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      US election 2024 live: Donald Trump says ‘we made history’ as he closes in on victory with win in Pennsylvania

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      On stage in West Palm Beach, Trump declared victory 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.“And now it’s going to reach a new level of importance, because we’re going to help our country. We’ll help our country … we have a country that needs help, and it needs help very badly. We’re going to fix our borders. We’re going to fix everything about our country. And we made history for a reason tonight, and the reason is going to be just that we overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible, and it is now clear that we’ve achieved the most incredible political thing.”He continued:
      I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president, and every citizen, I will fight for you, for your family and your future. Every single day, I will be fighting for you and with every breath in my body, I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe and prosperous America that our children deserve and that you deserve. This will truly be the golden age of America.
      Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, says Athens “looks forward to further deepening the strategic partnership between our two countries,” in a post on X congratulating Donald Trump on his election victory.At a time of regional turmoil, the centre right leader highlighted the need to continue working closely on geopolitical issues.Nato-member Greece has increasingly emphasised its role as a “pillar of stability” in the eastern Mediterranean – a role that in turn has been highlighted by the Middle East conflict.Hours before ballot boxes opened in the US, Mitsotakis said that while the presidential elections were of “particular importance for the entire international community” it was “absolutely necessary for Europe to come of age geopolitically. The time has come for Europe to re-energize itself by launching policies that go off the beaten track”.The comments have been interpreted as speaking to the nervousness many in Europe will feel about a Trump comeback.The video team have shared the below clips of Donald Trump supporters gathered at a watch party in Florida earlier erupting in celebration as Fox News called the 2024 race.The Associated Press, which the Guardian relies on for projections, has not yet called the election overall.Israel’s president Isaac Herzog has described Donald Trump as a “champion of peace” as senior figures in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government welcomed the prospect of the return of the former president to the White House.In a post to social media Herzog said:
      Congratulations to president Donald Trump on your historic return to the White House. You are a true and dear friend of Israel, and a champion of peace and cooperation in our region.
      I look forward to working with you to strengthen the ironclad bond between our peoples, to build a future of peace and security for the Middle East, and to uphold our shared values.
      Earlier, the Israeli prime minister Netanyahu himself offered congratulations, saying a Trump victory “offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America”.Israel’s newly appointed defense minister, Israel Katz, said he believed that a Trump presidency will “bring back the hostages” and defeat Iran, posting:
      Congratulations to president-elect Donald Trump on his historic victory. Together we’ll strengthen the US-Israel alliance, bring back the hostages, and stand firm to defeat the axis of evil led by Iran.
      Two far-right members of the Netanyahu cabinet, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir both used social media messages to invoke blessings from God on Trump, Israel and America. The two of them head parties which are for the exansion of Israel’s illegal settlements on the land of the occupied West Bank.Qatar’s Emir, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, also offered congratulations to Trump, saying:
      I wish you all the best during your term and look forward to working together again to strengthen our strategic relationship and partnership, and to advancing our shared efforts in promoting security and stability both in the region and globally.”
      Qatar has been one of the nations working most closely with the US and Egypt in attempts to broker a ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas. Hamas is believed to still be holding about 100 hostages seized from Israel on 7 October 2023, many of whom are thought to have been killed.Hamas, which launched the 7 October attack last year, leading to Israel’s sustained military assault on Gaza, has also reacted to the US election.Reuters reports senior official Sami Abu Zuhri said Trump would be tested on his statements that he can stop the war within hours as US president, and told the news agency: “We urge Trump to learn from Biden’s mistakes.”Charles Michel president of the European Council, which represents the leaders of the 27 EU member states has congratulated Donald Trump.The prime minister of Ireland, which is the European HQ to some of the US’s most important companies, has congratulated Donald Trump.“The people of the United States have spoken and Ireland will work to deepen and strengthen the historic and unbreakable bonds between our people and our nations in the years ahead,” said Simon Harris.Ireland’s relationship with the US is one of its most important economically and politically given its role over the peace deal in Northern Ireland.Foreign investment from the US is the backbone of the country’s economy with US multinationals including tech companies Google, Microsoft and Intel, employing 300,000 people in Ireland and contributing 50% of the country’s corporate tax.Here’s a video of Donald Trump speaking on stage in West Palm Beach, Florida, earlier where he pledgedto bring a “golden age” to the United States.The leader of the UK’s Liberal Democrats party has called a likely Donald Trump election victory “a dark, dark day for people around the globe” and described the Republican as a “destructive demagogue”.Ed Davey, who leads the third largest political party in the UK parliament, wrote on X:
      This is a dark, dark day for people around the globe. The world’s largest economy and most powerful military will be led by a dangerous, destructive demagogue.”
      In a statement recently released by the party, Davey added:
      The next president of the United States is a man who actively undermines the rule of law, human rights, international trade, climate action and global security.
      Millions of Americans – especially women and minorities – will be incredibly fearful about what comes next. We stand with them.
      Families across the UK will also be worrying about the damage Trump will do to our economy and our national security, given his record of starting trade wars, undermining Nato and emboldening tyrants like Putin.
      Fixing the UK’s broken relationship with the EU is even more urgent than before. We must strengthen trade and defence cooperation across Europe to help protect ourselves from the damage Trump will do.
      Now more than ever, we must stand up for the core liberal values of equality, democracy, human rights and the rule of law – at home and around the world.”
      The president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has congratulated Donald Trump and urged him to work with her on a “transatlantic partnership”.Von der Leyen said the EU and US were “more than just allies”, but shared a deep bond “rooted in our shared history, commitment to freedom and democracy, and common goals of security and opportunity for all”.She said:
      Let us work together on a transatlantic partnership that continues to deliver for our citizens. Millions of jobs and billions in trade and investment on each side of the Atlantic depend on the dynamism and stability of our economic relationship.”
      Behind the scenes von der Leyen’s team has been preparing for a Trump victory for months, including by drawing up lists of US imports to Europe to target with tariffs, if Trump imposes punitive duties on European goods to the US.Donald Trump has won Michigan’s Saginaw county, a bellwether that bodes well for his chances of flipping the Great Lakes state Joe Biden won four years ago.Trump is leading with 84.2% of the votes counted, picking up 50.9% support to Kamala Harris’s 47.7%. In 2020, Biden beat Trump by winning 49.4% of the vote compared to the Republican’s 49.1%. The county supported Trump in 2016, when he won Michigan overall.The Associated Press has not yet called Michigan, but Trump currently has a lead of just under five percentage points over Harris.Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte has congratulated Donald Trump and said he showed “strong US leadership” in his first term in office that strengthened the alliance.In a statement Rutte said he looked forward to working with Trump “to advance peace through strength through Nato”.Rutte, who took office last month, referred to the challenges facing the alliance without a direct reference to the war in Ukraine.He said:
      We face a growing number of challenges globally, from a more aggressive Russia, to terrorism, to strategic competition with China, as well the increasing alignment of China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.
      The veteran Dutch politician, reputed for knowing how to handle Trump, praised the US president-elect, while seeking to convince him of the value of the alliance.India’s prime minister Narendra Modi joined the ranks of world leaders congratulating Donald Trump on his presumed victory. In a post on X, Modi offered “hearty congratulations to my friend Donald Trump”, alongside several photos of the two men tightly embracing each other and holding hands.Modi, who has been Indian prime minister for a decade, was seen to have a close relationship with Trump during his first term in office, and Trump has repeatedly referred to “my friend Modi”.As it looked like Trump was claiming victory on Wednesday, Modi said he was “looking forward to collaboration” between the US and India and added:
      Together, let’s work for the betterment of our people and to promote global peace, stability and prosperity.”
      At the Republican watch party in Las Vegas, the crowd is giddy.The bar at the Ahern hotel is packed with excited, bleary-eyed supporters. In a city known for its flair and theatrics, many supporters are dressed up in their most flamboyant Maga gear. A man wearing a rubber Trump mask and a star-paneled cape draws laughs and cheers.Sari Utschen, 57, was wearing a homemade dress that was embroidered with the word “Trump” down the front in huge block letters, and string of LED lights draped like a scarf.“I feel relieved. I feel joyous,” she said.Utschen said she used to vote with Democrats in the 80s and 90s, but finds that the party has gone too far to the left in recent years. “I’ve been red-pilled,” she said, laughing. Over the past four years, she said: “I felt like we were being bamboozled under Biden. Nothing made sense.” 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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      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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      Left, right, Harris, Trump: all prisoners of political nostalgia in an era few understand | Rafael Behr

