To call the 2024 US election close is an understatement.
Not only do national polls make it a dead heat between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump – but in every crucial swing state the two are within 2.5 points of each other. It’s a sign of a deeply divided nation – with access to abortion, immigration and how best to manage the economy splitting America down the middle.
Both campaigns have been hitting the key swing states hard – even holding rival campaign rallies on the same day in Las Vegas, Nevada and Milwaukee, Wisconsin this week. In Milwaukee, both campaigns managed to turn out more than 10,000 voters each.
Mr Trump has relied on his usual brand of meandering, unpredictable, insult comedy speeches to turn out legions of hat-wearing fans to rallies that seem more like sports events than political rallies. Meanwhile Ms Harris has rolled out high profile celebrity endorsements – with Jennifer Lopez and Cardi B joining her on stage this week – and Scarlett Johansson, Robert Downey Jr and the cast of The Avengers reuniting for an online campaign ad.
And as November 5 draws near, both candidates’ rhetoric has dialled up to levels rarely seen even in America’s rambunctious political system. Mr Trump repeatedly refers to Ms Harris as a “dummy” and a “low IQ individual” – questioning her ability to cope with the pressure of the Oval Office.
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Meanwhile, Ms Harris branded Mr Trump a “wannabe dictator” at a huge rally in Washington DC last week, when around 100,000 people reportedly turned out to support the Vice President. And she has painted Mr Trump as “unstable”, “obsessed with revenge” and determined to instigate mass deportations and withdraw women’s rights if he wins the election.
In perhaps the most consequential gaffe of the late campaign, at Mr Trump’s New York rally last week, warm-up comedian Tony Hinchcliffe joked that Puerto Rico was a “floating island of garbage.” The backlash from the Latino community, which make up a huge proportion of voters in key swing states like Pennsylvania, was strong and furious.
With polls so close, it’s exceptionally unlikely that a result will be called on Wednesday – or even within a week of the election. But fears are growing that Mr Trump will declare victory on election night regardless of the result – as he did in 2020.
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Where campaigns traditionally focus their local resources in the final weeks of a campaign on getting out the vote, the Trump campaign has poured staff and funding into “election integrity” investigators – looking for ways to cry foul and declare the election unfair. Whoever is declared the winner in Tuesday’s vote, the story of the 2024 US election is unlikely to end there.
Here’s everything you need to know about the US election – and how you can follow it.
Will there be an exit poll?
Yes, but not remotely like we have them in the UK.
The exit polls are done state-by-state, and can be reported from 10pm UK time.
But they won’t predict the winner. Instead, they’ll contain information on which demographic groups have voted for each candidate, and what issues have been important to them.
What time do polls close?
This varies state-by-state.
Here they are listed by closing time, with swing states in bold:
Midnight:Georgia , Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia
12.30am:North Carolina , Ohio, West Virginia
1am: Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oklahoma, **Pennsylvania, **, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Washington DC
1.30am: Arkansas
2am: Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan , Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin , Wyoming
3am: Montana, Nevada , Utah
4am: California, Idaho, Oregon, Washington
5–6am: Alaska, Hawaii
What time will results start coming in?
The TV networks will be able to call some states shortly after the polls close in that state – but the closer the result is, the longer it will take to call them.
What are the key states to watch?
There are seven ‘swing’ states that could go either way.
The rust belt: Michigan , Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are all states formerly dominated by coal mining, steel production and manufacturing. Victory in those states was key to Trump’s route to the White House in 2016 – but Biden won them back in 2020. The Sun Belt: The ‘belt’ contains 15 states, but the ones we’re looking at are Arizona , Nevada , North Carolina and Georgia.
What do the latest polls say?
At the time of writing, FiveThirtyEight’s poll of polls is as follows:
- Harris: 47.9%
- Trump: 47%
We told you it was close.
Each of the seven swing states has the result within the margin of error – so each of them could easily go either way.
However there was a poll in Iowa published on Saturday which put Harris ahead by 47 to 44 – in a state that the DeMoines Register said had “swing aggressively to the right in recent elections, delivering Trump solid victories in 2016 and 2020.
If that poll is correct, it could indicate other polls are off too. Alternatively, it could be a complete outlier.
When will we know who has won?
Unless the polls are wrong and it’s not actually that close, there is almost no chance of learning the result on the night.
The US TV networks will call some of the non-battleground states early in the night – but we probably won’t get a good picture of who has a route to victory for days – or perhaps longer.
Some states, for various reasons, simply take a long time to count ballots – I’m looking at you, Pennsylvania and Georgia – and when it’s a close race, every ballot will count.
And even when all the votes are counted, there’s likely to be recounts demanded – and any dispute will go all the way to the courts.
In 2000, the result came down to Florida – where George W Bush won by just 537 votes. After a month-long series of legal battles, the Presidency was finally decided in a 5–4 decision by the Supreme Court.
More recently, the huge number of mail-in ballots meant some states took days to count the ballots – with the result not being called until four days after the election.
What has Harris’ closing message been?
After a run of rallies where she gave stark warnings about Donald Trump’s darker tendencies, Ms Harris chose a more positive, hopeful message for her final appearances.
“We need to finish strong. So for the next two days we still have a lot of work to do but here’s the thing: we like hard work. Hard work is good work. Hard work is joyful work,” she said. “And make no mistake, we will win.”
What has Trump’s closing message been?
Trump’s rallies have been meandering, erratic and often menacing – delivered in an increasingly gruff and tired-sounding voice.
After promising a message of unity for his final rallies, he told one of his final rallies he regretted leaving the White House after he lost and tried to overturn the result, sighing: “I shouldn’t have left.”
He also suggested the press at his rally would act as a human shield should there be another attempt on his life.
“To get to me, somebody would have to shoot through fake news,” he said, “and I don’t mind that much.”