Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Sam Levin in San Francisco, Tom McCarthy,Amanda Holpuch and Erin Durkin in New York

Democrats secure 218 seats in midterms to win control of House – as it happened

Interactive

Summary

The Guardian’s Erin Durkin is continuing our live coverage of the election results from New York. Follow along here.

Here’s a summary of the big events of election day and the undecided races we are still closely watching.

Updated

Possible runoff in Georgia

Stacey Abrams’ campaign has sent out an update about the possibility of a runoff in the Georgia governor’s race, where she is trailing behind Republican Brian Kemp, but tens of thousands of votes have yet to be counted. Some key facts from the Democratic candidate:

  • As of 4am local time, there was a difference of 85,167 votes separating Kemp and Abrams, which represents just over 2% of votes cast.
  • To trigger a runoff, the Abrams campaign needs to net 24,379 votes out of the tens of thousands of potential ballots that remain outstanding.
  • Three of the four largest counties in the state – DeKalb, Gwinnett, and Cobb – have reported only a portion of the votes that were submitted by early mail. In Cobb, anywhere between 25,000 and 26,000 votes were submitted early by mail.
  • Four other large counties – Chatham, Henry, Douglas, and Clarke – have reported zero votes by mail.
  • Together, those seven counties are expected to return a minimum of 77,000 ballots. These counties also represent heavily-Democratic leaning constituencies.

Earlier in the night, Kemp said the “math is on our side to win”.

The election cycle saw the emergence of a new trend in political campaigning: denouncing the candidacies of one’s own family members. In Missouri, Steve West, a Republican candidate for the state general assembly, faced opposition from his son and daughter, who spoke out against his racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic views. In Utah, 12 relatives of Republican gubernatorial candidate Adam Laxalt wrote an op-ed calling the politico out for his “phoniness”. (Twenty-two relatives responded with their own op-ed supporting Laxalt, proving at the very least that the politico has a significant number of relatives.) And in Arizona, six of Republican congressman Paul Gosar’s nine siblings starred in a series of attack ads against their rightwing brother.

West and Laxalt both lost, Gosar won, and 45 people can look forward to a very interesting Thanksgiving.

Democrats flip seven state chambers

The Democrats have also made significant gains in state legislatures, which often receive little attention during the midterms, but are hugely important for local policy.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) has provided this update:

In addition to flipping chambers in Colorado, Minnesota, Maine, New Hampshire and New York, the Democrats have flipped a total of 333 seats, according to the DLCC. Maine, Colorado and Illinois also now have Democratic “trifectas”, with Democratic governors winning seats.

The DLCC reported that there were also a number of historic wins in the state races, including the first black state senator in New Hampshire, the first openly transgender state legislator in New Hampshire, the first openly LGBTQ state senator in Michigan, and the first Iranian-American state senator in New York.

Ballot measures: voting rights, marijuana, tampons and tech tax

Voters have passed critical state ballot measures across the country:

  • Florida voted to restore voting rights to people convicted of felonies.
  • San Francisco voters passed a tax on big companies that would affect technology firms and fund housing and services for the homeless.
  • Voters in Massachusetts became the first state to affirm transgender rights in a statewide vote.
  • Legal marijuana continued to spread across the US.
  • Nevada voted to exempt feminine hygiene products from state and local sales taxes.
  • Four states voted on the expansion of Medicaid coverage to more low-income residents, a key aspect of the Affordable Care Act.

Read more from the Guardian’s Julia Carrie Wong:

Animal rights victory in California

Animal welfare advocates notched a big victory in California, as voters approved a ballot measure requiring farmers to increase the size of cages holding hens, pigs and calves and ensure that all eggs sold in the state are cage-free by 2022.

The vote has national implications because the regulations extend to any farm or agribusiness wanting to do business in California.

California voters also resisted calls to repeal a state gas tax passed to improve roads and other crumbling infrastructure. The measure, heavily touted by Republicans, was widely seen as a stalking-horse measure to excite Republican voters in a state where Republicans generally have little to be excited about.

Summary

If you’re just joining our live coverage, here’s a summary of the big wins of the night – and the key races that remain undecided:

Some background from the Guardian’s Dominic Rushe on the significance of Scott Walker’s defeat in Wisconsin:

Few governors have been as influential as Scott Walker in the past decade. Walker brought the state to a standstill and himself to national attention in 2011 after passing Act 10, a bill that gutted collective bargaining rights for public sector unions and slashed their benefits. Thousands took to the street’s in protest and opponents attempted to have Walker kicked out of office. The governor not only beat off the recall move, the first governor in the US to survive such an effort, but won re-election in 2012.

Act 10 has led to a dramatic slump in union membership in Wisconsin and made Walker a star among the anti-labour, big business set, as the Guardian showed in 2016. The Koch brothers and others have poured millions into his campaigns and anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist has argued Walker has been more influential in defeating the progressive agenda than Trump. If his policies are “enacted in a dozen more states, the modern Democratic party will cease to be a competitive power in American politics. It’s that big a deal,” he wrote last year.

Walker then launched a short-lived bid for the Republican presidential nomination but was firmly beaten back by Trump. Not that it cooled his ardor for the party. Since his re-election Walker has worked tirelessly to ensure Republican dominance in the state. In 2011, Republicans redrew Wisconsin’s electoral boundaries, effectively eliminating swing districts and creating safe Republican seats.

In the first election after the redistricting, Republicans won 60 out of 99 seats in the state assembly with just 48.6% of the statewide vote. In the 2014 election, Republicans won 63 of the 99 seats with just 52% of the vote. Local Democrats sued and a lower court ruled the redistricting was unconstitutional.

Updated

California races too close to call

With many of California’s most closely fought congressional races too close to call, candidates began to prepare their supporters and campaign volunteers for the prospect of a vote count that could last not just hours but days or even weeks.

In California’s 48th district, where Democratic businessman Harley Rouda is seeking to unseat the eccentric rightwing incumbent Dana Rohrabacher, Rouda seized on a temporary lead of 800 votes to tell an enthusiastic crowd in a hotel ballroom, “I don’t know when the final returns will be completed here.”

His supporters were having none of it. “I do!” one shouted. “You’ll win!”

Harley Rouda, the 48th Congressional district Democratic candidate
Harley Rouda, the 48th Congressional district Democratic candidate Photograph: Monica Almeida/Reuters

Still, the speech was a signal that a final result was unlikely to come any time soon. At least three other California races, in the 10th, 25th and 45th districts, were within five percentage points, with many more returns still to come. Absentee ballots are likely to throw a further element of the unknown – particularly those postmarked as late as election day which might not be delivered and ready to count until later this week.

Rouda said he was confident he would get over the finish line and spoke of the need for elected officials “who put country and community first” – a dig at Rohrabacher’s cosy relationship with Putin’s Russia and the alignment of his policy positions with his corporate campaign contributions.

