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      Today is a day of despair for America. We are plunged into an anticipatory grief | Moira Donegan

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      Today is a day of despair, and it would be futile to tell those who fear and grieve for what is to come in America that they will be OK. It would also be dishonest: many of us, in truth, will not be OK.Donald Trump appears to have decisively won the American election. He and his Republican allies have promised mass deportations that will ruin lives and sunder families; they have threatened to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and appoint the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy Jr to a position of authority on public health. They have pledged vast cuts to social security and Medicare, the persecution of dissidents and violent suppression of Trump’s political enemies. There will almost certainly be a nationwide abortion ban and this will further degrade women’s citizenship, rob them of their dignity, steal their dreams and ruin their health.For those of us aware of what Trump is capable of, this morning has plunged us into a cold kind of anticipatory grief. There are people in America who are reading the news with worry, who are bracing themselves for crackdowns and unrest, and who will, inevitably, be confirmed in their anxiety; who will discover that they have even more to fear from the coming administration than they now know. I’m thinking of all the ordinary Americans who are alive now, thriving or struggling in this declining country, who will have their lives destroyed or cut short by what is coming.For many, Trump’s victory will remind them of nothing so much as his 2016 upset over Hillary Clinton. Once again, his vulgarity, corruption, pettiness, narcissism and bigotry have been rewarded, at our expense; once again, the nation will be plunged into chaos as his vanity, greed, incompetence and anger take precedence over the national interest; once again, a violently and grossly misogynist man has been elevated to a position of superlative power over a flawed but competent, hardworking woman.But 2024 is not 2016. It is worse. In his first term, Trump’s incompetence was often an impediment to the worst of his agenda; no longer. Institutions, both in the government and in civil society, worked to slow or resist his program; now, many of them seem all too willing to participate, with universities and NGOs eager to launder Trumpism into respectability and the billionaire-controlled media eager to cut deals, suppress unfavorable coverage and minimize his misdeeds. And if in his first term Trump’s impulses were sometimes mitigated by moderates and institutionalists in his administration, by now those people have all been purged. He is surrounded by incels, bigots, conspiracists and sadists, and they are much better prepared to use the organs of the state to pursue their hateful aims. Trump himself even has the promise of broad criminal immunity, a recent gift from the supreme court that will enable his authoritarianisms in ways we cannot yet anticipate.But Trump’s victory, and his return to the White House, will not only be a catastrophe because of what they will mean for America’s future. They are also a horror for what they will do to our past. The last eight years, four under Trump’s governance and four under what American politics has become due to his influence, have prompted tremendous struggle and suffering. The groups he disparages – from immigrants, to women, to disabled people, to those from “shithole countries” – will be humiliated again by his return and betrayed by the countrymen who refused to vindicate their dignity with a vote against him. The people who have been harassed and threatened and attacked by his supporters have now seen their countrymen treat the violence that has been done to them with what they will read as indifference at best, and approval at worst.The historically marginalized among us – those who are Black, or trans, or female – have struggled to make their worthiness and citizenship meaningful in spite of the hatred and hierarchy that Trump has championed. This was the aim of the Women’s Marches, of #MeToo, of Black Lives Matter, which were in part rebukes to Trumpism, and symptoms of the desire for a different America, one that is less cruel to its citizens and more worthy of its stated ideals of liberty and justice for all. They dreamed of turning this country into a free nation of equals; instead, they must now settle for the smaller dream of keeping themselves safe from the worst of what is to come. Trump’s return to the presidency makes these bygone years of activism seem, in retrospect, like a humiliating exercise in futility.Does America deserve Trump? In the years since he rose to power, one theory posits that he is merely the manifestation of the nation’s unexorcised demons – a vestige of the racism that allowed this country to build its economy off the backs of the enslaved, of the casual relationship to violence that allowed it to build its territory and its global hegemony through violent conquest and coercion, of the grubby love of money and shameless disregard for principle that have always motivated our rapacious economy. In this version of the story, Trump is not merely a morbid symptom, but something like America’s comeuppance, a punishment for our sins. Living under his rule takes on the grim appropriateness of one of those ironic punishments in the underworlds of classical mythology, or in the hell of Dante’s Inferno. It is a feature of this horror