert Steve Kornacki noted that nine counties, which he referred to as the “blue blob”, comprised more than 40% of Georgia’s vote. This region “is just getting bluer and bluer every election”.Kornacki said this race could indicate whether it’s expanding.“There’s one county in that area, it’s been moving dramatically towards Democrats but just missed – Fayette county – the last time around,” he said. “If the Democrats are flipping that this time around and expanding that blob, I think that’s a sign, because that’s talking about enthusiasm in the suburbs.”Saginaw county, MichiganLocated in the Great Lakes Bay Region of Michigan, Saginaw county is considered the pre-eminent swing county in the most decisive swing state. There are multiple reasons for this, among them Saginaw’s voting record.Barack Obama landed Saginaw in 2008 and 2012. In 2016, Trump bested Hillary Clinton by just over 1,000 votes. The margin thinned still more in 2020, when Biden won by a mere 303 ballots.View image in fullscreenBiden’s 2020 win in Saginaw, however, was complicated by Trump’s votes actually increasing in that county. His loss was also attributed to Democrats who didn’t vote in 2016 but decided in 2020 to boot Trump out.Harris could need the same voter turnout in Saginaw to win. The outcome of this county could well reflect national trends, as voters’ concerns there echo that of those in other crucial contests.Clark county, NevadaBiden beat Trump by just three points in Nevada’s 2020 presidential race. Clark county, which is home to Las Vegas, has approximately 50% of Nevada’s population.If Trump wants to win Nevada, he would have to sap Democratic votes in Clark county, Reuters explains. Observers are also paying attention to Washoe county; this is Nevada’s second-largest population center, containing the city of Reno.Similar to Las Vegas, Trump would have to chip away at Democratic margins in the Reno area as well. As a testament to the tension surrounding Washoe, observers from both sides of the aisle have been closely monitoring the count following recent controversies over voting there.The Republican county commissioners recently voted against certifying results in this year’s primary, prompting legal action, before they reversed course. The elections office, meanwhile, has been answering an onslaught of questions and public information requests, in an effort to allay the public’s concerns about the election.While Democrats have won every presidential vote in Nevada since 2008, economic stressors – such as increased prices and decreased affordable housing – have spurred questions about working-class voters’ leanings.Mecklenburg county, North CarolinaRepublicans have won every presidential election in North Carolina since Obama’s run in 2008. Reuters notes that tight polling has turned North Carolina into a swing state this year.Mecklenberg county, which includes Charlotte, is strongly Democratic. Analysts are also eyeing adjacent Cabarrus county: Trump beat Biden there in 2020, but his lead slimmed by 10 points compared to 2016, Reuters noted.Wake county, which contains the highly educated city of Raleigh, is similarly drawing attention. This higher-than-average income county once skewed Republican but has favored Democratic presidential candidates since 2008 “by generally increasing margins”, US News & World Report notes.Erie county, PennsylvaniaErie county, which contains the city of Erie, has been described as “a bellwether area in a bellwether state”. Per US News, “No county in Pennsylvania – and possibly in the country – is as consistently swingy as Erie county.”Indeed, Trump won the working-class county in 2016, followed by a slim Biden win there in 2020. Some analysts are also paying attention to Lackawanna county.Scranton, Pennsylvania – Biden’s birthplace – is in this county. Unlike Erie county, Lackawanna has become more Republican of late. If Trump performs well in Lackawanna, it could spell broader success for him across this pivotal state.Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      Here is what my final polling data says about the US presidential election | John Zogby

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      The final six public polls that have been released pretty much tell the same story as each other and the previous polls in October. The race to become the 47th president of the United States is on a razor-thin margin. Three of those last six polls were actual 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.Harris’s lead in the John Zogby Strategies poll is within the margin-of-sampling error, but it reveals some dynamics that portend changing demographic support for both the Democratic and Republican parties. These are some findings and possible trend lines that not only explain what may happen once the votes are counted, but also suggest possibly significant realignments within both parties.For one, Harris appears to have underperformed with 18- to 29-year-olds nationally; in contrast Trump is leading among them, capturing 47% of the vote, while Harris polls at 45%. Ironically, in our poll, she did best among those over 65 with a 58%-39% margin. Those age cohorts usually produce opposite results, with older voters tending to be more conservative. The gen Z and millennial voters also revealed a huge “gender gap” of well over 60 points between men and women.There is also a substantial “marriage gap”: Trump won married voters by four points – not as big as in 2020 (seven points), but Harris won among non-married people by eight points (51%-43%), not as much as Joe Biden’s 18-point victory, but still enough to see that marital status is a key to how people vote. Notably, married women, who usually tend to be on the conservative side, chose Harris in our poll.Harris leads among voters who identify as independents by 13 points (51% of independents polled say they will vote for her, compared with just 38% saying they will vote for Trump), about the same as Biden, who received 54% of independent votes, compared with Trump getting 41% of their vote in 2020.The candidates chose messages and styles that aimed at different groups of voters. Trump stayed with his dark and isolationist theme, focusing on rallying his base first, then hoping to pick up more moderate independents who feel that the Biden-Harris team have led the US down the wrong path. Harris opted for directing her campaign with an appeal to those who were tired of Trump’s negativity and, at times, bizarre behavior. Her approach appears to have paid off, as she leads with 56% of self-described moderate voters. That puts her 19 points ahead with moderates than Trump, who polls at 37. This was a group that Biden won by 30 points last time.Harris did, as was suggested throughout the year’s polling, underperform in our poll among Black voters (73% said they would vote for her, and 19% said Trump) and Hispanic voters (Trump polls at 48% with Hispanic voters, Harris at 44%), but she is doing much better among white voters – down by only five (she polls at 46% and Trump polls at 51%), compared with Trump’s 17-point victory in 2020, where 58% voted for him and 41% voted for Biden.Harris is down considerably among Catholics (43% back her, compared with 55% backing Trump) and Protestants (36% back her, compared with 59% backing Trump), but scores well among those with no religious affiliation and with atheists. Democrats have been getting 30% or so of born-again evangelical voters in recent elections, but Harris only shows 24% in our poll.Harris not only leads in cities (53% of city-dwellers back her, compared with 43% backing Trump) but also in the suburbs (she was backed by 50% of the suburban voters polled, compared with 44% backing Trump) – the latter powered by a solid performance among suburban women. Biden won both in 2020: he won 60% of votes in cities (while Trump only got 38% of the vote in cities), but barely scraped by in suburbs, where only 50% voted for him, compared with 48% voting for Trump.There is a wide “education gap” in US politics. Harris has the backing of 57% of those with college degrees, compared with 39% for Trump. In 2020, Biden won the same group by 12 points (he received 55% of their vote, while Trump received 43%). Trump leads among those without degrees (50% of voters without college degrees back him, compared with 44% backing Harris). That was 50% for Biden and 48% for Trump last time.The gender gap propels Harris’s lead, with 49% of Trump voters being men versus 43% of Harris voters being men. (In 2020, 45% of Trump voters were men, while 53% of Biden voters were men.) Women back Harris by 12 points, with 55% of women supporting her to 43% supporting Trump (Biden won 57% of women, while Trump only received 42% of the women’s vote). There is in our poll an 18-point gender point gap.All of these “gaps” suggest a very real issues gap between Harris and Trump supporters. For those selecting Harris, the top issues are abortion (45%), the economy/Inflation (39%), democracy (37%) and climate change (19%). For those backing Trump, the top are the economy/inflation (68%), immigration (61%), keeping the US out of war (15%) and crime (14%). Two different worlds.Some key states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, both hotly contested, will not finish counting ballots until later in the week, and other states likely to be very close will have automatic recounts. It is not likely that we will know who won for a while. Our poll is thus far the only one that polled through Sunday 3 November; we left the lights on longer to try to capture late-breaking trends.

      John Zogby is senior partner at the polling firm of John Zogby Strategies and is author of Beyond the Horse Race: How to Read the Polls and Why We Should More