Alaska's Don Young re-elected

Alaska representative Don Young, the longest-serving member of the House, has won a 24th term, defeating Alyse Galvin, an education advocate. Young was first elected in 1973, and Galvin was making her first run for political office.

Young once famously pinned former speaker John Boehner against a wall inside the House chamber during a debate about earmarks – and held a 10-inch knife to his throat. Young has a long history of incendiary remarks and actions, including once brandishing an 18-inch-long walrus penis bone.

Recently, he faced widespread condemnation after he suggested that Jews could have avoided perishing in the Holocaust if they had armed themselves. Here’s a thread from earlier in the day on Young’s history:

Republican Dean Heller concedes in Nevada

Democratic representative Jacky Rosen of Nevada has beat incumbent Dean Heller, who has held the seat since 2011:

Heller was a critical target for Democrats, since he was the only Senate Republican up for re-election in a state that went to Hillary Clinton. Rosen is a former synagogue president serving her first term in Congress.

Updated

Democrats secure 218 seats to gain control of House

It’s official. Democrats have gained the 218 seats needed to seize control of the US House, the AP reported at around 3am EST.

Brian Kemp: 'Math is on our side to win'

Brian Kemp, the Republican nominee for governor in Georgia, has just addressed supporters, saying his campaign was still “waiting on the final results”, but adding:

Make no mistake, the math is on our side to win this election. We are waiting on the final results, but I’m confident that victory is near.

Kemp has faced intense scrutiny for his decision to continue overseeing the elections as secretary of state and has previously said he won’t recuse himself if the race goes to a recount. Kemp was leading by a small margin as of around 3am local time, but Stacey Abrams has not conceded.

Kemp also got loud cheers when he said his campaign had “battled the radical left and took on the fake news”:

Stacey Abrams: 'Every vote is getting counted'

Stacey Abrams has delivered a passionate early morning speech saying she will fight to ensure that every vote is counted:

An excerpt from her speech:

Hard work is in our bones, and we have proven this every single day, Georgia ... Tonight, we have closed the gap between yesterday and tomorrow. But we still have a few more miles to go. Here me clearly – that, too, is an opportunity to show the world who we are. Because in Georgia, civil rights has always been an act of will and a battle for our souls...

Democracy only works when we work for it, when we fight for it, when we demand it. And apparently today when we stand in lines for hours to meet at the ballot box, that’s when democracy works. But I’m here tonight to tell you, votes remain to be counted. There are voices that are waiting to be heard....

We believe our chance for a stronger Georgia is just within reach. But we cannot seize it until all voices are heard. And I promise you tonight we’re going to make sure that every vote is counted. Every single vote. Every vote’s getting counted ... In a civilized nation, the machinery of democracy should work for everyone, everywhere, not just in certain places and not just on the certain day.

Scott Walker loses to Tony Evers in Wisconsin

Republican Scott Walker has lost his seat for governor in Wisconsin in a tight, closely watched race:

It’s a shock defeat for Walker, known for his attacks on Wisconsin’s public sector unions, and a surprise win for Evers, the state’s public education chief. Here’s Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs’ earlier report this year on Walker:

Devin Nunes wins re-election

Democrats in California have their sights on seven congressional districts that returned a Republican congressman in 2016 but favored Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. A little more than two hours after the polls closed in the Golden State, the Republicans enjoy a clear lead in two of the districts (the 21st and 39th), the Democrats enjoy a clear lead in one (the 49th), and the rest appear to be toss-ups.

Just a few dozen votes separate Katie Hill, a millennial affordable housing activist, from incumbent Republican congressman Steve Knight in the 25thdistrict northwest of Los Angeles, and just a few dozen votes separate Harley Rouda, a businessman, from 15-term Republican incumbent Dana Rohrabacher on the Orange County coast.

Campaign volunteers and staff for Andrew Janzhigh five at their campaign headquarters in Fresno, California.
Campaign volunteers and staff for Andrew Janzhigh five at their campaign headquarters in Fresno, California. Photograph: Alex Edelman/REX/Shutterstock

The other races the Democrats had fantasized about winning appear to be slipping from their grasp. Duncan Hunter, the Republican congressman indicted earlier this year on corruption charges, appears to be pulling away from Ammar Campa-Najjar, the 29-year-old former Obama White House staffer who faced daunting odds in a heavily conservative area of suburban San Diego.

And Devin Nunes, the controversial chair of the House Intelligence Committee accused of covering for Trump in Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, has won re-election despite a spirited challenge from Andrew Janz, a prosecutor from Fresno in the agricultural inland Central Valley.

Updated

After calling the night a “tremendous success” earlier, Trump is now tweeting praise of himself. The president has not tweeted about the Democrats winning back the House.

The governor’s race in Wisconsin is shaping up to be a very tight one:

As of about 1am local time, with 98% of precincts reporting, the Democrat Tony Evers was leading by hundreds of votes over incumbent Scott Walker, according to the New York Times’ live updates.

An update from the Guardian’s Chris McGreal in Iowa:

Steve King’s apparent victory in Iowa’s fourth district – albeit by what looks to be a very small margin compared to his previous elections – appears all the more strange beside Congressional races in other parts of the state. The Democrats looked to have flipped two of the other three districts and to have held the third. That makes King the only remaining Republican from Iowa in Congress, and an enduring embarrassment that even his own party leaders in the state have sought to distance themselves from.

One explanation for King’s enduring support is that he is an eight-term congressman running in a district Trump won by two votes to one in 2016. King has traditionally won by around 20 points. His Democratic opponent, JD Scholten, looks to have reduced that to the low single digits in part by talking about healthcare and the need for a different kind of political conversation to King’s repeated provocations against minorities, associating with the far right at home and abroad, and mission to offend. Although Scholten looked to have a high mountain to climb, he had several factors in his favour.

He raised much larger campaign funds than King and the Republican’s own party leaders all but disowned him. And still he lost.

Scholten gave a brief concession speech. “I did things no other Democrat has ever done in this district,” he said. “I’m damn proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish.” That was some comfort to disconsolate Democrats at what they had hoped would be Scholten’s victory party but they still struggled to explain defeat to what one activist, Linda Santi, called “that neo-Nazi”.

“There are people who want to shrug off what he says. That’s part of it,” said Santi. She thought Trump’s move to win over dairy farmers by protecting them from his actions in the tariff wars played a part too: “Maybe there are also people who want to vote for someone like King for the things he says. People who like the dog whistle.”

Early estimates suggest that there was high turnout this election:

With 114 million voters, it would appear that this year saw 31 million more ballots than the 2014 midterms.

Interestingly, the New York Times senate results as of now has 40.7m votes cast for the Democrats, while the Republicans have 31.6m votes. But so far, the GOP has gained three seats, while the Democrats have lost three seats. Those numbers could shift as more votes are counted throughout the night.