that those who suffer most under his rule are usually those who are least culpable for these trespasses. Because we never really atoned – not for slavery, not for empire, not for the slaughter and dispossession of Indigenous Americans or the war and exploitation of foreign countries – this is what we now must endure: a figure who brings these cruelties home and who mocks our self-flattering delusion that we ever were, ever could have been, anything else.And yet there remain so many Americans who hope for this country to be something else, if only because they will not survive it otherwise. In the coming days, those who tried to prevent this outcome will turn on one another. Liberals and leftists will point fingers; various Harris campaign staffers will be named responsible for failed strategies in this or that state; someone will make a racist bid to scapegoat Arab Americans and the Uncommitted movement; and many people, smug and insulated from the worst of what is to come, will say that the Democratic party spent too much time campaigning on abortion rights issues.There is plenty of blame to go around. But for the most part, this finger-pointing will be a distraction, a way of putting off the confrontation with what is coming. Instead, I hope that we can turn our attention to the most vulnerable among us: those Trump has antagonized and ridiculed, those who are less safe today than they hoped they might be yesterday. It is those targeted groups who need us, our solidarity and careful attention. In turning to them, we can keep alive in ourselves some small part of the America that Donald Trump seeks to destroy.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      The thought of a Trump presidency is eating me alive | Francine Prose

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      I’m neither the calmest nor the most anxious person. But as Donald Trump’s presidential victory seems more certain by the minute, I feel sick to my stomach with worry. I hoped to go to sleep on election night knowing Harris had won, and that we were safe. But that is not what was in store for us.The anxiety I’m feeling right now started months ago. During the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, my hair began falling out and one of my eyelids started twitching. Classic signs of stress, said a doctor friend. On Halloween, talking with a colleague, I realized that we looked and sounded the way people look and sound outside the intensive care unit, as they wait to learn whether a friend or relative will survive.The survival we were worried about was that of our democracy. Our flawed democracy, I should say. No one can pretend we live in a nation of equals, that there aren’t massive income and racial disparities. No one imagines the rich and poor have an equal say about who runs for office or makes decisions about healthcare and education. No one dreams that either presidential candidate will stop funding war in the Middle East.Regardless of who is funding our political campaigns, no one is going to run for office on a platform that proclaims: I promise the American people that I am going to fight to protect our precious oligarchy!So let’s call it democracy. Because the alternative is so much worse.We understand the alternative. We know what a dictatorship is. The millions killed by Hitler, the millions killed by Stalin. The Argentinean military dropping prisoners out of helicopters. The replacement of laws and rights with the whims of the dictator. The dehumanization of the other, the whipping up of the majority to see the minority as vermin, as vectors of “poisoned blood”. The normalization of violence as part of the political process. The mutual admiration of one dictator for another. The silencing of every voice except that of the dictator and his inner circle. The idea that the old couple next door, with their funny accents, raising their grandson, are criminals who must be arrested and dumped across the border. The delight in racist humor, that jolly dog-whistle of hatred.The imprisonment and execution of those who disagree with the government is one of the most common threats we’d heard during the campaign. Any system, even ours, could murder its Alexei Navalny. In Pittsburgh I met a writer, Abdelrahman ElGendy, who spent six years in prison for taking part in a demonstration against Egypt’s military government. And what if the dictator decides against birth control or equal rights for women? What if misogyny is so open and prevalent that a woman’s laughter is described as a witch’s cackle?And what if the dictator loses his mind – along with the nuclear code? What if the dictator surrounds himself with power-hungry sociopaths, as so many dictators have? What if the dictator decides that the sick and old, the infirm and poor are a drain on the economy?These are snowflake fears, I know, but buttressed by sturdy historical facts. The most eloquent account of the prelude to a dictatorship was written by Gabriel García Márquez, in an essay, Death of a President: The Last Days of Salvador Allende, published in Harper’s, in 1974.All you have to do is read about the rally at Madison Square Garden on 26 October 2024. A comedian told nasty jokes about Puerto Rico, the sex lives of Latinos, the cheapness of Jews, the sluttiness of powerful women. A prominent speaker said, “America is for Americans.” In 1939, 20,000 people attended the rally of the German American Bund, also in Madison Square Garden. One of those speakers said that if George Washington were alive, he would be friends with Adolf Hitler.Regardless who wins the 2024 election, the