US elections live: Harris makes unexpected stop at DNC headquarters as millions of Americans cast their votes

Pennsylvania has 19 electoral votes – the most of any swing state – and the pathway to getting 270 electoral votes winning the election is more complicated for the candidate who does not win it.

Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris crisscrossed the state during the final week of campaigning and yesterday held rallies about an hour apart in the Lehigh valley, one of the most competitive parts of the state. Harris dedicated the entirety of the final day of the campaign to Pennsylvania, making four stops in the state.

Residents in the state have spoken about wielding the power of a vote that could decide the election.

“I’m quite terrified,” said Sonny Berenson, 20, a student at Muhlenberg college who attended Harris’s rally there on Monday. “This is probably the most contentious election in American history and we’re living in a state that can decide it. So I feel very powerful and very scared, but obviously I hope and pray Kamala wins.”

Danielle Shackelford, 68, a worker for the Pennsylvania lottery from Allentown, said she was optimistic Harris would win. She said abortion was a top issue for her and that there were many women who were silently supporting Harris over the issue. “They are fighting with everything inside of them to fight against what has been put out there,” she said. “What Trump has done, he has unleashed the wrath of women.”

Rene Diaz, Jr, a 36-year-old machinist said his top issues this election were the economy, foreign policy and the border. “We are drowning in so much debt that we shouldn’t be helping fight two wars and sending countries to fight two wars and help fund other programs,” he said. “I have children and it’s important that my children get to grow up with the life that I have.”

Elizabeth Slaby, an 81-year-old from Allentown, arrived at Harris’s rally in Allentown at 6.00am on Monday with her son and grandson. She said that she had been a Republican for more than 50 years but changed her registration five days after January 6.

It’s 5 November today – a day when the British traditionally let off fireworks to celebrate the foiling of the plot by Guy Fawkes to blow up parliament and kill King James I over four hundred years ago.

Marina Hyde has written a bit comparing Britain’s own insurrectionist to someone more contemporary …

And here is some footage of those first in-person votes getting underway:

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Here are some of the first images coming out of the wires as polls open:

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It’s just gone 7am Eastern Time and voting has just begun in a number of states across the US, including in the battleground states of Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan (some sites open at 8am ET).

Voting has also opened in: Alabama, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida (8am ET in parts of the Florida Panhandle on Central time), New Hampshire (Opening times vary by county with the earliest starting at 7am ET), Illinois, Indiana, Kansas (Varies by county; check with your local election office for polling hours), Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Rhode Island (Polls in New Shoreham open at 9am ET), South Carolina and Wyoming.

Alarm is growing over the blizzard of false voting misinformation being peddled by Donald Trump and his top allies, such as Elon Musk.

Reprising his 2020 playbook of claiming that Democrats were trying to steal the election before he lost to Joe Biden and cried fraud, Trump has flatly and without evidence declared that Democrats are a “bunch of cheats”.

Musk has become a leading purveyor of falsehoods and conspiracies to his 200 million followers on X, the social media platform he owns.

Musk, the world’s richest man, has asserted without evidence that Trump’s campaign is heading for a “crushing victory” over Harris, and been chastised by key election officials in Arizona and Georgia.

Besides Musk, other key Trump allies such as Turning Point USA chief Charlie Kirk have reached their large rightist audiences via podcasts and public events and pushed bogus claims about Democratic election fraud.

The race to become the 47th president of the United States is on a razor-thin margin, pollster John Zogby writes.

Three of the final last six public polls were 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.

A Donald Trump staffer who worked as a regional field director for the western Pennsylvania Republican party was fired on Friday after it was revealed that he was a white supremacist, Lorenzo Tondo reports.

Politico reported it had identified Luke Meyer, 24, a Pennsylvania-based field staffer who worked for five months for the former president, as the online white nationalist who used the pseudonym Alberto Barbarossa.

Meyer reportedly co-hosts the Alexandria podcast with Richard Spencer, the organiser of the 2017 white nationalist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia and regularly shared racist views.

After being presented with evidence by Politico linking him to the Barbarossa alias, Meyer admitted the connection and confessed that he had been concealing his online identity from fellow members of Trump Force 47, the arm of the Trump campaign overseeing volunteer mobilisation efforts.

More here:

It’s extremely unlikely that we’ll know the winner of the presidential contest tonight, as Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are virtually tied in the polls, and the odds that the race comes down to a small number of swing states is high, so when will we find out?

It depends on how close things turn out to be. Four swing states – Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – have absentee ballot procedures that can require days to conclude. But if Harris has decisively won the other swing states, it is enough to declare her the victor. Any other result will take time.

Last time round, Joe Biden was declared the winner on Saturday 7 November – four days after the election. The president crossed the electoral vote threshold that day when media outlets called Pennsylvania and Nevada. Michigan and Wisconsin were both called the day after the election, but Arizona wasn’t called until 12 November, North Carolina until 13 November, and Georgia on 19 November, after a recount.

What about this time? According to Protect Democracy, a non-partisan group, we’ll generally see results faster than in 2020 if the margin in a state is greater than 0.5%. They draw this conclusion because there will be significantly fewer mail ballots than in 2020, and states will be able to count them faster. Three states also expanded the pre-canvassing of mail ballots before election day that didn’t in 2020 (Arizona, Georgia and Michigan) and three states have an earlier deadline for when mail ballots must arrive than they did in 2020 (North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania).

Protect Democracy said in a recent report that its best guess was that results will be called in Michigan and Wisconsin one full day after polls closed – the same speed as 2020. It also guesses that Pennsylvania will be called faster than in 2020, when it took four days; Nevada will be called in the same amount of time or faster than 2020, when it took four days and Arizona will also be called in the same amount of time or faster than 2020, when it took nine days. North Carolina and Georgia will both be called faster than 2020, the organisation guesses.

You can read more about when and how we will find out who the next US president is in the story below:

The US election is officially under way. Polls opened in certain locations in Vermont at 5am Eastern Time, so about 50 minutes ago.

According to CBS, here’s when polls open across the country:

6am ET – Connecticut, Kentucky (Polling sites in the west open at 7 a.m. ET), Maine (Polling locations open between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. depending on town population), New Jersey, New York, Virginia.

6.30am ET – North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia

7am ET – Alabama, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida (8am ET in parts of the Florida Panhandle on Central time), Georgia, New Hampshire (Opening times vary by county with the earliest starting at 7am ET), Illinois, Indiana, Kansas (Varies by county; check with your local election office for polling hours), Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan (Polling sites in four Upper Peninsula counties open at 8am ET), Missouri, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island (Polls in New Shoreham open at 9am ET), South Carolina, Wyoming

8am ET – Arizona, Iowa, Minnesota (Counties with a population of less than 500 are not required to open until 11am ET), Mississippi, Oklahoma, North Dakota (Polls start opening at 8am ET and vary by county), South Dakota (Polling locations in the west open at 9am ET), Tennessee, Texas (Polling sites in three western counties open at 9am ET), Wisconsin

8.30am ET – Arkansas

9am ET – Colorado, Montana (Polling sites in counties with less than 400 registered voters can open as late as 2pm ET), Nebraska, Nevada (Polling sites open at 10am ET with the exception of City Hall in West Wendover), New Mexico, Utah

10am ET – California, Idaho (Polling locations in the north open at 11am ET)

11am ET – Washington (Most voting is done by mail, so times vary by county), Alaska (Polling sites open at 11am ET with the exception of Adak)

12pm ET – Hawaii

Polls then begin to close in eastern states from 6pm US Eastern Time on Tuesday.