US election 2024 live updates: Trump casts ballot in Florida and says he feels ‘very confident’ as Walz says result is ‘razor close’ | US elections 2024

Advisers urge Trump to declare victory prematurely on election night

Hugo Lowell

Donald Trump has been told by some advisers that he should prematurely declare victory on election night if he’s sufficiently ahead of Kamala Harris in key battleground states like Pennsylvania, according to people close to him, though whether he will heed that advice remains unclear.

The consensus view is that Trump has nothing to lose by claiming he has won if he has a several-hundred-thousand-vote advantage in Pennsylvania or if his internal pollsters think a victory is plausible even if the results are not fully confirmed on Tuesday night.

But even Trump’s most pugnacious allies – including the former White House strategist Steven Bannon who spoke with him last week, one of the people said – have suggested he hold off making a pronouncement if the race is any closer by the time he goes to bed, lest it makes him look foolish.

In the final days of the campaign, Trump and his campaign have projected confidence. It has raised expectations among his supporters that he will win, laying the groundwork for baselessly claiming the election was stolen if he loses and Harris takes the White House. Any premature declaration of victory would also probably play into that phenomenon.

Lauren Gambino

Kamala Harris is spending the day at the Naval Observatory, the vice-president’s residence in Washington.

The public is not expected to see the Democratic nominee until later tonight, where she is poised to deliver remarks at Howard University, her alma mater, in Washington DC.

After a sprint across Pennsylvania, Harris arrived at her residence hours before polls opened in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

She spent part of her day calling into radio stations in an eleventh-hour Get Out The Vote push for Americans on their way to work who hadn’t yet cast a ballot. More radio interviews were scheduled for lunchtime and the drive home from work, before polls close.

Per her campaign, she has called into radio stations across three battleground states so far – Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina. More are expected throughout the day.

Asked what her first order of business would be if she wins the election, Harris cited lowering costs – the top voting issue this cycle.

“Bringing down the cost of living for folks,” she said in an interview on NewsRadio KDKA, naming several of her economic proposals on housing, healthcare and the child tax credit. She also noted “fixing what’s going on with our broken immigration system,” an issues that has bedeviled presidents of both parties for decades.

Florida is no longer a swing state in terms of the presidential race, with Donald Trump holding a clear polling lead after winning it in 2016 and 2020.

But a potentially pivotal US Senate race, as well as amendments concerning the state’s six-week abortion ban, and the legalization of recreational marijuana, are helping drive voters to the polls.

At JP Taravella high school in Coral Springs, Mackenzie Nezat, 18, was voting for the first time in a general election, and said women’s reproductive rights was a key issue in her decision to support Democratic candidates, as well as the climate emergency and gun violence prevention.

Taravella is five miles from Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school, where 17 students and staff were killed in a 2018 mass shooting.

“It’s important to have a president that acknowledges the issue of climate change. All of us kids have to grow up with this. I want leaders who are willing to tackle it,” she said. “And I’m not anti-gun, I want to be an owner for protection, but the way in which people can get them should be better.”

Nezat, a first-year neuroscience student at Nova Southeastern University, said the character of a president was equally important to her.

“I care how a president talks, and that they uphold morals and positive values.”

Kamala Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, said the election was “razor close” as he visited a diner in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

“Rule of law matters, constitution matters, the American experiment matters, our neighbors matter,” Walz said.

“And contrary to what this one guy thinks, nobody is above the damn law.”

“Stay calm. Stay with it,” he added, noting that America has “the fairest, the freest, the safest elections.”

Ed Pilkington

Reporting from Nash county, North Carolina:

We’ve come to talk to voters in Nash county, to the east of Raleigh, which will be closely watched tonight as it could provide one of the earliest clues as to who is prevailing.

In 2020 Nash was one of only 10 counties in the seven battleground states that flipped from Donald Trump to Joe Biden; its count should be done by about 10.30pm ET.

“I’m definitely pro-Trump,” said Randy Parrish, 65, smoking a cigarette in his car before he cast his ballot. He said he was unimpressed by Kamala Harris. “She’s had four years to fix things. It was just empty promises.”

Asked whether he was anxious about the result, he said he wasn’t. “I ain’t that worried, because God’s in control,” he said.

Local businessman John Tomaszewski, 55, had come to the polling place in the aptly named Spring Hope with his wife and daughter, all three of whom voted for Trump. He told a story to illustrate why he is behind the former president.

Before Trump entered the White House in 2017 he would buy plywood for the commercial cabinets he produces from China, as it was $15 per sheet cheaper. After Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese goods the sheets were only $4 cheaper and he could afford to buy American plywood.

“I want my man to win, of course, but I hope God will be in control of whoever wins because we need that back in our lives,” he said.

Amy Sharpe, 45, had just voted for Tim Walz. (She said she voted for Walz, Harris’s running mate, not Harris herself, because she loves “Coach” as she called him. He’s like everybody’s grandpa”.)

As for Trump, “he’s a lunatic. All that Hannibal Lecter stuff!”

She works as a bar tender, and several months ago she laid down a new rule – no talking about politics. “It has gotten physical so fast now, folk pushing and shoving and shouting. So I just said no more politics in the bar.”

Polls are open all across the country now as Americans cast their ballots for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump in an election that has been cast as an existential fight for the country’s future.

Here’s our hour-by-hour election guide for what to expect tonight. In the meantime, here’s a recap of the main developments:

• Before the polls opened this morning, more than 80 million Americans had already voted and cast early ballots, with just under 45 million voting early in person and about 38 million voting early by mail.

• Trump and Harris have tied with three votes each in Dixville Notch, the tiny New Hampshire town which traditionally kicks off voting on election day.

• Trump and his wife, Melania, voted in Florida, where he said he felt “very confident”. Asked if he would call on his supporters not to engage in violence, Trump said: “I don’t have to tell them that there will be no violence,” adding his supporters “are not violent people”.

• Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, cast his ballot in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he told reporters his attitude “is the best way to heal the rift in the country is to try to govern the country as well as we can”.

• Harris, who voted by mail ahead of election day, said her first order of business if elected to the White House would be “bringing down the cost of living for folks”.

• Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger said “non-credible” bomb threats that led to the temporary closure of two polling stations in Fulton county originated from Russia.

• The FBI warned Americans that two new fake videos bearing the agency’s name and insignia were being “misused in promoting false narratives surrounding the election”.

• A bipartisan coalition of 51 attorneys general across US states and territories urged people to remain peaceful and pre-emptively condemning “any acts of violence related to the results”.

Rachel Leingang

US Senate candidate and Trump ally Kari Lake just stopped by a Scottsdale polling place and told voters waiting in line to “stay in line.”

Her supporters grabbed her for photos and cheered for her. “Did you vote?” she asked them. “Did you vote for Trump? Did you vote for Lake?”

“Kari, you’re the best!” one supporter cheered. “Tell these jackals in the media,” she joked in response.

She got back on to a campaign bus emblazoned with “make Arizona grand again.”

Sam Levine

Reporting from Allentown, Pennsylvania:

I’ve just left a polling station in Allentown, which was much quieter than the one I went to in nearby Bethlehem first thing this morning.

One the voters I spoke with was Felix Garcia, a 59-year old mechanic who is Puerto Rican. He said that the racist comments a comic made at a rally about the island wouldn’t sway his vote.

“I decided to vote for him because I’m very concerned with the economy, the border. He said he can bring the companies to implement the jobs over here. I don’t like the things they’re teaching my kids in the school. A lot of bad things,” he said.

“Trump didn’t say [the racist comments about Puerto Rico at his Madison Square Garden rally]. It’s not coming from him. He came to work for all America, not only Puerto Ricans. Not only Black guys. All of them. And I’m happy with that.”

Another vocal Trump supporter was Jim Winburn, 62, who came out of the polling site and said, loudly, “Trump’s already won.”

“Republicans tell me what they’re gonna do, they don’t tell me what the problem with the other people is,” he said.

Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger has confirmed that “non-credible” bomb threats made against two polling stations in Fulton county originated from Russia.

Two polling locations in Fulton county were briefly evacuated on Tuesday morning after they received false bomb threats, county election officials said. The threats targeted five polls in total, they said.

Raffensperger told reporters that the threats originated in Russia but did not elaborate.

“They’re up to mischief, it seems,” he said according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “They don’t want us to have smooth, fair and accurate elections.”

Donald Trump is asked if he will tell his supporters not to be violent.

“I don’t have to tell them that there’ll be no violence. Of course there will be no violence,” Trump tells reporters in Florida.

He says his supporters “are not violent people … these are people that believe in no violence.”

“I certainly don’t want any violence, but I certainly don’t have to tell [these] great people,” he says.