WASHINGTON: Election Day is nearly upon us. In a matter of hours, the final votes in the 2024 presidential election will be cast.
In a deeply divided nation, the election is a true toss-up between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump.
There are seven battleground states that will likely decide the outcome, barring a major surprise. Major questions persist about the timing of the results, the makeup of the electorate, the influx of misinformation, and even the possibility of political violence. Both sides are also prepared for a protracted legal battle that could complicate matters further.
Here's What to Watch on the Eve of Election Day 2024:
History Will Be Made Either Way
Given all the twists and turns in recent months, it's easy to overlook the historical significance of this election.
Harris would become the first female president in the United States' 248-year history. She would also be the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to hold the office. Although Harris and her campaign have largely downplayed gender and race for fear of alienating some supporters, the significance of a Harris win would not be lost on historians.
A Trump victory would represent a different kind of historical accomplishment: he would be the first person convicted of a felony to be elected to the U.S. presidency, having been convicted of 34 felony counts in a New York hush-money case just five months ago.
Trump argues that he is the victim of a politicized justice system, and tens of millions of voters apparently believe him or are willing to overlook his extraordinary legal baggage.
How Long Will It Take to Know the Winner?
Election Day in the United States is often seen as Election Week, as each state follows its own rules and practices for counting ballots. The truth is, nobody knows how long it will take for a winner to be announced this time.
In 2020, The Associated Press declared President Joe Biden the winner on Saturday afternoon four days after polls closed. In that election, The AP called North Carolina for Trump 10 days after Election Day and Georgia for Biden 16 days later after hand recounts.
In 2016, the election was decided just hours after most polls closed. The AP declared Trump the winner on election night at 2:29 a.m. (technically Wednesday morning on the East Coast). This time, both campaigns believe the race is extremely close across the seven swing states expected to decide the election: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
The size of the map and the tightness of the race make it hard to predict when a winner could be declared.
Where Can I Find Early Clues About How the Contest Might Unfold?
Look to two East Coast battleground states, North Carolina and Georgia, where results could come in relatively quickly. That doesn’t mean we’ll get the final results in those states quickly if the returns are close, but they are the first swing states that might offer a sense of the night’s trajectory.
In North Carolina, Harris’ margins in Wake and Mecklenburg Counties, home to the state capital of Raleigh and the state’s largest city, Charlotte, respectively, will reveal how much Trump will need to rely on the less-populated rural areas he has dominated.
In Pennsylvania, Harris needs heavy turnout in deep blue Philadelphia, but she's also looking to boost the Democrats’ advantage in the suburban counties to the north and west of the city. She has campaigned aggressively in Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery counties, where Biden improved on Clinton’s 2016 winning margins. The Philadelphia metro area, including these four collar counties, accounts for 43 percent of Pennsylvania’s vote.
Elsewhere in the Blue Wall, Trump needs to blunt Democratic growth in Michigan's key suburban counties outside of Detroit, especially Oakland County. He faces a similar challenge in Wisconsin's Waukesha County outside of Milwaukee.
Where Are the Candidates?
Trump is expected to spend the early hours of Election Day in Michigan, where he will hold a final late-night rally in Grand Rapids, as has become his tradition.
The Republican candidate plans to spend the rest of the day in Florida, where he is expected to vote in person, despite previously saying he would vote early. He has a campaign watch party scheduled in Palm Beach Tuesday night.
Harris plans to attend an Election Night party at Howard University in Washington, a historically Black university where she graduated with a degree in economics and political science in 1986 and was an active member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.
Aside from her appearance at Howard, she has no public schedule announced for Election Day. Harris mentioned on Sunday that she had “just filled out” her mail-in ballot, which was “on its way to California.”
Who's Left to Show Up on Election Day?
On the eve of Election Day, it’s unclear which voters will show up to cast ballots on Tuesday.
More than 77 million people have participated in early voting either in person or by mail. Some officials suggest that the polls in states like Georgia might be a “ghost town” on Election Day.
One major reason for the surge is that Trump has generally encouraged his supporters to vote early this time, reversing his stance from 2020, when he urged Republicans to vote only in person on Election Day. The early vote numbers indicate that millions of Republicans have heeded Trump's call in recent weeks.
The key question, however, is whether the surge of Republicans who voted early will ultimately cannibalize the number of Republicans who show up on Election Day.
There are also shifts on the Democratic side. Four years ago, as the pandemic lingered, Democrats overwhelmingly cast their ballots early. This time around, without the public health risk, it’s likely that more Democrats will show up in person on Election Day.
The balance on both sides is critical as we try to understand the early returns. It’s up to the campaigns to know which voters they still need to turn out on Tuesday. On that front, Democrats may have an advantage.
Trump's campaign and the Republican National Committee have outsourced much of their get-out-the-vote operation to outside groups, including one funded largely by billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk, which is facing new questions about its practices. In contrast, Harris’ campaign is running a more traditional operation featuring over 2,500 paid staffers and 357 offices in battleground states alone.
Could There Be Unrest?
Trump has been promoting baseless claims questioning the integrity of the election. He falsely asserts that he can lose only if Democrats cheat, even as polls indicate a true toss-up.
Trump could again claim victory on election night regardless of the results, just as he did in 2020.
Such rhetoric can have serious consequences, as seen when Trump loyalists stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in one of the darkest days in modern American history. Unfortunately, there remains a potential for further violence this election season.
The Republican National Committee will have thousands of “election integrity” poll monitors in place on Tuesday, searching for signs of fraud. Critics fear this could lead to harassment of voters or election workers. In some key voting places, officials have requested the presence of sheriff's deputies, in addition to bulletproof glass and panic buttons that connect poll managers to a local 911 dispatcher.
At the same time, Trump allies note that he has faced two assassination attempts in recent months, raising the possibility of further threats against him. Police in Washington and other cities are preparing for the possibility of serious unrest on Election Day.
As always, it’s worth noting that a broad coalition of top government and industry officials, many of them Republicans, found that the 2020 election was the “most secure” in American history.