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      Donald Trump’s record of refusal to concede defeat after the last US election should have disqualified him from running in this one. His criminal indictments should have meant banishment from mainstream politics. His campaign rhetoric – a rambling litany of bigotry and spite – should not have carried beyond the paranoid fringe.But what use are should and shouldn’t against the brute force of can and does? Things that are supposed to be self-evident in a constitutional democracy have ceased to be obvious to millions of Americans. We don’t need to wait for all votes to be counted to wish for a stronger cultural inoculation against tyranny.A healthier body politic would not have been infected by Trump’s candidacy. How did the democratic immune system fail? He is gifted with a malign kind of charisma, but it needed a confluence of economic stagnation, cultural polarisation and technological revolution over many years to achieve maximum contagion.There is always a risk of romanticising the past when coping with anxiety in the present. Aggressive nationalism that bristles with racism, misogyny and swaggering machismo is an old style in American politics. There is also nothing especially new in polarised social attitudes. Culture wars have been waged with varying degrees of intensity for generations.What stands out as a uniquely 21st-century innovation is the segregation of political tribes into discrete and self-reinforcing information silos. Formerly, even in times of fierce political division, there were institutions and rules that governed debate. There were commonly agreed facts that might be subject to rival interpretation while still connecting partisans of opposite views to a shared reality.That way of conducting politics is not obsolete, but it is rooted in analogue systems. It relies on real-life interactions, deliberations, clunky old institutions, meandering conversations, small talk. It is the stuff of people mingling in assemblies and town halls, breaking bread together. It is the opposite of politics played in digital mode where the platforms on which debate is conducted are also engines of radicalisation; where differences of opinion are accelerated into irreconcilable enmities.This isn’t an elegy for some pre-internet golden age of enlightened public discourse. Prejudice, misinformation, sheer stupidity and abuse of power were abundant enough when information flows were tightly controlled and volumes were a tiny fraction of what they are now.An apparent correlation between extreme politics and the rise of social media doesn’t prove a causal link. But there is a plausible argument that a very online culture, marked by short attention spans, narcissism and impatient consumer appetites, has a more natural affinity with shallow demagoguery than with representative democracy.The whole apparatus of voting for a candidate who might not satisfy your exact needs, and probably doesn’t embody all the values you hold sacred, but might at least make some half-decent decisions for the country as a whole over the coming years, feels oddly antiquated. It is alien to the click-and-collect spirit of digital commerce.A democratic election is the antithesis of an internet transaction. It contains not just an expectation of delayed gratification, but a guarantee of frustration. Compromise, imperfection and disappointment are the necessary price for having a government that tries to balance the complex demands of a variegated society.The alternative is a political movement, such as the Maga cult, that treats elections as a cry of rage or exultant self-actualisation. Trump’s campaign has never construed voting in terms of civic choice, with more than one potentially legitimate outcome. It was always going to be either a heroic restoration of the rightful president or another iteration of the deep-state conspiracy against him. There is no place for defeat in the script except as material to bolster the claim of a higher victory.It is a mode of campaigning that is hostile to the basic premise of a democratic ballot, which is that either side might win and counting votes actually counts.It also exploits a culture of political journalism that measures professional integrity by a refusal to pick sides. It has been peculiar to observe liberal American media continuing to apply their conventional reporting templates, which contain the implicit judgment that the two candidates have equivalent democratic credentials. That is absurd when one of them transparently despises democracy.Much of America’s moderate conservative and liberal establishment seems to have spent the campaign going through the motions of political normalcy, hoping to stir the system into resilience by operation of muscle memory. It doesn’t work.But ringing the alarm at the spectre of fascism doesn’t work either. There is no doubt that Trump’s temperament and ambitions are fascistic. He admires dictators, lusts after absolute power, speaks of political critics as enemies and boasts of his willingness to crush them with armed organs of the state.And yet calling that kind of politics by its proper name doesn’t provoke any scruple among his supporters. Partly that is because the currency of comparison with 20th-century dictators has been dulled by overuse. “Fascist” is a label that has been applied too casually and too often as unthinking abuse to be rehabilitated as a tool with moral precision and rhetorical impact more than 100 years after it was coined.That doesn’t mean the lessons of the 1920s and 1930s are irrelevant to the current predicament. It is easy to find disturbing parallels, and the connection can’t be ignored when white supremacists and card-carrying neo-Nazis are an active cadre in the new radical-right coalition.But there is also a danger for liberal opinion in leaning too heavily on the familiar cautionary tales from history.Casting the threat as a resurgence of something old – a zombie ideology risen from its postwar grave – preserves the convenient idea of liberal democracy as the more modern and more highly evolved political system. It is the instinct to dismiss nationalism as an ideological retirement home for angry white people whose skills don’t equip them to compete in a dynamic, globalised economy, and who express their frustration as bigoted reaction against progressive social change.There might be a dose of truth in that analysis – but it doesn’t contain an argument in favour of liberal democracy, beyond the implication that only stupid, bad people oppose it. Unsurprisingly, those same people don’t find that argument very persuasive.The awkward truth for those of us who rally in defence of liberal democracy today is that it has undergone no obvious renewal since its peak at the end of the last century. We, no less than the nationalists, are imprisoned by nostalgia, wishing the future could be more like the past. And so we find ourselves constantly testing the limits of analogue protection against a virus that is digitally borne.

      Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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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

      When do polls close?

      How the electoral college works

      Where is abortion on the ballot?

      Senate and House races to watch

      Lessons from the key swing states

      Trump v Harris on key issues

      What’s at stake in this election

      What to know about the US election More

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      Remember, remember, the fifth of November, when a bad guy tried to blow up a political system | Marina Hyde

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      Well … we finally got to 5 November. Of course, you know the story. Once upon a time, there was a bad guy who wanted to set fire to a country’s political system. Metaphorically, but also literally. I mean, he wasn’t subtle, this guy. This Guy, I should say, because his name was Guy Fawkes. Why – who did you think I was talking about?Because time’s a great healer, Britons now celebrate the thwarting of this truly awful Guy’s insurrection with fireworks, fires and organised effigy-burning. But the good version of those things – not the kind we do when we go out of a football tournament in the later stages. We’re still working on teasing out the family fun in those particular moments.Incidentally, before I proceed further, a word about the timing of this column, which I am writing on Tuesday morning but which will appear in the Wednesday print edition of this newspaper. That is My Struggle, assuming there isn’t a monopoly on that working title in the current news cycle. And even without those challenges of the calendar, it is impossible to know how many people out there are catching up with the Gunpowder Plot on a time lag. Furthermore, there will be long-view historians who will argue that we still don’t actually really know the ultimate knock-on results and/or fallout of it all. So if you are catching up with the whole story on tape delay, beware of spoilers that will follow. Please look away now if you want to experience the magic/horror [delete as applicable] as if in real time.So anyway, our Guy. Not only was he a very bad hat, but he wore a very bad hat – a signature piece of headgear that simply screamed MAKE ENGLAND PAPIST AGAIN. And this Guy swore he’d overthrow the political leadership of the country by any means necessary. Blow it all up, burn it all down – this was his plot. He could really drone on about it for hours to like-minded people. Other details? He sometimes went by Guido, because nobody – NOBODY – loved Hispanics more than him, or had done more for Hispanics than him.Anyway, the fateful day approached. Despite the highest possible stakes, some of his henchteam couldn’t quite keep their mouths shut about it all. One of them actually wrote down a semi-cryptic warning about what was coming, and sent it to a lawmaker called Lord Monteagle. I think it was done on parchment, but it could have also been a social media post on X (which back in the 17th century was known as Twitter).Even though people will say any old thing on parchment, something about the message properly unsettled Lord Monteagle, who shared the post with King James I. As for the precise mechanics of that share, let’s assume Monteagle quote-posted it, adding a topper along the lines of: “They hath said the quiet part out loud.” Or maybe “out Loude”. My understanding is that spelling was a bit of a free-for-all at the time, and there was a lot of unnecessary capitalisation in some people’s posts.At this point, the king had a number of options. He could have regarded engaging with the incendiary language about incendiary devices as beneath his dignity, and not at all befitting the civility politics of which he regarded himself as the perfect embodiment. He could have got a period celebrity to come out in his favour and denounce it. Which one? I don’t think James would have nailed down the composer William Byrd (he’d gone Catholic in the 1570s and might have endorsed Fawkes) – but William Shakespeare was coming off a huge box-office hit with Othello and was in development with King Lear. He’d have been ideal; people always do what playwrights say.But in the event, the king basically responded by going: “OMG Monteagle – if someone tells you who they are, BELIEVE THEM THE FIRST TIME.” Two of his team officials were immediately dispatched to parliament.By this stage, the Guy was in situ and well on his way to realising his plan. He was found by law enforcement down in the palace of Westminster’s cellars, with a slow match and a watch – presumably one from the Fawkes Signature Collection (advertising slogan: “Time is money so you wear a watch that matters”. There was also a pail of Diet Coke to sustain him through the night, some touchwood, and 36 barrels of gunpowder.Despite being busted in what you’d think was a pretty open-and-shut way, I imagine that aides from Fawkes’s conspiracy scrambled to “walk back” the idea that some bad stuff was in the process of going down. Their precise words are lost to time, but no doubt they’d have wheeled out a few of the classics. “This is just Guy being Guy – you shouldn’t take him so seriously.” “It truly saddens us to see ye olde fake news media lying that he meant any harm.” “He was just dressing up as a bomb-maker to show solidarity with our great blue-collar munitions workers.” Or my personal favourite: “These barrels of gunpowder are just a metaphor.”What a Guy. The rest is both history, and the future that liberals want. So whichever stage of the great timeline we’re at by the time you read this, I suppose we have to at least consider that one day, people will simply enjoy some kind of jolly annual commemoration of whatever it was that happened. In the meantime, I desperately hope Guy Fawkes day is/was everything you wished it to be.

      Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist More