Election 2024: Too Close to Call, Too Important to Look Away – After Months of Harsh Words, It’s Up to Voters Now
UPDATE: 9 a.m. ET – this post will be updated throughout Election Day with state-by-state results and other developments.
Americans woke up Tuesday morning to an Election Day like no other, with the race between Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and Republican candidate Donald Trump exceptionally close and, to take the word of pundits from both sides, extraordinarily consequential.
Some of the saltiest words available in the English language — including, yes, “garbage” — have been deployed in the weeks and months leading up to the first post-pandemic presidential election.
Yet it’s still looking like a coin-flip.
The big prize will be won in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, all of which went to Biden by razor-thin margins in the 2020 election. Both campaigns have concentrated their efforts in these states.
Early voting has already reached historic turnout, with an estimated nearly 80 million ballots already cast. Polling has been a constant back-and-forth, with margins so narrow and voters holding their cards so close – the Harris campaign released two ads to encouraging voters to secretly break from friends and family – that neither side has had much data to crow about.
Trump walks into Tuesday with a slim lead in Arizona; Harris holds even narrower deficits in Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin. In Michigan and Pennsylvania, the widely different visions for America’s next four years of federal governance are statistically tied. And nationally, they are separated by just over a single point in Harris’ favor, according to the most recent aggregate polls.
Top issues on voters’ minds are the economy, immigration and abortion rights – anyone remember the 1990s? – but both candidates have spun the election as a fight for the very existence of an American republic, ruled by the democratic process, as we know it.
With the 2020 election fresh in everyone’s memory, the candidates’ legal teams are braced for disputes, while authorities are preparing for possible unrest. A drawn-out, days-long process might start to feel familiar – especially to those who remember the 2000 election that was ultimately (and peacefully) decided by rthe Supreme Court.
Check back here for hour-by-hour updates as polls open and results roll in.
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