Harris concedes to Trump; will speak today

President-elect Donald Trump’s victory Tuesday paves the way for an agenda which could cost Canada billions, including demands for higher defence spending and steep new tariffs on every shipment into the U.S.

Trump will return to the White House in January after beating Vice-President Kamala Harris in a closely fought election. He is promising tariffs of at least 10 per cent, potentially as much as 20 per cent, on all goods entering America. He has also demanded that NATO countries, like Canada, boost defence spending.

If you feel like we’re reliving the first days of Donald Trump’s first presidency, eight years ago, brace yourself for four more years of more of the same.

Americans didn’t just vote for change. They already are changed.

More than a “change election,” we’re looking at a changed country.

OTTAWA—Donald Trump, the once and future U.S. president, claims he will stop World War Three. But will he also undermine the fight on climate change?

That question — or something like it — jostled through the minds of environmentalists and green policy experts around the world on Wednesday, as they tried to come to terms with what Trump’s return to the White House will mean for international climate action. 

“Many of us in the climate movement are not … entirely surprised. But there’s still a kind of need to take it in, and acknowledge the real emotions that come with it — in terms of fear, anger, sadness,” said Caroline Brouillette, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada, an umbrella group of more than 150 organizations.

Harris told supporters gathered to hear her speak Wednesday at Howard University in Washington, D.C., that though the outcome of the election was not what they’d wanted, she was proud of the race they ran and the way they ran it. 

Harris said she has congratulated president-elect Donald Trump and has committed to helping his team with the transition. She promised a peaceful transition of power.

“While I concede this election I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign,” Harris said.

Donald Trump has promised sweeping action in a second administration.

The former president and now president-elect often skipped over details but through more than a year of policy pronouncements and written statements outlined a wide-ranging agenda that blends traditional conservative approaches to taxes, regulation and cultural issues with a more populist bent on trade and a shift in America’s international role.

Trump’s agenda also would scale back federal government efforts on civil rights and expand presidential powers.

Thanks to those who reached out to sarcastically ask if I need a wellness check, writes columnist Vinay Menon.

I do, after watching Donald Trump once again defy gravity. The former U.S. president is now president-elect. Congratulations. And condolences to anyone who cares about democracy, constitutional law, honesty, decency and how a steak should be prepared — well-done with ketchup is a mouth abomination.

The day after an election is when a columnist is supposed to peer into a crystal ball. I’m too scared to look. I don’t want to see Ukraine abandoned. I don’t want to see millions of migrants in concentration camps awaiting deportation by mule. I don’t want to see America tailspin into a great depression under the weight of self-destructive tariffs.

WASHINGTON—President-elect Donald Trump and his Republican allies had spent months seeding doubt in the integrity of American voting systems and priming supporters to expect a 2024 election riddled with massive and inevitable fraud.

The former president continued laying that groundwork even during a mostly smooth day of voting Tuesday, making unsubstantiated claims related to Philadelphia and Detroit and highlighting concerns about election operations in Milwaukee. Shortly before polls began closing, he took to his social media platform to announce, without providing details, “A lot of talk about massive CHEATING in Philadelphia.” The declaration produced immediate denials from city leaders who said there was zero evidence of any wrongdoing.

Yet Trump’s grim warnings abruptly ended in the later hours of the evening as early returns began tipping in his favor. During his election night speech, the president-elect touted a “magnificent victory” as he claimed ownership for the favorable results and expressed love for the same states he’d questioned hours earlier.

Voters had the chance this election to break the highest glass ceiling in American politics by electing Kamala Harris the nation’s first female president. Instead, they returned Donald Trump to the White House, a comeback that relied on significant — even somewhat improved – support among women.

Some female voters on Wednesday mourned the missed opportunity to send a woman to the Oval Office and wondered when, if ever, it might happen.

“I am just aghast,” said Precious Brady-Davis, a Black transgender woman who’d just won a two-year term on a Chicago-area water management board — but her joy in that was tempered. “I am disappointed in my fellow Americans that, once again, we did not elect a qualified woman to the presidency.”

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh told reporters in Ottawa that he accepts Trump “got the job” but did not congratulate him, saying he wants Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to tell Trump that his 10-percent tariffs “are wrong.”

Singh wouldn’t answer questions about why he doesn’t congratulate Trump, instead he emphasized the anxieties many Canadians felt upon Trump’s re-election. “Today’s a day to get ready to fight to protect, Canada, protect our jobs to protect our values,” he said.

It is hard to breathe today. Civility is dead. So is polling and punditry. But the most dangerous element of yesterday’s U.S. election results is the woman-hating engaged in by the Republican presidential ticket. Like other types of hatred, misogyny usually lurks in dark crevices, but Donald Trump has thrust the demeaning of women out into the light, where it is now breeding freely, writes Leanne Delap.

There was a TikTok trend this past week of shocked teens discovering the Access Hollywood “grab ’em by the p — y” tapes. They were too young in 2016 to have seen them. The modern world moves fast, but the internet is forever.

We’ve become inured to the coarseness of discourse — and gesture, to cite the fellatio-simulating microphone action Trump engaged in last week.

With Donald Trump set to return to office after defeating Kamala Harris on Tuesday, he will become the oldest president in the history of the United States.

Trump, now 78, has had several questions raised about his physical and mental well-being, which he has refused to reveal any details about.

WASHINGTON – Former President Donald Trump won Michigan on Wednesday, reclaiming the battleground state and its 15 electoral votes for the Republicans after Joe Biden flipped it in 2020 on his way to the White House. Trump won Michigan in 2016 by just over 10,000 votes, marking the first time a Republican presidential candidate had secured the state in nearly three decades. Trump’s Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, faced concerns that discontent among Democrats in metro Detroit over the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war could jeopardize her campaign. The Associated Press declared Trump the winner at 12:54 p.m. EST.

World leaders and celebrities flooded social media with congratulatory messages for President-elect Donald J. Trump in the wake of his decisive victory against Kamala Harris in the U.S. election.

Here’s what people are saying about Trump’s win:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he looks forward to congratulating Trump in person, who he said will usher in an “era of a strong United States of America” with his “decisive leadership.”

Donald Trump’s election victory was history-making in several respects, even as his defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris prevented other firsts. She would have been the nation’s first Black and South Asian woman to be president.

He’s the oldest to be elected

At 78, Trump is the oldest person elected to the U.S. presidency. When sworn in on Jan. 20, 2025, he will be a few months older than Joe Biden was at his inauguration in 2020. Trump’s running mate, 40-year-old JD Vance, will be the third-youngest vice president.

ATLANTA — Donald Trump’s victory means he is likely to name a U.S. attorney general who will halt the two federal prosecutions he is facing.

That means Fulton County’s election interference case could be the only criminal case left standing. And it will likely will be put on hold until at least 2029.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who won reelection to a second term Tuesday, has not directly addressed the question of what she will do with the case against Trump should he return to the White House. But many legal experts believe even if the Democrat moves forward she will ultimately be stymied by the U.S. Supreme Court.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Once viewed as a potential savior for the Democratic Party after Joe Biden ‘s reelection campaign stalled, Kamala Harris and her supporters are reckoning with a profound rejection by American voters in this year’s presidential election.

She is trailing in every battleground state to Donald Trump, a man she described as an existential danger to the country’s foundational institutions. And Trump appears on track to win the popular vote for the first time in his three campaigns for the White House — even after two impeachments, felony convictions and an attempt to overturn his previous election loss.

Harris has not yet conceded her loss. She’ll deliver a concession speech Wednesday at 4 p.m., her office announced. She’ll speak at Howard University, her alma mater in Washington, where her supporters watched returns Tuesday night before being sent home after midnight as Trump pulled ahead in battleground states. Her campaign did not disclose any plans to speak to Trump.

The outcome is particularly bitter for Harris because, as the sitting vice president, she is expected to oversee Congress’ ceremonial certification of the election.

U.S. stocks surged after Republican candidate Donald Trump won the election, with the Dow Jones industrial average gaining more than 1,300 points by late morning, while Canadian markets were more muted but also rose.

“It looks like the 2016 playbook all over again,” said John Zechner, chairman and lead equity manager at J. Zechner Associates.

So-called cyclical stocks including banks rose Wednesday, alongside other potential beneficiaries of less regulation and more economic stimulus, said Zechner in an email.

WASHINGTON— Donald Trump ‘s impending return to the White House means he’ll want to stand up an entirely new administration from the one that served under President Joe Biden. His team is also pledging that the second won’t look much like the first one Trump established after his 2016 victory.

The president-elect now has a 75-day transition period to build out his team before Inauguration Day arrives on Jan. 20. One top item on the to-do list: filling around 4,000 government positions with political appointees, people who are specifically tapped for their jobs by Trump’s team.

WASHINGTON— Donald Trump’s presidential win is going to be certified in Congress in January by the candidate he beat, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Under the Constitution, the vice president is the head of the Senate, and it’s the role of the Senate president to declare the result of a White House election.

Under normal circumstances, the vote-tallying procedure performed by the vice president is a mere formality and it’s the final step in the complicated technical process of electing a new administration.

As the results rolled in on Tuesday night and it became clear that the United States was moving back toward Donald Trump, I thought about Doug Ford and bike lanes, writes Star contributor Scott Stinson. 

The Ontario premier has moved with great haste to implement a quasi-ban on the construction of new bike lanes in the province, and in the city of Toronto he has gone further, moving to tear out existing lanes on three busy downtown streets. No one can seriously believe that removing some bike lanes will make a noticeable on traffic. If anything, it will just invite more cars into an already-choked downtown. What will the Premier say when the gridlock doesn’t improve?

It’s a typically Trumpian pledge: Here is an illogical solution to an intractable problem. But it sounds pleasing.

On a much broader scale, Trump has wooed his voters with similarly easy-sounding solutions to complex problems. 

Now that Donald Trump has been re-elected as president of the U.S., Canada is bracing for a trade war with its biggest export customer.

Damage will be done to Canada’s $900-billion (U.S.) trade relationship with the United States, writes columnist David Olive.

There will be harm on both sides of the border if Trump proceeds with his avowed imposition of a 10-per-cent to 20-per-cent tariff on U.S. imports.

Progressive-leaning voters are going to be looking for some kind of silver lining in Donald Trump’s return to power in the United States, writes Susan Delacourt.

Here is one: all those people whose faith in democracy was shaken by Trump’s loss four years ago, braced to declare this 2024 election corrupt too, can no longer complain that the system is rigged against them.

Democracy, in other words, has prevailed, even with a leader who is poised to shake it to its foundations and even with Trump’s declared promise to be a dictator on day one of his presidency.

If, as Pierre Trudeau famously said, living next to the U.S. is like sleeping next to an elephant, Canada is now bracing for the volatile lurches of a very different kind of pachyderm.

With Donald Trump set to return to the white house, the Star looks back in historical photos and quotes at the sometimes harmonious, sometimes tumultuous history of Canada’s most important relationship.

“As Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump piled-up the votes last night, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau must have been pinching himself in anticipation. For months, Trudeau and his PMO palace guard will have followed the U.S. presidential race polls more closely than most. Despite the whispers to the Star’s Ottawa Bureau, I’m dubious that the Liberals actually preferred a Kamala Harris victory.

How so? Trump’s political rebirth presents our Prime Minister with a career-saving opportunity: Trudeau gets to spend the next eleven months playing the delicious role of Escamillo, the brave bullfighting Toreador from Bizet’s timeless opera Carmen.

Trump is his bull, and we’ll soon be bombarded with stories about how Trudeau is preparing to defend Canada’s interests from a snarling, vicious, horned bovine.”

Don’t turn your back on your friends. Please.

That’s the message from Premier Doug Ford to U.S. president-elect Donald Trump and vice-president-elect JD Vance.

“Ontario is the number one export destination for 17 U.S. states and the number two export destination for another 11. I look forward to working with U.S. leaders at the federal, state and local levels to strengthen our trade and economic growth,” the premier said in his statement this morning.

He noted that Ontario and its southern neighbour “share one of the most important and enduring friendships in the world, built on strong economic ties, shared values, national security interests and integrated supply chains.”

Premier Doug Ford said he is “optimistic” about future trade opportunities between Ontario and a Trump-helmed U.S.

“Now is the time to bet big on the U.S.-Ontario relationship,” Ford said in a statement Wednesday morning. “I look forward to working with President-elect Trump, Vice President-elect Vance, their administration and leaders across the United States as we continue to build and grow together.”

Ford had recently expressed concern about the potential for increased protectionism under a new Trump administration. The former president has pledged a 10 per cent global tariff on foreign goods.

Trump is the first former president to return to power since Grover Cleveland regained the White House in the 1892 election. He is also the first person convicted of a felony to be elected president and, at 78, is the oldest person elected to the office.

His vice president, 40-year-old Ohio Sen. JD Vance, will become the highest-ranking member of the millennial generation in the U.S. government.

Early Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau posted a statement of congratulations to President-elect Trump on X, underlining the two countries’ “friendship” and shared goals.

“The friendship between Canada and the U.S. is the envy of the world. I know President Trump and I will work together to create more opportunity, prosperity, and security for both of our nations.”

Official Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre has not yet issued a statement.

However, New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh posted the night before that “no matter the outcome of the US Elxn, let me say this: Hope is always better than fear and division. Tomorrow, we’ll be ready to stand up for Canada.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he looks forward to congratulating Trump on his win in person, as well as an “era of a strong United States of America under President Trump’s decisive leadership.”

Grievance and nostalgia have proven a powerful political combination for Donald Trump.

But his return to power after a four-year absence — the first since Grover Cleveland’s non-consecutive second presidential term in 1893 — appears to be the product of shrewd and determined Republican efforts to reach certain voting blocks, particularly African Americans, Latinos and male voters across the country.

Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States on Wednesday, based on projections from the Associated Press.

It’s an extraordinary comeback for a former president who refused to accept defeat four years ago, sparked a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts.

With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. Trump has now collected 277 electoral votes to Harris’s 224. 

Trump is receiving kudos from world leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and French President Emmanuel Macron.

“Congratulations on history’s greatest comeback!” wrote Netanyahu in a post on X.

Trump, for his part, was declaring victory. “This is a magnificent victory for the American people that will make America great again,” he said to a gathering of his own supporters in Palm Beach, Fla. after 2:30 a.m. “We have taken back control of the Senate. The Senate races in Montana, Nevada, Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania were all won by the MAGA movement.”

Donald Trump won Pennsylvania early Wednesday, putting him just four electoral votes shy of defeating Kamala Harris to win the White House.

A win in Alaska or any of the outstanding battleground states — Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona or Nevada — would send the Republican former president back to the Oval Office.

As Donald Trump racked up more electoral votes, Kamala Harris’ campaign co-chair addressed her rally at Howard University, saying there are still votes to be counted and states left to be called and Harris will address the nation on Wednesday.

Polls closed in Nevada nearly three hours late after voters waited in long lines to cast ballots, the state’s top election official said, and initial election results began to be posted just before 10 p.m. PST.

Polls had been scheduled to close at 7 p.m., but state law allows anyone in line at that time to cast a ballot.

Harris won New Hampshire on Wednesday, continuing the state’s two-decade-long streak of awarding its four electoral votes to Democrats. New Hampshire has backed Democrats in seven of the last eight presidential elections. 

The former presidential candidate has arrived at the Palm Beach Convention Center, entering and walking briskly as he made his way near the stage among crowds of supporters.

Trump has said he will play a role when it comes to health policy but has not specified what that would be. Kennedy, who launched his own presidential bid as an independent before dropping out of the race and endorsing Trump, joined him at several rallies in the last stretch of the campaign.

Former President Donald Trump won the swing state of Georgia on Wednesday, returning its 16 electoral votes to the Republican column. Joe Biden narrowly carried Georgia in 2020, but Republicans have won every other Georgia presidential vote since 1996. 

Elon Musk appeared gleeful about the prospect of gaining influence over the federal government during a potential Donald Trump presidency.

He posted a photoshopped image of himself carrying a sink into the Oval Office, adding, “Let that sink in.” It’s a reference to when he took over Twitter, now X, and began shaking up operations at the social media company.

Trump has said Musk, the world’s richest man, would help him streamline government.

Harris’ campaign co-chair, Cedric Richmond, told the audience gathered at what was planned to be the Democratic nominee’s election night party at Howard University that the vice president would not speak tonight, but that the campaign was not giving up the fight against Trump.

“We still have votes to count. We still have states that have not been called yet. We will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken,” said Richmond. “So you won’t hear from the vice president tonight but you will hear from her tomorrow.”

Richmond said Harris would return to Howard “not only to address her supporters but to address the nation.”

The event, which began as a jubilant celebration of Harris and the prospect of a new presidency, began to sour as the Democrat’s path to victory narrowed.

He’s expected to speak tonight to his gathered supporters.

The GOP has won control of the Senate as Sen. Deb Fischer secures reelection in Nebraska.

With at least 51 Senate seats secured, Republicans will retake control of the chamber for the first time in four years. It gives the party a major power center in Washington and important power in confirming the next president’s Cabinet, as well as any Supreme Court justice if there is a vacancy.

With a handful of battleground races yet to be decided, Republicans still have an opportunity to grow their majority.

Vice President Kamala Harris won Hawaii and the state’s four electoral votes on Wednesday. It’s the 10th straight presidential election in which Hawaii has selected the Democratic Party candidate. The state last picked a Republican for the nation’s top office 40 years ago, when Ronald Reagan emerged victorious in 1984. 

This adds 13 electoral votes to her tally. Harris’ victory marks the third time Donald Trump has lost the Old Dominion state. The Democratic nominee for president has won Virginia in every election since 2008. 

Voters in Missouri — the first state to make abortion illegal after Roe v. Wade — approved a constitutional amendment that protects abortion in state law. The citizen-led initiative petition will legalize abortion up to 24 weeks, handing Democrats a crucial win on a top campaign priority.

The win adds five electoral votes to Democrats’ tally. The Democratic Party’s influence in New Mexico has only grown over the last two decades, with former President George W. Bush being the last Republican to win the state in 2004.

At Trump’s election night watch party, the crowd erupted in cheers, with some supporters pumping fists in the air and others jumping when the screen showed that Trump won North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes.

Some are yelling “fight, fight, fight.”

Harris won Oregon, adding eight electoral votes to her tally. Oregon has one more electoral vote this cycle than it did in the previous presidential election after gaining a congressional seat following the 2020 census. 

The first transgender person in Congress was elected in Delaware where Sarah McBride comfortably won a seat in the House of Representatives after having served two terms in the state’s senate.

Former President Donald Trump won the battleground state of North Carolina on Tuesday. Trump receives the state’s 16 electoral votes after defeating Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. 

Trump won Idaho for the third consecutive election on Tuesday, adding four electoral votes to his tally. Idaho is deeply red, and the Republican presidential nominee has carried the state with more than 60% of the vote for the last several elections.

Harris won California on Tuesday, giving her the largest prize in the presidential election – 54 electoral votes. The outcome in the heavily Democratic state where Harris previously served as a U.S. senator and attorney general was expected.

Harris also picked up Washington’s 12 electoral votes on Tuesday, beating former President Donald Trump in a state where he is not popular. 

Republican Ted Cruz will serve a third term as senator of Texas, CNN projects. Cruz is expected to fend off Democratic challenger Colin Allred, bringing the Republicans one step closer toward a Senate majority.

Cruz grew up in Texas but was born in Canada. (He gave up his Canadian citizenship in 2013.)

Allred was a long shot; no Democrat has won statewide office in Texas in 30 years. Still, the Democrats felt they had a chance, given the shifting demographics in the state and booming Hispanic population.

Allred would have been the state’s first Black senator.

Trump won Kansas and its six electoral votes on Tuesday. Republican candidates have carried Kansas in every presidential election since 1964, and it was the third election in a row that Trump has won the state.

He also won Iowa, claiming the state’s six electoral votes. Formerly considered a swing state, Iowa has proved to be a clear example of Trump’s appeal among Republican voters and his staying power in the GOP. A majority of Iowans backed Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 but chose Trump decisively in 2016 and again in 2020.

Colorado voters approved a state constitutional amendment enshrining protections for abortion. The measure repeals a ban on state and local funding for abortion and allows Medicaid and other government health insurance programs to cover the procedure. Abortion is already legal in Colorado at all stages of pregnancy. This is the third state ballot measure that has passed Tuesday night.

10:40 p.m. Opinion: Why election day is Judgment Day for Donald Trump — with his freedom, and more, at stake

In one hand are the scales of justice. In the other hand, the Sword of Damocles.

A President Donald Trump could slide between them.

For the 45th and possibly 47th occupant of the Oval Office, election day — and the sun hasn’t set on it yet — was tantamount to Judgment Day. Trump could end up in the White House or he could end up in prison.

He wasn’t just fighting Kamala Harris, he was fighting for his freedom.

At Paupers Pub on Bloor Street, as usual, the Leafs and Bruins game plays on the TVs that litter the bar. A similar scene unfolds upstairs — patrons nursing beers and gnashing their teeth on chicken wings, their eyes glued to the screens. But instead of hockey, it’s MSNBC.

It’s a similar scene unfolding throughout the city, as nervous Torontonians watch the U.S. election unfold with final opinion polls suggesting a close race between Vice-President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump

Especially on the edge of their seats are U.S. voters in Toronto, part of the 600,000 who are eligible to vote in the U.S. in Canada, according to the Federal Voting Assistance Program.

Harris won Colorado on Tuesday, picking up the state’s 10 electoral votes. Colorado was once a purple state, flipping between Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, but it has shifted blue in the past two decades.

She also won the District of Columbia on Tuesday, securing the capital’s three electoral votes. Harris’ win in D.C. is no surprise – the District is a longtime Democratic stronghold whose government repeatedly feuded with Republican Donald Trump when he was the president.

Canadian politicians treaded down a rocky but familiar path through American election night uncertainty, with no clear winner yet declared.

The Canada-U.S. Interparliamentary Group organized a watch party across the street from Parliament. Ahead of U.S. polls closing, Liberal John McKay, the group’s co-chair, quipped: “I think it might be a prayer meeting.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dropped by two other different watch parties, one where caucus members gathered at a bar off Parliament Hill, another at the home of a senior staffer, but would finish the evening back at Rideau Cottage, an official said.

Trump won Montana for the third consecutive election on Tuesday, adding four electoral votes to his tally. Montana has one more electoral vote this cycle than it did in the previous two, as the state received an additional congressional seat following the 2020 census.

He also won Utah and its six electoral votes. The Mountain West state is a rare Republican stronghold that has in past elections only half-heartedly supported Trump, whose brash style and comments about immigrants do not sit right with some members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormons, make up about half of Utah’s 3.4 million residents.

It will be a busy night for Georganne Burke, head of the Canada chapter of Republican Overseas.

She has a Global News hit lined up, several interviews and then she plans to watch the election unfold from her couch at home.

A dual citizen and voter in Florida, Burke said she used to be a Democrat, until she defected to the Republicans in 2016, charmed by Trump’s authenticity.

She said she’s worried about political violence from the left, if Harris doesn’t win, but says waiting for the result won’t keep her up.

“I’ll watch it as long as I can keep my eyes open,” she said. “And then I’ll just have to say, OK, that’s it. Goodnight.”

Trump won the reliably conservative state of Missouri on Tuesday, defeating Democrat Kamala Harris. Missouri voters overwhelmingly favored Trump over Democrats in the 2016 and 2020 elections, and he was favored to win again this year.

Several states have changed their early voting rules to reduce the delay in final results, which in some cases took four days after the last presidential election in 2020.

In Michigan, for example, new rules allow mail-in ballots to be counted starting eight days before election day. The state, where almost half of all votes cast are done by mail or drop box, expects to have all its absentee ballots counted tonight, avoiding the “mirage” of a Republican win that occurred in 2020.

Because mail-in ballots were overwhelmingly cast by Democratic voters, those watching the results on election night were left with the impression that Donald Trump had carried Michigan, but as counting of the absentee ballots wore into the next day, that lead evaporated and Joe Biden ended up winning by more than 150,000 votes.

This year, not only will those votes be counted more quickly, they’re less likely to skew so heavily Democratic as Republicans were encouraged to vote ahead of time as well.

Former President Donald Trump won Texas for the third consecutive election on Tuesday, adding 40 electoral votes to his tally. Texas gained two more electoral votes this cycle after the 2020 census. The Republican nominee for president has won Texas for nearly 50 years since Democrat Jimmy Carter carried the state in 1976.

Former President Donald Trump won North Dakota’s three electoral votes on Tuesday. Trump also picked up South Dakota’s three electoral votes for president. He also picked up wins in Louisiana and Wyoming.

Trump carried Ohio for a third time on Tuesday, defeating Democratic nominee Kamala Harris to capture the state’s 17 electoral votes. 

Republican Donald Trump won the statewide popular vote in Nebraska for the third consecutive election on Tuesday, receiving two electoral college votes. Nebraska is one of two states that divide electoral votes with two votes going to the statewide winner and one apiece to the winner of each congressional district.

Vice President Kamala Harris won New York’s presidential contest on Tuesday, picking up the state’s 28 electoral votes. New York has now voted for the Democrat in every presidential contest since giving Ronald Reagan the nod in his landslide 1984 election.

Florida voters reject abortion rights amendment and keep in place Gov. Ron DeSantis’ 6-week ban as the initiative fails to reach the required 60% threshold. The measure faced an uphill battle in the deeply red state where Trump, a Florida resident, said during the campaign that he would vote against it.

Vice President Kamala Harris won Illinois, claiming the state’s 19 electoral votes for Democrats. The reliably blue state, the home of former President Barack Obama, has supported Democratic presidential candidates since 1992. 

Harris also won Delaware’s presidential contest, easily defeating Republican Donald Trump. Harris’ victory in solid-blue Delaware was a foregone conclusion, given the stranglehold Democrats have held on the state’s three electoral votes for decades.

Former President Donald Trump secured Arkansas’ six electoral votes on Tuesday, winning the heavily Republican state for the third presidential election in a row.

Vice President Kamala Harris won New Jersey’s 14 electoral votes on Tuesday. Harris’ victory over Republican Donald Trump continues Democrats’ dominance in the state, which has gone with the Democratic candidate for president in every election since 1988.

As of 8:30 p.m., the Associated Press projects Trump to have won 101 electoral votes while Harris is projected to have 49 as more polls close across the U.S. Follow along for updates.

Former Florida Republican governor and incumbent senator Rick Scott has fended off a challenge from Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, whom Democrats had hoped would flip a red seat in the U.S. Senate on a day when polls indicated the party would lose control of the upper chamber of Congress.

Scott’s victory is the first of four senate seats that the Republicans need to win a majority in the Senate. The Democrats need nine of the 11 seats considered competitive.

Scott, who won his previous elections by a percentage point or less, cruised to victory, indicating Florida, which was once a swing state, is becoming more comfortably Republican.

According to the Associated Press, Donald Trump has won the states of South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Alabama and Mississippi. Kamala Harris, on other hand, will win in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Maryland. 

As of 8:15 p.m., Trump is projected to have 95 electoral votes while Harris is projected to have 35. 

Here’s where polls will close at 8 p.m. EST: Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Washington, D.C.

At 8:30 p.m. EST, polls will close in Arkansas.

Instead of attending his International relations class at U of T, Carter Fay, a first-year student and dual citizen, was busy door-knocking for Kamala Harris’ campaign in his home state of Georgia.

He spent all of his reading week, and more, in his hometown, encouraging voters to take a stance against Trump, a candidate he says “we need to take him at his word … he says he’s going to be a dictator.”

The mood of the other Harris volunteers as polls closed in Georgia, he said, was hopeful. It’s a state that Biden narrowly won in 2020, by just a 0.3 per cent margin.

This isn’t Fay’s first rodeo, he’s worked several election campaigns, and he knows that when he gets on his flight tomorrow back to Toronto, campaigning will have to take a back seat to his classes.

Still he’s apologetic towards his professor, whose class he skipped today, and will be catching up on his school work as he makes his way back to campus.

In addition to control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives, there are also many ballot measures — essentially popular referenda on contentious issues — that will be decided on Election Day.

Voters in dozens of states will be asked to support or oppose many measures including hikes to the minimum wage, stricter penalties for certain crimes, as well as the liberalization of marijuana laws and access to abortion.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, abortion rights have become a state-by-state issue, and ballot measures have taken over from the courts as the battleground.

Abortion rights advocates have prevailed in all seven ballot measures before Tuesday night. The right to an abortion was preserved in Vermont, Michigan, California and Ohio, while efforts to restrict abortions were defeated in Montana, Kentucky and Kansas.

Voters will now have the opportunity to have their say on reproductive rights in ten more states: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and South Dakota.

Trump won West Virginia for the third straight presidential election cycle on Tuesday. The victory adds four electoral votes to the former president’s count. West Virginia has one fewer electoral vote this cycle after losing a congressional seat following the 2020 census.

The Associated Press declared Trump the winner at 7:30 p.m. EST.

According to the Associated Press, Republican nominee Donald Trump is projected to win in Indiana (11 electoral votes) and Kentucky (eight electoral votes).

Democratic nominee Kamala Harris is projected to win Vermont (three electoral votes). 

At 7 p.m. ET, polls will close in Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia. Some polling stations had closed earlier in Kentucky and Indiana at 6 p.m. 

At 7:30 p.m. EST, polls will close in North Carolina, Ohio and West Virginia. By 8 p.m., polls in 16 states, including Pennsylvania, will close and polls will close in 15 more states by 9 p.m.

Shortly after 4:30 p.m. ET, Donald Trump claimed on TruthSocial, the social media platform he created after being banned from Twitter (now X) in the wake of Jan 6., there was talk of “massive CHEATING in Philadelphia,” but didn’t not provide any evidence. In the lead up to election day, experts have repeatedly raised concerns about Trump’s baseless allegations undermining trust in the electoral process.

According to CNN, the Philadelphia Police Department said they were not aware of what Trump was referring to.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner issued a statement responding to Trump’s post, saying the only suggestion of cheating was coming from the Republican presidential nominee.

“There is no factual basis whatsoever within law enforcement to support this wild allegation,” Krasner said. “We have invited complaints and allegations of improprieties all day. If Donald J. Trump has any facts to support his wild allegations, we want them now. Right now. We are not holding our breath.”

Democrat Gov. Josh Shapiro’s Department of State said, “Pennsylvania counties, including Philadelphia, are running a safe and secure election.”

-Alex Boyd and the Associated Press

The first polls will begin to close at 6 p.m. ET in parts of Kentucky and Indiana. By 7 p.m. ET, polls will fully close in six states, including Georgia and Virginia, and Florida will begin counting votes then as well.

By 8 p.m., polls in 16 states, including Pennsylvania, will close and polls will close in 15 more states by 9 p.m. By midnight, the last polls will close in Hawaii and most of Alaska, but in 2020, media organizations didn’t declare a winner in the election until four days after the election.

Miria Ioannou’s vote could be a deciding factor in the key swing state of Pennsylvania, but she’s not sure if it will count.

Her ballot, sent from Toronto, is the subject of a statewide challenge against more than 4,000 absentee ballots, which means the fate of her vote will drag out long past election day. Pennsylvania is a key kingmaker for the next president — Biden won there in 2020 by less than one per cent of the vote.

After frantically emailing election officials in her county and talking with the American Civil Liberties Union, Ioannou, a dual citizen who lives in Toronto, is ready for a long night.

“I’m just crossing my fingers and hoping it goes through,” she said.

Shares of former president Donald Trump’s social media company were halted on the New York Stock Exchange three times in the afternoon after a sudden plunge from Tuesday morning. Stock for Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, ended Monday evening at $34.34, before the stock jumped in the morning to a high of $40.74. As of 4:13 p.m., the price had returned back to $33.94 and trading had resumed.

“The path to the White House runs through North Carolina,” Harris said in an interview on Raleigh’s Foxy 107.1. “And it’s a tight race. We are tied. Every vote matters.”

Harris told host Karen Clark she plans to work the phones until polls close to get out every vote she can.

“This is about turning the page and bringing in a new generation of leadership for America,” Harris said.

Two of the seven battleground states are expecting to surpass their 2020 voter turnout records, state election officials said on Tuesday.

At a press conference in front of a Detroit polling station, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson told reporters that the state is on track to break voter turnout records this year after 3.3 million people, or 45.8 per cent of registered active voters, voted ahead of Election Day.

In 2020, Michigan saw a turnout rate of 70 per cent, or 5.5 million people voting in total.

And, in Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger told reporters that the state was also on track to surpass its 2020 turnout numbers.

Raffensberger said he expected 1.2 million people to vote by the time polls close at 7 p.m. EST, which would surpass 2020’s turnout of 4.9 million votes.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz told reporters Tuesday that his experience as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate “restored” his faith in the nation.

“This is truly a remarkable thing we do every four years,” he said in a conversation with reporters outside his campaign plane. “It’s democracy. It’s messy. It’s beautiful. It’s the people.”

“My faith in this country has been so restored,” he added.

Walz said he had not talked with Harris on Election Day but projected confidence that they would prevail over former president Donald Trump.

“I just can’t describe the difference in the vibe that is out there with folks and how hungry they are for something different,” he said.

Asked about the measure, which would keep the state’s six-week restriction in place, he avoided answering by simply saying he’d done “a great job bringing it back to the states.”

The second time, he snapped at a reporter, saying: “You should stop talking about it.”

Trump had previously indicated he would back the measure, but then changed his mind, saying he would vote against it.

The abortion measure would prevent lawmakers from passing any law that penalizes, prohibits, delays or restricts abortion until fetal viability, which doctors say is sometime after 21 weeks. If it’s rejected, the state’s current abortion law would stand.

U.S. Capitol Police say the man was stopped Tuesday during a security screening at the Capitol Visitor Center. Authorities say he smelled of fuel and was carrying the flare gun and torch.

Officials have cancelled public tours of the Capitol for the remainder of the day.

Police say they are still investigating.

The arrest comes as authorities are on heightened alert for security issues around the nation’s capital and have increased patrols in areas downtown and near the White House around Election Day. Nearly four years ago, a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Bomb threats that briefly disrupted two polling stations in Georgia originated in Russia, the state’s secretary of state said on Tuesday.

“We’ve heard some threats that were of Russian origin. I don’t know how to describe that that’s viable — we don’t think they are, but in the interest of public safety, we always check that out, and we’ll just continue to be very responsible when we hear about stuff like that,” Georgia Secretary of State George Raffensberger said before the media.

“We identified the source, and it was from Russia.”

Raffensberger also referenced another threat  believed to have been carried out by Russia late last month that targeted Georgia’s online absentee voter portal.

According to the Associated Press, that attack was an apparent attempt to crash the site ahead of the election. The attack was thwarted by state election officials.

“They’re up to mischief, it seems, and they don’t want us to have a smooth, fair and accurate election,” Raffensberger continued at Tuesday’s press conference.

“The FBI is aware of bomb threats to polling locations in several states, many of which appear to originate from Russian email domains. None of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far,” the agency said in an X post Tuesday afternoon.

The bomb threats were among multiple disturbances that U.S. officials are tracking.

But Cait Conley, a senior adviser to the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told reporters on a call Tuesday there were no national-level security incidents that were threatening to disrupt the election on a wide scale.

Officials continue to warn of what they say is an unprecedented level of foreign influence and disinformation that they expect will persist beyond Election Day.

Election Day voting unfolded largely smoothly across the nation Tuesday but with scattered reports of extreme weather, ballot printing errors and technical problems causing delays.

Most of the hiccups occurring by midday were “largely expected routine and planned-for events,” said Cait Conley, senior adviser to the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in a press briefing. She said the agency was not currently tracking any national, significant incidents impacting election security.

Helping voting run relatively smoothly on Election Day was the fact that tens of millions of Americans had already cast their ballots. Those included record numbers of voters in Georgia, North Carolina and other battleground states that could decide the winner.

Trump is suggesting he won’t challenge the results of the election — as long as it’s fair

“If it’s a fair election, I’d be the first one to acknowledge,” the results, Trump said, though what meets that definition wasn’t clear.

Speaking to reporters after voting in Florida, Trump said that he had no plans to tell his supporters to refrain from violence should he lose.

“I don’t have to tell them,” because they “are not violent people,” he said.

Trump planned to visit a nearby campaign office to thank those working on his behalf.

The man went to vote in the town of Fowler, N.Y., near the Canadian border at about 6:30 a.m., New York State Police said in a news release.

The man, who had previously been convicted of a felony, was told that he was ineligible to vote because he had not re-registered after being released from prison.

The man became irate and began threatening to return with a gun or to burn the place down, police said.

The man fled but was later picked up by state police and brought to the station for questioning. Charges against him were pending.

There are no NFL or NBA games today. Plenty of fans will be going to stadiums anyway.

At least 17 NFL and NBA facilities are either polling locations or ballot drop-off stations. Some teams even offered voters personalized “I Voted” stickers with team logos.

Tuesdays aren’t game days in the NFL.

Florida voters turning to a state-run website to check their voter registration status were getting an error message Tuesday morning.

A spokesperson for Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd confirmed the state’s online Voter Information Lookup tool was experiencing technical issues but did not answer questions about what was causing the problem.

“We’re working to resolve it,” spokesperson Mark Ard said. “We’re providing alternative websites and locations for voters to find their voter information, their precinct.”

Cait Conley, senior adviser to the director of the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency, said during a briefing that “we are not currently tracking any national level, significant incidents impacting the security of our election infrastructure. We are tracking instances of extreme weather and other temporary infrastructure disruption to certain areas of the country, but these are largely expected routine and planned for events.”

Conley said CISA, the FBI and intelligence communities did anticipate that foreign actors would try to influence the election later today and in the following weeks.

11 a.m. Opinion: My generation was supposed to put a woman in the White House. We’ve been waiting for Kamala Harris for too long

In all the anxiety about a possible second Donald Trump presidency, it’s easy to forget that America might, in a historic first, elect a woman as president.

My female generation X friends and I cannot forget this dream. We have booked our Washington hotel for the January inauguration weekend. We have waited long enough. We are ready to celebrate.

But first, we need to apologize for the delay.

The first clip falsely reports the FBI said Americans should “vote remotely” due to a high terror threat at polling stations. Meanwhile, the second clip contains a fabricated FBI press release alleging that the management of five prisons in three swing states — Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona — rigged inmate voting.

Both video clips, the FBI said, are not authentic and their contents are false.

“Attempts to deceive the public with false content about FBI threat assessments and activities aim to undermine our democratic process and erode trust in the electoral system,” the agency wrote.

10 a.m. Democrats hope to flip a reliably Republican Louisiana congressional seat with new boundaries.

In a critical election year, Democrats are looking to flip a once reliably Republican Louisiana congressional seat, where political boundaries were recently redrawn to form the state’s second mostly Black congressional district.

With five people on the ballot for Louisiana’s Sixth Congressional District, Democrats have thrown their support behind longtime politician Cleo Fields, 61. The state senator has been involved in state politics for three decades and served two terms in Congress after being elected in 1992.

9:30 a.m. Voters are gearing up to head to the polls to cast their ballots for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris in one of the nation’s most historic presidential races. They’ll also be determining which party will control the House and Senate.

Joe Rogan has endorsed Donald Trump in today’s U.S. election. The podcaster — who has hosted both Trump and his running mate, U.S. Senator J.D. Vance, this election cycle on his widely-listened “The Joe Rogan Experience” — voiced his support for the Republican nominee on X late Monday night, writing that he believed Elon Musk had made the “most compelling case for Trump.”

“I agree with (Musk) every step of the way,” Rogan wrote. 

Musk, for his part, has been a vocal supporter of the former president throughout the campaign, from attending multiple campaign events to offering $1 million to people who go out and vote for Trump. 

9:15 a.m. A Republican lawyer who interned in the White House under Donald Trump is challenging Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, the Georgia prosecutor who brought charges against the former president over efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Courtney Kramer worked in the White House counsel’s office during the Trump presidency and is active in GOP organizations. She’s the first Republican to run for district attorney in Fulton County since 2000.

Fulton County, which is home to 11 per cent of the state’s electorate and includes most of the city of Atlanta, is a Democratic stronghold.

Polls opened across the nation Tuesday morning as voters faced a stark choice between two candidates who have offered drastically different temperaments and visions for the world’s largest economy and dominant military power. Millions of Americans had already cast their ballots, voting by mail and early in-person voting.

The race to become America’s 47th president looks like it will be a photo finish between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris as Americans head to the polls Tuesday.

The two main candidates have been neck and neck through the last weeks of the campaign, but how they got to the finish line could not have been more different.

Harris, the current vice-president and a former U.S. senator and California attorney general, has pledged to create opportunities for the middle-class families, to support the push to restore abortion rights, and to heal the country after years of bitter political division.

Millions of Americans are heading to the polls Tuesday as a chaotic presidential campaign reaches its peak in a deeply divided United States, where voters in only a handful of battleground states will choose the country’s path forward.

Vice-President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump have presented starkly different visions for America’s future, but polling shows the two remain in a dead heat.

“Any election in the U.S. is important and impactful for us,” said Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to the United States. “They are central to our economic prosperity. They are a vital security partner.”

7:35 a.m. Opinion: Kamala Harris can’t stop America from hating women

America hates women. Were I writing this for a major American newspaper — within days of an election that might deliver the nation its first woman president, or in general — I would likely be asked to hedge my assertion. “It may seem that America hates women,” I would probably write, bequeathing women-hating newspaper readers just enough plausible deniability to hang onto their paid subscriptions.

Fortunately for all involved, I can drop those pretences here. That’s because, outside of the U.S., the country’s hatred for women is plain. As of the 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade, abortion is fully banned in 13 states and heavily restricted in eight more; in parts of the country, women have been criminalized for miscarried pregnancies and stillbirths. The U.S. accounts for 70 per cent of female homicide victims from high-income countries and has the highest maternal mortality rate of the so-called “developed” world. Perhaps most telling of all, the country elected Donald Trump to be its president, and may do so again.

A presidential campaign marked by upheaval and rancour approached its finale on Election Day as Americans decided whether to send Donald Trump back to the White House or elevate Kamala Harris to the Oval Office.

Voters on Tuesday faced a stark choice between two candidates who have offered drastically different temperaments and visions for the world’s largest economy and dominant military power.

6:30 a.m. Opinion: ‘Tomorrow! The sun’s coming up now!’ Inside Kamala Harris’s overly complicated, utterly exhausting final act in Philadelphia

Kamala Harris’s final argument to the American people — an exhausting and often baffling rally in Philadelphia — played out Monday night like a conservative fantasy of the worst that can happen when liberals are left in charge: It was expensive. It was overcomplicated. It left many of the people it purported to serve unsatisfied, annoyed and increasingly alienated as the night went on.

From a logistics point of view it was easily the worst large political event I have ever attended, and I covered Donald Trump in 2016. If it was a sign of how the broader Harris campaign was operating heading into election day, I fear it was a catastrophic one, at least for anyone desperate to move on from the last, endless decade of Donald Trump.

Canadians are eager to see how the results of the contentious U.S. presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will shape the next four years.

But before they can get to that, they’ll have to tune in on Tuesday — not so simple, thanks to a media landscape that’s more fragmented than ever.

“A good chunk of Canadians are getting their news mostly from the internet,” says Philip Mai, co-director of the Social Media Lab at the Ted Rogers School of Management.

Monday 10 a.m. Doug Ford warns of the perils of protectionism on the eve of U.S. election

Ahead of Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election, Premier Doug Ford is warning that protectionism would hurt Ontario, America’s third-largest trading partner.

Ford — who has expressed concern about the threat by former president Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, to slap hefty tariffs on foreign goods and services — underscored the importance of trade between the province and U.S. states.

“Regardless of the outcome of this week’s elections, we stand ready to work with our partners south of the border,” the premier said in a statement Monday.

Word came unexpectedly in January 2017 that President Donald Trump wanted to talk to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Officials scrambled to connect the two leaders and racked their brains: what urgent matter had they not foreseen?

Trudeau had already had a friendly congratulatory call with the newly inaugurated Republican president. Trump, who campaigned on ripping up the North American free trade deal and forcing Canada and all NATO allies to spend more on defence, riffed on Trudeau’s famous father, the former prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau.

Among the millions glued to their TV sets Tuesday night watching U.S. election results will be a group of people in Montreal with a particular connection to Democratic candidate Kamala Harris — her high school classmates.

Long before she became an American vice-president and presidential candidate, Harris spent several years in Montreal and attended Westmount High School from 1978 to 1981.

While she doesn’t talk much about that time, one of her former classmates believes her high school years helped shaped who she would become.

Opinion: A final U.S. election plea to Trump’s MAGA supporters: Make America Sane Again

We’ve had a rough ride over the last decade. I’ve written mean things about you. You’ve emailed mean things to me. It’s a hostile standoff in which I unfairly label you as dipsticks and you casually wish for my death in a fiery car crash.

Bygones! With the U.S. election less than 100 hours away, I come to you with an olive branch and one question: Can you survive a Trump 2.0?

As the Washington Post reported in 2021: “No other modern president has left the U.S. with a smaller workforce than it had when they took office.” Politico: “America’s trade gap soared under Trump.” FactCheck.org: “The federal debt held by the public went up, from $14.4 trillion to $21.6 trillion.” The Atlantic: “Trump is the worst president in history.”

Opinion: Donald Trump is going to win the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Here are three reasons why

If there is one thing I’ve learned in my time writing this column, it’s that readers, especially those who read regularly, would rather I be direct, precise and dead wrong, than prevaricating, wishy-washy and possibly correct.

Donald Trump is going to win the 2024 U.S. presidential election. On election night. Decisively.

Opinion: ‘When he talked about Puerto Rico, it was like, ‘That’s not them, that’s me’:’ Will one bad joke sink Donald Trump in the swingiest swing state in America?

The suburban collar counties of Philadelphia, a leafy stole draped on the shoulders of Pennsylvania’s largest city, exist in the American political imagination much like the Toronto suburbs do in the Canadian. No one in the country at large thinks about them all that much, in other words, until election years, when everyone thinks about them all of the time.

Opinion: Pennsylvania is on fire: What we don’t talk about when we talk about Donald Trump

The weather in Philadelphia, just about everyone in Philadelphia is eager to say, is not normally this hot in November. The grass isn’t normally this yellow, either. The sidewalk cafes aren’t normally full at night. There aren’t normally lineups for ice cream outside in the month when the snow used to come, and the air used to freeze, and the late fall winds used to strip the trees of their last, carotenoid-laden leaves.

I landed in Philadelphia to cover the final days of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 1. It was the region’s 33rd consecutive day without rain. The city itself had tied a record the day before for the hottest Halloween in history. It hit 28 C that afternoon and stayed hot overnight. On Friday, in nearby West Chester, a red-faced Secret Service agent desperately tried to inch into the shade while searching guests headed into an appearance by Doug Emhoff, the Second Gentleman of the United States. Earlier that day, in Allentown, north of the city, the mayor, wearing a black T-shirt and dark blue jeans, begged to do an interview in the shade after hosting a press conference with Rosie Perez.

Working class. Muscle class. Blue collar.

Whatever you call them — pollsters define the demographic as people without college degrees — they’re a great big chunk of labour that Kamala Harris is reportedly shedding by the day.

In Michigan, automotive workers, factory workers, steel mill workers — trade unionists — who have long flocked to the Democratic Party, a reliable voting bloc down through the decades. The union members who, in 2020, allowed President Joe Biden to carry the state — and its 16 electoral votes — by 154,000 votes, seizing the battleground state back from Donald Trump, who’d surprisingly claimed Michigan in 2016 by a razor-thin 0.23 per cent.

The American election is deadlocked.

That is, each side sees the other through a glass darkly, existentially calamitous for the country. In these waning hours of full throttle door-knocking and frenetic phonebank calling, foreboding rhetoric has been ratcheted to a smoke alarm pitch.

But this isn’t the end of days, whatever happens Tuesday. The republic survived Donald Trump once, it can do so again, should it come to that. And Kamala Harris isn’t a Marxist, or “crazy,” or “low I.Q.” — among the milder insults her opponent has thrown at her. Neither can undo 248 years of democracy forged in the fire, though only one has threatened to terminate the Constitution.

It’s the election that no one could have foreseen.

Not so long ago, Donald Trump was marinating in self-pity at Mar-a-Lago after being impeached twice and voted out of the White House. Even some of his closest allies were looking forward to a future without the charismatic yet erratic billionaire leading the Republican Party, especially after his failed attempt to overturn an election ended in violence and shame. When Trump announced his comeback bid two years ago, the New York Post buried the article on page 26.

At the same time, Kamala Harris was languishing as a low-profile sidekick to President Joe Biden. Once seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party, she struggled with both her profile and her portfolio, disappointing her supporters and delighting her critics. No one was talking about Harris running for the top job — they were wondering if Biden should replace her as his running mate when he sought a second term.

The U.S. presidential election is here. Tomorrow, millions of Americans will go to the polls in what will be one of the world’s most-watched elections.

Swing states, faithless electors, the electoral college — there’s a lot to know about the uniquely American spectacle that happens every four years. As our largest trading partner and border-sharing neighbour prepares to elect its next head of state, Canadians are waiting with baited breath to see who will land in the White House: Democratic nominee Kamala Harris or the Republican alternative, Donald Trump.

Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016 because of the Electoral College. So did George W. Bush in 2000.

The Electoral College is the unique American system of electing presidents. It is different from the popular vote, and it has an outsize impact on how candidates run and win campaigns. Republicans Trump and Bush lost the popular vote during their presidential runs but won the Electoral College to claim the nation’s top office.