Georgia race could be runoff, says Abrams campaign

We’ve just had another update from the Stacey Abrams campaign here in Atlanta. Her campaign manager Lauren Groh-Wargo told the crowd that they are expecting the race will go to a runoff after the remaining ballots are counted:

It’s going to still be a long night and we’re unlikely to have anything definitive to say until the morning.”

Groh-Wargo said there are still ballots from votes cast today that are yet to be counted alongside tens of thousands of absentee ballots across the state not yet tallied. There are also an unknown number of uncounted provisional ballots.

Abrams currently trails Kemp by just three points, according to the latest tally. The Democrat is expected to address the crowd in a few minutes. We’ve yet to hear anything from her opponent Brian Kemp.

Updated

Brad Little elected Idaho governor

Paulette Jordan will not become the first Native American governor in the US. Republican Brad Little, the current Idaho lieutenant governor, has become the state’s governor:

Jordan, who would’ve also been the state’s first female governor, attracted national attention for her progressive campaign in one of the reddest states in the country:

Voters in Washington state appear to have shot down a proposal to charge companies for their carbon pollution, the Seattle Times projects.

Washington’s proposal would have been the first carbon fee in the US, although some states already have programs to cap certain greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. Opponents of a national carbon tax are likely to point to the failure in Washington as proof that a broad climate change policy is politically infeasible.

In Arizona, voters also decisively rejected Proposition 127, which would have required power companies to get half their electricity from renewable sources by 2030, the AP projected.

Here’s the scene at Stacey Abrams’ election party right now, from the Guardian’s Tom Silverstone:

Sam Levin in San Francisco here, taking over our live coverage, which will continue into the morning as results pour in across the country. We have also been tracking historic victories, with women, candidates of color and LGBTQ people breaking barriers in Congress and statehouses.

That includes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman elected to Congress; Ayanna Pressley, the first black House member from Massachusetts; Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, the first Muslim congresswomen; and Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland, the first Native American congresswomen. See the full list of firsts here:

Summary

Here’s a summary of where things stand:

  • Democrats have won control of the House of Representatives by what looks like a generous margin. Likely incoming House speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats would deliver “checks and balances” on the Trump administration.
  • Despite facing a highly motivated and newly empowered opposition, Trump declared the night a “tremendous success.”
  • Republicans grew their majority in the senate by multiple seats, with results still to come in western states.
  • Democrats scored wins in gubernatorial races in Michigan and Kansas but lost in Florida and Ohio. Democrats took control of a significant number of state legislative chambers.
  • Marquee Democratic candidates including Andrew Gillum in Florida and Beto O’Rourke in Texas lost. The Georgia governor’s race, where Democrat Stacey Abrams was trailing, had yet to be declared.
  • A record number of women, mostly Democrats, are headed to serve in Congress.

Steve King wins in Iowa

The AP has called Iowa’s CD-4 for King. Moments ago Chris McGreal filed from the party hosted by his challenger:

At the Democrats election watch party in Iowa’s fourth congressional district, there were shouts of disbelief as TV stations suggested that the count is going against their attempts to unseat the Republican representative who has rapidly come to be regarded as the worst man in Congress, Steve King.

His Democratic challenger, JD Scholten, was sanguine. “He usually wins by 22%,” he told the Guardian.

Whatever the outcome, the gap is likely to have been narrowed to single figures. Scholten struggles to explain how King, who has stood out for his ability to deliberately offend in a political era when he has competition from the president, manages to maintain his support. Is it because of his prejudices or despite them?”

“That’s an interesting question. I don’t know. I don’t think it plays as well in Iowa as people think.”

IA04 Results

Updated

Nelson concedes in Florida

Another incumbent Democratic senator goes down, this time Bill Nelson in Florida, who loses to outgoing governor Rick Scott:

Exiting the senate we have Donnelly, McCaskill, Nelson and Heitkamp.

#slay

Trump is calling around, according to press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders:

Tonight, President Trump called Leader Mitch McConnell to congratulate him on the historic senate gains. He also spoke with Speaker Paul Ryan and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The President called to congratulate Rick Scott, Mike DeWine, Kevin Cramer, Josh Hawley, Brian Kemp, and Ron DeSantis. Lastly, the President talked to Sen. Chuck Schumer. He and the Vice President will continue to make calls tonight and tomorrow.”

Record number of women headed to Congress

Women will break the current record of 84 serving at the same time in the U.S. House, the AP reports:

With ballots still being counted across the country, women have won 75 seats and are assured of victory in nine districts where women are the only major-party candidates.

From the Women’s March opposing President Donald Trump the day after he was inaugurated in January 2017 through a stream of sexual assault accusations later that year that sparked the (hash)MeToo movement, outrage and organizing by women have defined Democratic Party politics this election cycle.

More than 230 women, many of them first-time candidates, were on the general-election ballots in House races.

Despite the gains, men will continue to hold the vast majority of House seats.

Updated

Here at Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’ watch party officials just came out to tell the crowds that her deficit has just been cut in half.

Abrams now trails her Republican opponent Brian Kemp by just 104,000 votes with a significant number of ballots in many Democratic-leaning precincts still to be counted after some polling stations in the Atlanta metro area stayed open into the night.

Supporters of Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams cheer as they get word of results during an election night watch party, Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2018, in Atlanta.
Supporters of Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams cheer as they get word of results during an election night watch party, Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2018, in Atlanta. Photograph: John Amis/AP

Abrams has trailed Kemp all night leading to a somewhat muted atmosphere at this party at the Regency Ballroom in downtown Atlanta. But the news has lifted the crowd, who earlier in the evening were addressed by congressman John Lewis who said:

“Don’t give up. Don’t get lost in a sea of despair. Keep the faith. We can win and we must win.”

We’re now listening to Destiny’s Child ‘Survivor’ on the loud speakers and it looks like this one is going on long into the night.

A bipartisan climate change caucus tonight lost its GOP co-chair, Miami Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo, and is set to bid farewell to a long list of other Republican members.

Critics say the Climate Solutions Caucus gives cover to Republicans who won’t vote to support climate action. The caucus currently has 45 Republican members and 45 Democratic members. But only four of the Republican members voted against a resolution opposing a tax on planet-warming pollution.

Seven of the Republican members are retiring and one lost a primary. At least another 10, including Curbelo, are projected to have lost re-election tonight and more are in tight races. One who lost, Virginia’s Barbara Comstock, made a League of Conservation Voters Victory Fund list of lawmakers with the worst environmental voting records.

Trump calls Pelosi

Comity for now. But what happens when they subpoena his tax returns?

Cook Political Report editor Amy Walter summarizes nicely, calling it a “choose your own narrative” election:

Analyst Daniel Nichanian noting here that the Democrats have claimed full control – a combination of the governorship plus both chambers of the statehouses – in three states tonight:

Cruz tips hat to O'Rourke

The big screen was, inevitably, tuned to Fox News. And when the network called the nation’s most-watched Senate race for Ted Cruz, the crowd at his party bellowed with delight and surely a degree of relief.

Several hundred supporters had gathered in a hotel ballroom in one of Houston’s swankiest districts in the hope that the man who triumphed as a Tea Party-backed insurgent in 2012 would win a second term. With victory assured, speakers appeared on a stage with a giant Texas flag backdrop to gloat that Beto O’Rourke’s historic fundraising and high profile had not delivered a stunning upset to turn this state’s deeply red tide.

“We saw a hundred-million dollar race with Hollywood coming in against the state, with the national media coming in against the state, but all the money in the world was no match for the good people of Texas,” Cruz said.

Ted Cruz hugs his wife Heidi.
Ted Cruz hugs his wife Heidi. Photograph: Michael Wyke/EPA

Asher Warriach, a 23-year-old student, was wearing a Make America Great Again red cap, holding a sign that read “Muslims For Trump” and pumping his fists with delight. “I’m so happy, this is the greatest thing to happen to America since [the presidential election in] 2016,” he said. “We rejected socialism - honestly, it’s a victory for America’s future.”

When Cruz entered the ballroom he high-fived his fans as they chanted “U-S-A!” and embraced his wife, Heidi before taking the stage. “Texans came together behind a common-sense agenda of low taxes, low regulations and lots and lots of jobs. Securing the border and keeping our communities safe and defending the constitution and the bill of rights,” he said.

“I want to take a moment to congratulate Beto O’Rourke, he poured his heart into this campaign, he worked tirelessly, he’s a dad and he took time away from his kids,” Cruz added. “Let me say to all of those who worked on his campaign, those who were inspired, that I am your senator as well and my responsibility is to represent every Texan.”

The nastiest and most expensive governor’s race in the country ended with an olive branch from Ron DeSantis, Florida’s new governor-elect.

Taking to the stage in triumph before jubilant supporters at his election night rally in Orlando, the Republican praised Andrew Gillum as a “formidable opponent” and promised he was ready to turn the page on a bruising political campaign mired in allegations of corruption and racism.

“I don’t care if you were against me in the campaign, I want to work with you,” DeSantis said to a crowd of hundreds. “I will fight the good fight for Florida.”

Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis and his wife Casey.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis and his wife Casey. Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters

What had been a mood of growing optimism through the evening at the Rosen Center Hotel erupted into outright joy when Fox News called the race for the former US Congressman, and his supporters embraced each other as Gillum’s concession speech was broadcast from Tallahassee.

“He will be a great governor for all Floridians,” said Kat Gates-Skipper, chairperson of DeSantis’s veterans support group.

DeSantis promised to be a champion of low taxes, law enforcement and environmental protection during his 12-minute victory speech, but also took the time to thank Trump for his support “when it wasn’t necessarily the right thing to do.” The US President, he said, would soon be tired of him knocking on the West Wing door “and asking things for Florida.”

McCaskill loses in Missouri

The senate career of Claire McCaskill has concluded with a loss in Missouri to Republican challenger Josh Hawley, the state attorney general. The state has trended steadily more conservative since McCaskill was first elected in 2006 and voted for Trump by more than 18 points.

The Democrats are now waiting to find out how few senators they will have to work with in January.

Missouri Senate Result

Updated

Win or lose, the race was set to end where it all began.

On the same Florida college campus where Andrew Gillum’s political career began as a student body president 17 years ago, the popular Tallahassee mayor and improbable gubernatorial candidate conceded defeat to Republican Ron DeSantis late Tuesday.

“We may not have all shown up in the way that we thought and hoped that we would,” Gillum said to a dejected crowd of supporters, “but I still believe in and trust the voters.”

Few expected Gillum to win the Democratic primary in August. As the nominee he faced a tough climb in a state that Donald Trump carried comfortably in 2016, but consistently polled ahead of DeSantis for much of the lead up to the election.

Those numbers didn’t play out however, and Gillum fell into an an early deficit in vote counting. As the night carried on it became increasingly unlikely that late returns in Broward County, often a source of election night drama in Florida, could make up the deficit.

Gracious in defeat, Gillum was also defiant before the crowd of supporters at his alma mater, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University.

“Let’s make sure that people know we plan to have a seat at this thing and that we will not be ignored, will not be pushed aside and we will not be pushed into the shadows anymore. That we’re here and we’re here to stay,” Gillum said of his failed bid to become just the fourth black American governor in US history.

Choking back tears, and with his wife R Jai grabbing his shoulder in support-the crowd rising in cheers- Gillum made it clear he wasn’t done with pushing that platform in Florida.

“I’m not going anywhere. We’re going to fight. And we’re gonna keep fighting. We’re going to keep working. We’re going to keep believing, and ultimately I believe we will be victorious.”

Updated

Georgia awaits Kemp

Khushbu Shah is in Athens, Georgia, where supporters of Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp are waiting on a victory speech:

The small crowd’s mood lifted among Brian Kemp’s supporters as someone from the Kemp campaign came out to tell the crowd Ted Cruz won in Texas and Andrew Gillum conceded in Florida. However, according to his campaign, Kemp won’t come out to speak at his watch party until more results from Atlanta have come in.

A few minutes later, the music cut off again as someone listed a bevy of Republican wins. Whoops were heard around the room again.

The bar has been ordered to remain open another hour as people wait for official results. The music got a little louder and flashes from cameras are going off around the room.

GA Results

Updated

Pelosi: 'Note the power to win'

Here’s Nancy Pelosi.

“How are you feeling?” she asks the crowd at the DCCC celebration party.

The crowd roars.

She congratulates her colleagues and dispenses some shout-outs (shouts-out?). “Let’s assume they’re all distinguished,” she says. It’s hard to miss how deeply veteran many of these names sound. She says it’s all for the children.

People react to the election returns at the House Democratic Election Night event hosted by Democratic House Minority leader from California Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Ben Ray Lujan from New Mexico for the 2018 midterm general election at the Hyatt Regency in Washington, DC.
People react to the election returns at the House Democratic Election Night event hosted by Democratic House Minority leader from California Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Ben Ray Lujan from New Mexico for the 2018 midterm general election at the Hyatt Regency in Washington, DC. Photograph: Erik S Lesser/EPA

“Thanks to you we owned the ground,” she says. “Thanks to you tomorrow will be a new day in America. Remember this feeling. Note the power to win.”

She mentions checks and balances to the Trump administration, which gets some real cheers.

It is on of the less pleasant jobs as a Guardian reporter to have to tell avid Beto O’Rourke supporters at his election night party in El Paso that according to AP their charismatic champion has narrowly lost his bid to topple Ted Cruz from a US senate seat.

Still, they are putting on a remarkably brave face on it.

“This is just the beginning,” said Carlos Martinez-Vela, 45, who has lived in the US for 22 years but voted today in his first election here. “We are witnessing something really big – this country is moving forwards towards the way it is supposed to be.”

And that is? “A country that stands for openness, democracy and equality. A couple of months ago nobody thought that Beto’s campaign would have been possible in Texas, and even if Cruz has won this is just the beginning.”

Others in the crowd were less able to be positive about the outcome, as news of the result begins to ripple through the crowd. Alejandra Correa, 50, came to El Paso from Ciudad Juarez across the Rio Grande when she was seven.

“My father’s dream was the American dream – to bring us to El Paso for a university education. To hear that Ted Cruz has won after a campaign in which he talked about ‘invaders’ at the border is very disappointing and depressing for me. This is the opposite of the American dream – it is driving America towards racism and division.”

Updated

Trump declares 'success' as Democrats take House

The rationale behind this message of victory as the opposition party racks up what could be a punishing House majority – is it an Art of the Deal thing? Anybody out there read it?

Democrats win control of House

The Democrats have won control of the US House of Representatives, multiple networks have projected.

Not only that: it appears the Democrats may be on course to hit the high end of most forecasts, with a margin of potentially dozens of seats.

Democrats will sweep into Washington in January with significant new power to shape the president’s agenda and to mount investigations that could change the nature of the Trump presidency.

If Trump can seem to have a bunker mentality, sensing attack from all sides – Democrats, TV talking heads, distant caravans, hidden conspirators, the media – he is about to face an opposition with actual teeth.

The night was built on wins like this:

Massachusetts affirms transgender protections

In the first statewide referendum on transgender rights, Massachusetts voters on Tuesday beat back a repeal attempt and reaffirmed a 2016 law extending nondiscrimination protections to transgender people, including their use of public bathrooms and locker rooms, the AP reports:

Supporters of the law had feared a vote to repeal would prompt a wave of similar efforts to roll back protections in other states. Already, some protections at the federal level are under threat from President Donald Trump’s administration.

“When transgender rights are being threatened nationally, we absolutely must preserve the rights we have secured at the state level,” said Carol Rose, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.

In Michigan, meanwhile, voters have approved the formation of an independent commission to take charge of redistricting, as a fix to the state’s egregious gerrymander.

“Our state constitution begins with, ‘All political power is inherent in the people,’” said Katie Fahey, founder and executive director of Voters Not Politicians, the activist group behind the initiative.

“Thousands of volunteers, from every county in our state, and spanning across political party lines, dedicated two years of their time, talents, and passion to make this people-powered campaign a reality. We’ve proven that when a thoughtful group of passionate citizens ban together to try and fix the problems our politicians won’t, we can make our state a better place. I couldn’t be more proud of what we have accomplished together, or of how amazing the people of Michigan are.”

Pelosi to speak

Once and potentially future House speaker Nancy Pelosi is preparing to address the election night event hosted by the party’s congressional committee.

It looks like it’s going to be a happy speech.

Gillum concedes Florida race

Andrew Gillum, the Democratic candidate for governor in Florida, has conceded the race to Republican Ron DeSantis. That’s a heartbreak for Democrats and progressives nationally who were hoping that Florida voters would reject DeSantis’ dabbling in racist rhetoric and full embrace of Donald Trump.

Democrats also have lost the race for the Ohio statehouse, with Republican Mike DeWine triumphing there.

So despite good news in the House, the Democrats have failed to close in many seemingly tight races tonight.

Florida Results

Updated

Republican Troy Balderson has held onto his seat in Ohio’s 12th congressional district. And the Republicans have scored their first House flip of the night:

But the Democratic flips in the House continue to come, including with Democrat Elaine Luria wining election to U.S. House in Virginia’s 2nd congressional district, and a couple seats in New York.

CNN has just projected that the Democrats will take control the US House of Representatives.

Victoria Bekiempis reports from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s election night party. She won the 14th Congressional District of New York on Tuesday, marking a dramatic victory for the new wave of progressive Democrats:

In beating longshot Republican opponent Anthony Pappas, Ocasio-Cortez became the youngest woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks at her midterm election night party in New York City.
Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks at her midterm election night party in New York City. Photograph: Andrew Kelly/Reuters

In her victory speech, Ocasio-Cortez doubled down on her popular calls to fix economic injustice.

“I think we all know deep down, here and across the country, that our deepest challenges are not left and right, they are not red and blue -- they are top and bottom,” she said. “And that if we are going to turn this ship around, as a country, it is not good enough to throw a rock at our neighbors. We’ve got to clean up our own house.”

“We have a crooked path, and it is time to make that crooked path straight,” she said.

At Ted Cruz’s watch party in Houston, there was a huge roar when Fox called the race for Cruz, Tom Dart reports:

The mood lifted when the big screen tuned to Fox News showed the Republican senator take the lead in his tight race with Beto O’Rourke - albeit with only 10% of 7,939 precincts reporting.

But elsewhere, Democrats have good reason to feel optimistic about some close House races as votes continue to be tallied in districts in and around Houston, Austin and Dallas, where Republican incumbents John Culberson, Michael McCaul, Pete Sessions and Roger Williams are under serious pressure.

While the Democrat Lupe Valdez was easily and predictably defeated by Republican incumbent Greg Abbott in the governor’s race, some other statewide races - lieutenant governor, attorney general, agriculture commissioner - are surprisingly tense in a state where no Democrat has won statewide office since 1994.

And two Democrats, Sylvia Garcia, from Houston, and Veronica Escobar, from El Paso, have become the first Hispanic women from Texas to be elected to the House. Escobar takes over the seat vacated by O’Rourke.

Blackburn, Cruz, Cramer win; Republicans may build on senate majority

A string of bad Senate results for the Democrats.

Ted Cruz has won in Texas, Marsha Blackburn has won in Tennessee, and Kevin Cramer has won in North Dakota the AP projects – meaning that instead of a Senate majority next year, Democrats may find themselves with a shrunken majority.

Democrat Tammy Baldwin has held on in Wisconsin, as has Joe Manchin in West Virginia, Bob Casey in Pennsylvania and Sherrod Brown in Ohio.

But Democrats did not get the results they needed in Indiana or North Dakota, their longshot bid in Texas fell short, and Nevada and Arizona are still out.

In short, the Democrats failed to defend North Dakota and Indiana, so even if they pick up Arizona and New Mexico, they are still two short of a majority, and neither Texas nor Tennessee is any longer available. And we don’t yet know what happened in Montana, which the Democrats are also defending.

Democrat Bill Nelson is not charging toward victory in Florida. All of that feels like an expanded Republican Senate majority.

Updated

Mood is light at Democratic celebration

J Lo is blaring and Democrats at the DCCC’s election night party are finally beginning to relax. A wave of good news – from Sharice Davids’ victory in Kansas to Mike Sherrill in New Jersey – has eased some of the anxiety that gripped Democrats earlier in the night.

Scarred from Election Night two years ago, some Democrats dared not be too hopeful, should they find themselves in a similar position at the end of this night.

Democratic congressional committee chairman Ben Ray Lujan, addressing the crowd gathered at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill earlier in the evening, repeated that he was confident Democrats would capture the majority. The remark received polite applause.

Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, rallied the crowd: “Onward to victory!” she proclaimed. The response was marginally more muscular but still tense.

Roughly an hour later, and several glasses of wine in, Democrats are swaying there hips and applauding loudly with each call.

There’s still a long way to go – but it’s safe to say that at this stage the night is progressing far differently than it did two years ago.

Updated

As the polls close in Iowa, Congressman Steve King is hiding behind locked doors as he waits to find out if he’s finally gone too far for the voters of his state’s fourth district with his apparent dislike for Americans and non-Americans of every stripe but his own.

His campaign turned me away from his “victory party” in a Sioux City hotel on the grounds I was “non-credentialed media”, although rather more politely than the scorn with which they rejected the Des Moines Register as “leftist propaganda”.

“I’m very sorry, it’s a private party,” said the woman guarding the door. Telling her it was a public election got me nowhere. I am not alone. Reporters from HuffPost, Storm Lake Times and even the conservative Weekly Standard have also been shooed away.

The Democratic challenger, J.D. Scholten, who has run a closer challenge than the King has faced in years, is not nearly so fussy. It doesn’t even have anyone on the door to ask passersby who wander in who they are.

Networks call Texas senate for Cruz

The Associated Press is not yet to the place where ABC, NBC and CBS have arrived. The networks say Beto O’Rourke has failed in his bid to unseat incumbent Republican senator Ted Cruz in Texas. We’ll let you know when we have further.

More Democratic House flips

A list of a bunch more House flips:

Democrat Mikie Sherrill wins election to U.S. House in New Jersey’s 11th congressional district

Democrat Conor Lamb wins re-election to U.S. House in Pennsylvania’s 17th congressional district.

Democrat Sharice Davids wins election to U.S. House in Kansas’s 3rd congressional district.

Democrat Dean Phillips wins election to US House in Minnesota’s 3rd congressional district

It’s that time of night when elections analysts are showing visible strain not to say what they want to say, which in this case is that the Democratic bid to take the House looks very promising. “On track to win the House,” CNN has it, with forecaster Harry Enten giving the Democrats about 230 seats, which is about where we were when the night started.

But one network went full YOLO a half hour ago:

The Fox News elections decision desk represents a valid news-gathering enterprise, unlike certain other parts of the Fox family. But truly, we advise readers to keep a lid on it, for now.

Kobach loses – CNN

Kris Kobach, a Republican candidate in Kansas, a state won by Trump by more than 20 points, has fallen short in his gubernatorial bid, CNN has reported.

Kobach headed up Trump’s so-called “election integrity commission” designed to root out supposed voter fraud. But the commission disbanded without issuing a report, and there were whispers that the only fraud afoot was the commission itself, and its leader.

In any case Kansas voters have said no thanks tonight to Kris Kobach, electing Laura Kelly governor.

Kansas Governors Result

Updated

It's Mitt

Utah polls are closed and retiring senator Orrin Hatch will be replaced by the former governor of Massachusetts.

Republican Utah Senate candidate Mitt Romney greets supporters who gathered to await election results in Orem, Utah.
Republican Utah Senate candidate Mitt Romney greets supporters who gathered to await election results in Orem, Utah. Photograph: Gene Sweeney Jr./AP

Andrew Gumbel reports from California’s 49th:

Darrell Issa, the powerful chairman of the House oversight committee who was one of President Obama’s most persistent congressional tormentors, has already conceded – before a single vote has been tallied – that the next congressman from his district will be a Democrat.

Issa, who barely squeaked to re-election two years ago and announced in January that he was retiring, told Fox News not only that his district north of San Diego was a lost cause but that it had never been in play.

Mike Levin, the Democratic candidate, has been consistently ahead of his Republican rival, Diane Harkey, in the polls but has campaigned hard in a district that was once characterized by large numbers of retired military but has become more diverse and less conservative over the past several election cycles.

Issa, however, took the unusual step of predicting defeat for a Republican both he and President Trump endorsed. “Quite frankly we know the results already,” he said. “To a certain extent you have to write off some of California. My district was never in play in this cycle and so it was never funded… There will be a Democrat representing La Jolla and Solana Beach for the first time in a number of years.”

He might be the next chairman of the judiciary committee, should Democrats take the House. Which would be where, despite the loud vows of disinterest from the Democratic leadership, presidential impeachment hearings would start.

Manchin, Ocasio-Cortez victorious

An unlikely pairing, but as fate would have it, two Democratic victories called at once: the senate race in West Virginia, where Democratic incumbent Joe Manchin was defending his seat in a state Trump won by 42 points, and the congressional race in New York’s 14th, where Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was going to win the minute she beat incumbent Joe Crowley in the primary.

WV Senate Result

Updated

Another Democratic flip in Florida: Representative Carlos Curbelo of Miami has conceded to Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. Democrats on the march...

An extraordinary (and late) night in Texas

Whatever the final outcome of the Texas senate race between Beto O’Rourke and Ted Cruz, it’s already clear that this is going to be an extraordinary night. And probably a late one.

CNN is reporting that with 50% of precincts reporting O’Rourke is three points ahead of Cruz, at 51-48. But behind that very grabby headline, something even more interesting and potentially seismic is going on in Texas tonight.

I’ve just spoken to Mark Jones, political scientist at Rice University, and he’s talked me through what he’s seeing. First thing to note is that O’Rourke is doing exceptionally well in those places where we’d expect him to do well – that is the big liberal cities like Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.

What’s really putting the cat among the pigeons though is that O’Rourke is also doing much better than expected in areas that are traditionally blood red conservative. Places like Fort Worth, the last big city in Texas that is still reliably Republican, as well as conservative suburbs such as Denton County north of Fort Worth and Collins County outside Dallas.

“Beto O’Rourke is greatly overperforming not only in his liberal heartlands but in conservative areas. To survive, Cruz is going to have to do incredibly well in rural districts,” Jones said.

That’s why this could be a long night. The rural parts of Texas are those that tend to post their vote counts last. We could be waiting some while before we know for sure, but brace yourself for a nail-biting night in Texas.

Democratic House pickups

Democrat Jason Crow has defeated Representative Mike Coffman in Colorado’s sixth district, while Mary Scanlon has defeated Pearl Kim in Pennsylvania’s redrawn fifth.