campaign has been a snapshot – however blurry in places – of our country. And it’s not a pretty picture. The divisions are going deeper, or perhaps just more open. In our peaceful rural neighborhood, someone has posted a campaign sign at the entrance to the long narrow lane that leads to the peaceful town cemetery.Dictators are not about bridging divides. They prefer divisions. They like people hating other people. They like people fearing that the country is in danger from maniacs who want to defund the police and offer welcome baskets to busloads of narcos and serial killers. We’ve been encouraged to picture migration as a scene from World War Z (2013), zombies scaling fortifications, swarming the cities of the living.People have been saying that the would-be dictator was not really going to do what he threatened during the campaign. Economically, it was a nonstarter. Deport the undocumented agricultural workers, and a tangerine will cost $20! But I kept thinking of something that the journalist Masha Gessen wrote in the aftermath of the 2016 election: believe the dictator.Added to our dark fantasies about the future are the pre-existent realities lately getting new scrutiny. The refusal of two major newspapers to endorse a candidate reminded us (surprise!) how much of our media is run by billionaires calculating, to the penny, the potential profit and loss, depending on who wins. Officials with significant roles in our governments turn out to have price tags as low as an airline upgrade. For most of my life, I’ve felt more or less reassured by the existence of the supreme court, but that bedrock trust is gone.Things are a mess. We want the country to get better, and we fear it could get worse.People in other countries have apparently been obsessed with the 2024 US elections. They understand what’s at stake. Even from afar they can see why we have been sleeping badly at night and being on edge during the day.

      Francine Prose is a former president of PEN American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences More

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      Trump calls media ‘the enemy camp’ in speech declaring victory

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      On stage in West Palm Beach in the early hours of Wednesday morning, Donald Trump thanked his supporters, his family and his campaign team as he declared victory in the US presidential race. One group not on the former president’s thank-you cards: the media, whom he referred to as “the enemy camp”.Introducing his running mate, the Ohio senator JD Vance, Trump said: “I told JD to go into the enemy camp. He just goes: OK. Which one? CNN? MSNBC? He’s like the only guy who looks forward to going on, and then just absolutely obliterates them.”Trump has had an antagonistic relationship with the US press for years, often labeling them as the “crooked media” and calling them the “enemy of the people”. But as the Republican candidate in recent weeks ramped up his rhetoric against his perceived opponents, he’s intensified his attacks on reporters as well.The comment during Trump’s victory speech come less than a week after he joked during a campaign rally he would have no concerns about reporters being shot at if there were another assassination attempt against him.During meandering comments at a rally in Pennsylvania last week, Trump complained about gaps in the bulletproof shields surrounding him after a gunman opened fire on him at a rally in July.“To get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news and I don’t mind that so much,” he said.The press, he added, were “seriously corrupt people”.Trump’s communications director later claimed in a statement the comments were supposedly an effort to look out for the welfare of the news media.Trump on Wednesday morning claimed victory over his Democratic opponent in the presidential race, Kamala Harris, and pledged to bring a “golden age” to the United States.“This was a movement like nobody’s ever seen before, and frankly, this was, I believe, the greatest political movement of all time. There’s never been anything like this in this country, and maybe beyond,” Trump said. More

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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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      The return of President Trump – podcast

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      Donald Trump has declared victory in the presidential election after winning key swing states in the race for the White House. As the night unfolded Helen Pidd spoke to Michael Safi at Kamala Harris’s watch party in Washington DC, where the mood turned from cautious optimism to something much darker. As results came in Lauren Gambino picked up on the nervousness in the Harris camp – and then came the battleground states. Ed Pilkington watched North Carolina go to Trump. George Chidi was in Georgia as its electoral college votes were added to Trump’s tally. And then came the big one: Pennsylvania.As Carter Sherman reported, this was an election of huge potential consequences for women. Along with Trump in the White House, the Republicans have retaken control of the Senate and several ballot measures intended to protect women’s rights fell in the states they were voted on.At just before 7.30am in the UK, Trump took to the stage at his campaign event in Florida to claim victory. More

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      Promise and excitement turn to jitters and dread at Kamala Harris’s watch party

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      In the end, Kamala Harris never took the stage at her election night watch party on the Howard University campus in Washington DC. As Americans appeared poised to return Donald Trump to power, it was her campaign co-chair, Cedric Richmond, who appeared instead.He tried to strike a note of optimism – there were still votes to be counted. But the scene had echoes of Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016, when her campaign chairman, not the candidate, came out to address her election night supporters – women and girls awaiting a result that many hoped would finally shatter the “hardest, highest” glass ceiling. Eight years later, they are still waiting.Richmond told a dispersing crowd that they would not be hearing from the vice-president on election night after all. But he pledged she would return to campus to address supporter – and the nation – on Wednesday.“We still have votes to count,” he said. “We will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken.”The evening had begun with promise. Doreen Hogans, 50, arrived at Harris’s election night watch party at Howard University on Tuesday evening filled with cautious optimism. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled a string of pearls that had belonged to her late mother. She considered how her mother might feel that the nation’s first female and first Black female vice-president was on the cusp of history.“She would have been so proud,” Hogans said, her eyes glistening, letting herself imagine Harris, and her signature pearls, ascend to the presidency. She took a deep breath, pocketed the necklace and merged into the crowd of Democrats assembled on the Yard.View image in fullscreenHarris’s supporters were hopeful. The music pulsed. Members of Harris’s AKA sorority, wearing pink and green, danced together. Michele Fuller, who attended Howard at the same time as Harris, rushed into the event with a friend. “It feels unbelievable,” she said, who helped canvas for Harris in Pennsylvania.“She’s just done so great,” she said. “And she’s more than qualified. I’m just so excited.”All around her, students and supporters filled the lawn around the stage set for Harris to speak. Supporters danced as the music pulsed. “If you’re ready to make Black history, talk to me,” the DJ called out.For the past 108 days since Harris’s sudden ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket, she has carried the fears of tens of millions of Americans deeply afraid of a second Trump presidency. The stakes were high, she acknowledged, agreeing at one point that her opponent met the definition of a fascist, but she promised a future unbound by the fear and anxiety of the Trump era. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” Harris said, in her closing argument last week.Her audaciously joyful campaign unleashed a wave of pent-up excitement among Democratic-leaning voters, especially women. She had raised a billion dollars. She has centered abortion rights, framing it as a matter of bodily autonomy. She attracted high-energy crowds and endorsements from the planet’s biggest stars. And yet the race remained exceedingly, nail-bitingly close.As Donald Trump began to carve out an expected early lead on Tuesday evening, jitters set in. But this was a crowd predisposed to anxiety.View image in fullscreenIn the shadow of Clinton’s 2016 loss – an upset that stunned the scores of women who had assembled at her glass-ceilinged election night party in New York and covered the grave of Susan B Anthony in “I Voted” stickers – few Democrats allowed themselves to feel anything more than “nauseously optimistic” about Harris’s prospects.Rhonda Greene, 55, of Virginia, said she woke up on the Wednesday morning after the 2016 election confident the US had elected Hillary Clinton. “Then I looked at the TV and I was in a state of shock – for at least a week,” she said. “I can’t even imagine. I won’t even allow my mind to go there.”After all, so much has changed since then. Trump’s presidency sparked an extraordinary backlash and women marched en masse across the country. Democratic-leaning women ran for office in record numbers – and many of them won. And then the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, igniting women of all ideological persuasions. Fury over the loss of federal abortion rights again helped power Democrats fend off a red wave in 2022, and saw conservative states act to protect access. Harris’s candidacy, while unexpected, seemed like the natural progression.“To see a woman become president, I’m like, I can do anything after that,” said Chelsea Chambers, a sophomore at Howard, arriving at the Yard, where the Frederick Douglas Memorial Hall was illuminated and the stage set for the vice president to speak.But perhaps a lesson from 2016: there were no flashy displays of confidence at Harris’s election night party. No glass ceiling – it was outdoors at her alma mater, the place where she won her first election, freshman class representative of the Liberal Arts Student Council. Many Howard students and alumni were in attendance to support Harris, who would be the first president to have graduated from an HBCU – Historically Black Colleges and Universities.As the evening wore on, the crowd celebrated the handful of bright spots. Angela Alsobrooks was elected to be the first Black woman senator to represent Maryland. Cheers rang out when Harris won her home state of California, hardly a surprise, but it raised her electoral vote tally, 145 to Trump’s 211.But the night quickly swung from celebration to dread. Attendees began refreshing their phones, staring at a probability needle that increasingly pointed toward a Trump victory.The loss of North Carolina – the first of the seven battleground states to be called for Trump – stung, but there was hardly any reaction from the crowd – just nervous sighs and scattered groans.As the mood darkened and the campaign eventually switched the sound of the TVs off and music began to play, 2Pac’s California Love came on. But the vibes were off. Many attendees began to leave, while others debated whether to stay and hear from the vice-president herself.In the rush toward the exit, Janay Smith, 55 and an alumna of Howard who flew in from Atlanta, said she had not yet given up hope. The blue wall states had not been called yet and that was always what the Harris campaign saw as its clearest path to victory.But Harris had framed the election as an existential choice for the future of the country. And in the choice between electing the first female president and returning to power the former president, whose attempts to cling to power in 2020 led to an insurrection at the US Capitol and who would be the first convicted felon commander in chief, American chose him, again.“I am a bit let down by my nation that is even this close,” Smith said.Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      After wild election, Americans endure night of agony awaiting results

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      After months of angst and waiting, at the end of an election ride crazier than any in memory, after the assassination attempts and the bloodied ear, Joe Biden’s shock departure and Kamala Harris’s stunning arrival, after the childless cat ladies and the Springfield, Ohio, culinary dogs, after all the vitriol and the gathering sense of doom – at last, it was show time.Finally, tens of millions of anxious voters were done with the wildest campaign in their lifetimes and found themselves in that next stage of exquisite suffering that is the American way of democracy: the TV election night bubble.At least it was soothing to hear cable news rivals – as starkly divided as the presidential candidates they cover – find common ground as they opened proceedings.“It’s election night in America, in one of the closest and most consequential presidential races ever,” proclaimed CNN. “This is it, America! It’s time for you to decide the most unprecedented election of our times,” declared Fox News.View image in fullscreenAs is traditional with US elections, the news of the first polls to close was as dramatic as watching paint dry. The first-in-the-nation states to wrap up voting were Indiana and Kentucky, both reliably in Trump’s bag.At 7pm on the east coast the temperature began to rise, with polls closing in six states that control 60 of the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the White House.The first of the Big Seven battleground states to close its polling stations was Georgia.More than 5 million Georgians are projected to have voted, exceeding 70% turnout in what is turning out to be an exceptionally passion-filled race. Early exit polls from Georgia gave some troubling food for thought for the Harris campaign.View image in fullscreenWhile the vice-president did well with Black and young voters, edging up her margins on Biden’s four years ago, the exit polls recorded a sharp swing among independent voters, who make up 31% of the Georgia electorate.Trump was recorded in the exit polls to be up by 54% to Harris’s 30% among these voters – an eye-popping contrast to 2020, when Biden was favoured by 9% over Trump among independents. It was an early, and isolated, finding – how it pans out through the hours ahead could prove instructive.North Carolina, a state that has only gone Democratic in presidential races twice since 1976, is another of the battleground which both candidates have frantically sought and a must win for Trump.And North Carolina did become the first of the contested battlegrounds to be called, while votes in six other swing states were still being counted, as a win for Trump.As early counts came in, there were signs of Trump also narrowly edging ahead in key counties in Georgia. Should that razor-thin lead firm up, it would leave Harris having to win all three of the all-important Rust belt “blue wall” states – Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – to keep her hopes alive.View image in fullscreenRelatively early in the evening, the North Carolina governor’s race was called for the Democrat, Josh Stein, over the embattled Republican lieutenant governor Mark Robinson, who CNN has linked to an online persona describing himself as a “black NAZI!”.Robinson has denied the allegations. But the fear in the Trump camp is that his fall from grace may harm the former president’s chances.As the night wore on, the Trump team expressed bullishness on their chances. Some had begun to talk about winning all three of the blue wall states – a phenomenon which, if it happened, would repeat how Trump tore down the wall in 2016.Florida continued its relentless march to the ultra-right on election night. As recently as 2016, Florida was seen as one of the pre-eminent battleground states.How different the Sunshine state looked on Tuesday, its 30 electoral college votes passing seemingly effortlessly to Trump. For the first time since 1988, the Miami region backed the Republican candidate.That fits the increasingly intense love affair between Trump and Cuban Americans in southern Florida. Whether it speaks of a wider drift of Latino voters from the Democratic party will be closely interrogated in coming days.Exit polls from Pennsylvania and Michigan both pointed to a similarly dramatic shift in the Hispanic vote towards Trump compared with four years ago, despite the controversy that erupted over the “island of garbage” remark made by a Trump surrogate at his Madison Square Garden rally.View image in fullscreenFlorida, one of 10 states with abortion rights on their ballot, also rejected an amendment that would have secured the right to an abortion up to fetal viability. That leaves standing the current state law, in which abortions are banned after six weeks, a point at which many women are not even aware they are pregnant.As the first polls closed on the eastern seaboard, Trump and Harris retreated into their caves to await the coming storm. Both professed to have boundless confidence, though upon what basis was left to the imagination.Trump, who voted in Palm Beach, Florida, near his Mar-a-Lago home-cum-club, had limped towards the finishing line, a final blitz of rallies across multiple battleground states leaving him sounding hoarse and looking haggard. No wonder – he has been at it for the past 721 days since he announced his presidential run, making Harris’s 92-day sprint seem like a cake-walk.View image in fullscreenEven as he concluded his pitch for the presidency, Trump watered the seeds of potential election denial that he has planted in a chilling repetition of 2020. “If it’s a fair election, I’d be the first one to acknowledge it,” he told reporters as he emerged from the polling station, that “if” reverberating ominously in the air.Harris spent election day at the Naval Observatory, the vice-president’s residence in Washington, enjoying a few hours out of the public glare until Tuesday night, when she was poised to deliver remarks at Howard University, her alma mater, in the same city.As they awaited the people’s will, each candidate nursed their unique claim to history-in-the-making. Harris, 60, was bidding to be the first woman and woman of colour to occupy the Oval Office.Trump, at 78, would be the oldest president in the same space. He would also be the first defeated president in 132 years to re-enter the White House, not to mention that most inconvenient truth – that he would be the first convicted felon to hold the most powerful job on earth.The first tentative clues as to where the country might be headed were gleaned shortly after 5pm eastern time when an initial flurry of national exit poll data gave pundits something to talk about. Yet, typically for this most infuriatingly hard-to-read election cycle, there was plenty of red meat for both sides to chew on.View image in fullscreenFor Harris and her cohort of millions of terrified Americans, convinced that a second Trump presidency would usher in an era of authoritarian rule, there was the affirming result that voters placed “democracy” at the top of their list of concerns. At 35%, the category came in above even that perennial electoral priority, the economy, stupid (on 31%).Abortion came in third at 14% – a warning sign for Trump, having orchestrated the abolition of the right to an abortion in Roe v Wade. Meanwhile, immigration, the issue that above all others Trump has hammered on the campaign trail for months, with his hordes of murdering, drug dealing “illegals” swamping the country, came in a lackluster fourth on 11%.The Harris campaign will also have been heartened by a gaping gender gap revealed by exit polls, with the vice-president winning women by a whopping 12 points (55% to 43%). Trump was conversely ahead with men by nine points, but the telling difference is that women tend to vote in slightly larger proportions.Democracy, abortion, the relatively low standing of immigration, gender gap. So game over?Not so fast.Over in Trumpworld, there were plenty of other contrasting reasons to be cheerful. Though the economy came in second in the list of voters’ issues, the figures beneath the headline were not good for Harris given her role as vice-president in the Biden administration.View image in fullscreenAsked how they rated the state of the US economy, two-thirds of voters in the exit poll said not so good or poor. Three-quarters said they had experienced moderate or severe hardship from inflation.Most punishingly for the Democratic candidate, asked whether voters felt better or worse off than four years ago – the exact same question with which Trump began every one of his Make Aamerica great again (Maga) rallies – 45% said worse off, with only 24% better off and 30% no change.As a long night got into its stride, firm indications of the future that lies ahead remained elusive. That left plenty of room for anxieties to fester about what comes next.At 4.39pm on election day, before any state had closed its polling stations, Trump began cranking up his election denial playbook, just as he had done in 2020. “A lot of talk about massive CHEATING in Philadelphia,” he screeched on his platform Truth Social, alluding to a false claim that fake ballots had been distributed in the sate. “Law enforcement coming!!!”“There is absolutely no truth to this allegation,” a Philadelphia election official, Seth Bluestein, promptly retorted.Both sides have armies of lawyers at the ready, in anticipation of legal challenges on and after election day. And law enforcement agencies nationwide are on high alert for potential violence.It all points to much more angst and waiting ahead for beleaguered American voters – whatever, and whenever we know, the outcome.Maanvi Singh contributed reportingRead more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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