One by one... but will it be enough?

Donnelly falls in Indiana

A devastating blow to Democratic hopes of taking the US senate – businessman and former state representative Mike Braun has defeated Democratic incumbent Joe Donnelly in the Hoosier state, AP projects.

The Tennessee senate race is not looking good for the Democrats, either.

Donnelly falls in IN

Updated

Victoria Bekiempis is at Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s election night party in the race over New York’s 14th Congressional district. She writes:

Ocasio-Cortez, who campaigned on a far left platform that included abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the United States’ border control agency, shocked establishment Democrats after unseating 10-term Congressman Joe Crowley in an historic primary this June.

The deeply blue district encompasses parts of The Bronx and Queens.

A supporter of Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reacts at her midterm election night party in New York City.
A supporter of Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reacts at her midterm election night party in New York City. Photograph: Andrew Kelly/Reuters

At the party, which is taking place at La Boom nightclub in Queens, handwritten signs with slogans such as “Tuition free college, “Housing as a human right” and “People Before Profit” are affixed to walls, attesting to the deeply grassroots nature of Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign.

Bronx resident Luigi Albau, who supported Ocasio-Cortez, praised what he described as a unifying campaign – and positions such as medicare for all.

“We share the same values – a better country for everyone,” said Albau, who works in finance. “Come on, this is America – enough people are struggling.”

Florida restores voting rights to felons

More than 1.5 million Florida felons will have their voting rights restored, after voters there backed a ballot initiative called Amendment 4. Felons are disproportionately likely to be black and lean Democratic, according to an analysis by the Tampa Bay Times.

The initiative restores voting rights to felons after their sentence is served, unless they are convicted of murder or a felony sexual offense.

As tonight’s nail-biter gubernatorial race between Democrat Andrew Gillum and Republican Ron DeSantis can show, in this state even a few hundred votes can make a huge difference.

Summary

Here’s a summary of where things stand:

  • The Democratic effort to take the House has encountered setbacks with failures to pick off tossup seats in Kentucky, Virginia and elsewhere. However the path to a Democratic House majority remained viable, with hours of returns to come determining the question.
  • Democratic candidates in the Florida gubernatorial and senate races – Andrew Gillum and Bill Nelson – appeared to be struggling, although the races were too close to call.
  • Democrats successfully defended senate seats in states won by Trump, including West Virginia – but a run of the table in these races looked increasingly unlikely, and the slim chances of Democrats taking control of the senate were slipping away.
  • As election night crossed the 9 o’clock hour, Democrats harbored hopes that Representative Beto O’Rourke would score an upset against incumbent senator Ted Cruz, in what would be a defining victory for the night.

O'Rourke shows strength early in Texas race

The Texas senate race is tight, with Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke’s campaign to unseat incumbent Ted Cruz appearing to be on a trajectory that could, conceivably, end with an extraordinary upset victory.

Cruz’s intrinsic strength, as an incumbent in a state that Trump won by nine points, which has not elected a Democrat statewide since the 1990s, is not to be underestimated. But with 50% of precincts reporting, according to CNN, O’Rourke holds an edge over Cruz of about three points, 51-48.

Beware incomplete returns: there are major swaths of the state that have yet to report, including areas of significant strength for Cruz. While results from Dallas and San Antonio are in, results from Houston and El Paso are not.

Casey wins in Pennsylvania

Texas governor Greg Abbott has won reelection, AP reports, while the state of New York has reelected Andrew Cuomo and senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

Here’s another Democratic senate hold in a state won by Trump: incumbent Bob Casey remains the senator from Pennsylvania, defeating Representative Lou Barletta.

Menendez wins in New Jersey

Incumbent Democratic senator Bob Menendez has held his seat in New Jersey, against an expensive challenge by Republican pharmaceuticals executive Bob Hugin, the AP projects.

Menendez takes NJ

Updated

Kentucky clerk Kim Davis loses reelection bid

Emily Holden reports for the Guardian:

Kim Davis – the county clerk in Kentucky who famously denied marriage licenses to same-sex couples – has lost to Democratic challenger Elwood Caudill Jr.

Davis, a Republican, lost to Caudill by about 700 votes.

Caudill in the Democratic primary defeated David Ermold, who is gay and was refused a marriage license by Davis in 2015. Davis spent days in jail for denying the couples. She changed her affiliation to Republican from Democrat after she gained national notoriety.

Caudill also ran against Davis in the primary for Rowan County Clerk in 2014, narrowly losing.

A dispatch from Iowa’s fourth congressional district: Among the voters at a church hall in Sioux City, Iowa was 28 year-old Brady Hill who is possibly the only person to cast a ballot against his controversial Republican congressman, Steve King, without knowing that politician is fighting to keep his seat amid national uproar over his racist and homophobic statements and flirtations with Nazis.

King’s own party is keeping its distance from him after he cozied up to white supremacists and the Congressman is in a much narrower race than might be expected for a seat he has previously won by 20 points and in a district that voted overwhelmingly for Trump.

But all of this passed Hill by. “Didn’t know about that,” he said with surprise on being told about King’s views. “I read more national news”.

But Hill, who works on a movie theatre concessions stand, still voted against King because he doesn’t want Republicans in power. “I voted against him every year I could and now we need a check on Trump,” he said.

Louisa Rhodes had no doubt about why she voted against King.”I feel like the president incites hate and it’s scary. King is the same. Two peas in a pod,” she said. “King’s more confident speaking out now because of what the president says.”

Leasa Vargas, a residential counsellor at a traumatic brain injury centre, said one of the reasons she voted against King was his vote to scrap Obamacare which she said would leave many of her patients without treatment. But she’s repelled by King’s hostility to minorities too.

“I work will all nationalities, all creeds, all races, and he rubs everyone wrong,” she said. So how has he been reelected all of these years, and why is he still the favourite to win today?” I don’t get it. I can’t explain it,” she said.

An immigrant from Ethiopia, and now US citizen, who gave his name only as Falmata was more cautious in explaining his views. He voted against King, he said, because in 2016 he went to ask his Congressman to support criticism of the abuses by the Ethiopian government. King wouldn’t see him.

“He needs to spend less time criticising immigrants and to focus on things that matter,” said Falmata. “We need to see something new.” Asked for his last name, Falmata replied: “Do I have to give it?”He was concerned about publicly criticising King. Isn’t there a right to free speech? “Sure,” he said, and left.

McGrath falls short in Kentucky

Democrat Amy McGrath, whose effort to unseat Republican Andy Barr in Kentucky was seen as an opportunity in the broader effort by Democrats to take the House, has lost, the AP projects. Kentucky returns the Republican.

Another Democrat falling short: Leslie Cockburn has lost her race to Denver Riggleman in Virginia, in the infamous “bigfoot erotica” race, the AP projects.

Updated

Mike Pence won’t be the only Pence kicking around DC: Republican Greg Pence, the vice president’s younger brother, has won election his race in Indiana’s 6th congressional district, the AP projects.

Pence the elder.
Pence the elder. Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

Tom Dart sends along an update from the Ted Cruz rally in Houston:

On Monday night, Ted Cruz held an election-eve rally at the Redneck Country Club, a roadhouse in suburban Houston. For his watch party - billed as “Victory Night” - the Texas senator is in the more upscale location of the ballroom at the Hilton Post Oak, a four-star hotel in one of the city’s ritziest areas that’s close to his home.

Dozens of Cruz fans chanted “Ted, Ted, Ted!” and filed in when the doors opened at 7pm CT, posing with lifesized cardboard cut-outs of the Republican incumbent giving a thumbs-up. Tables were adorned with copies of pocket US Constitutions with Cruz on the cover and a mocked-up background of the Stars and Stripes and the White House.

Ted Cruz supporters take position in front of the podium as they enter the election night headquarters in the 2018 midterm general election at the Hilton Post Oak in Houston, Texas.
Ted Cruz supporters take position in front of the podium as they enter the election night headquarters in the 2018 midterm general election at the Hilton Post Oak in Houston, Texas. Photograph: Michael Wyke/EPA

The pamphlets were leftovers from his 2016 presidential campaign. That didn’t work out as Cruz hoped, but attendees sounded sure that he will repel the unexpectedly stiff challenge from his Democratic opponent, Beto O’Rourke.

“I feel very confident,” said John Willis, a 59-year-old security guard in a Cruz-branded football jersey. That was also from the 2016 campaign, when Willis drove almost a thousand miles to Iowa to phone-bank and knock doors for the candidate. “I just believe he does the right message, he’s a great guy,” Willis said.

“I think [O’Rourke] would be a horrible thing for Texas. He has nothing to do with Texas values, he doesn’t represent us… It’s gonna be close but I think [Cruz] will win.”

Pressley makes history in Massachusetts

The first African American woman to serve on Boston’s city council, Ayanna Pressley has made history again, becoming the first black member of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts. After defeating 10-term incumbent Michael Capuano in the primary, she did not face a general election challenger.

Republican Edward Brooke, a US senator from 1967-1979, was the first African American politician elected to represent Massachusetts in Congress.

Pressley speaks to reporters after voting at the Adams Street Library on Election Day in Boston, Massachusetts.
Pressley speaks to reporters after voting at the Adams Street Library on Election Day in Boston, Massachusetts. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

“With her victory tonight, Ayanna Pressley has not only made history as the first Black woman ever elected to represent Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives, she’s ensured that Democrats have the voice of a young, Black progressive woman helping lead the fight for inclusive populist reforms like Medicare for All, criminal justice reform, and a $15 minimum wage,” the group Democracy for America said.

Updated

The senate race in Florida is snug:

Shalala declares victory for second Democratic House pickup

In the Miami-area 27th district, former Health and Human Services secretary Donna Shalala has declared victory over her Republican opponent, Maria Elvira Salazar, a Cuban-American and former broadcast journalist. The AP has not yet called the race, though other outlets have. Clinton won this congressional district by nearly 20 points.

[UPDATE: AP called the race for Shalala just before 8.30pm EST]

The House Majority PAC has released a statement of congratulations:

Donna Shalala has a distinguished record fighting for South Florida and for all Americans,” said House Majority PAC Executive Director Charlie Kelly. “Voters rejected Maria Elvira Salazar’s partisan politics and have chosen a Representative in Donna Shalala who will focus on critical issues like improving education, lowering health care costs, and growing the local economy. HMP is proud to have played a part in helping Donna Shalala get to Congress where she’ll continue her work to improve the lives of Miami families.”

Updated

Brown holds Ohio seat

Democratic senator Sherrod Brown has fended off a challenge for his seat in Ohio, which Trump won by eight points, AP projects. A fine result for the Democrats but not enough to make them look any more competitive in the battle for senate control.

Also returning to the senate for team blue: Elizabeth Warren, Ben Cardin, Sheldon Whitehouse, Tom Carper, and Chris Murphy

Snapshot from Florida: Richard Luscombe reports from Orlando:

There are no dancing students at the Ron DeSantis election night party at Orlando’s Rosen Center Hotel, unlike at his opponent Andrew Gillum’s bash in Tallahassee, but the ballroom is filling up with excited supporters.

As polls closed across most of the state (some western parts if the Panhandle are on central time and are open later), retired police officer Charles Rahn, 73, said he could not rule out “the biggest victory in the history of Florida governors” for the Republican candidate.

“The polling sites have been busy all day and that’s a good sign, lots of independents and Republicans are our voting.”

The conduct of an often vicious campaign? Not so good, he says. “They’ve slung a lot of mud at each other,” Rahn conceded. “That’s politics. In the end it’s who tells the biggest lie most often.”

The candidate himself appears more circumspect.

“We did as much as can be done and I’m happy with letting the chips fall where they may,” he told reporters earlier in the day after casting his vote in his home precinct of Ponte Vedra Beach, 150 miles north of Orlando.

But DeSantis bristled when asked about the divisiveness of a campaign tinged with allegations of racism.

“I’m going to turn the page on that and I’m willing to work with everybody, but let’s just be clear, the divisiveness was directed at me, it was not from me,” he said.

The forecasters who forecasted a Democratic victory in the House are reviewing their forecasts and tentatively forecasting – anyway:

ba-dum bum

Democrats score first flip of night

In Virginia, the Democrats swipe a House seat, as expected, from incumbent Representative Barbara Comstock, with Democrat Jennifer Wexton scoring victory.

The Democrats have meanwhile held a seat in a battleground race in Florida. The AP projects that Democrat Stephanie Murphy wins re-election to U.S. House in Florida’s 7th congressional district.

It sounds like Republican incumbent Steve King, he of the serial racism controversies, has gone full bunker in Iowa’s fourth congressional district:

Polls close in Ohio, West Virginia, North Carolina

Will Democrat Joe Manchin be reelected to the senate in West Virginia, which Trump won by 42 points? We may soon know. In Ohio’s 12th, the Columbus suburbs, Danny O’Connor, a centrist Democrat, is challenging incumbent Troy Balderson in a rematch of their extremely close race in a special election last August.

Election results: incoming.

Results are trickling in in the Indiana senate race pitting Democratic incumbent Joe Donnelly against the businessman and former state legislator Mike Braun. The Democrats really need this one to keep their Senate dreams alive.

The race is too close to call, but we shouldn’t let it slip away without remembering a Donnelly ad that seemed inspired by Veep, the long-running HBO comedy.

You be the judge:

Have you heard the new Dolly Parton track about the 19th Amendment?

The Stacey Abrams campaign has just sent out a call reminding voters they can stay in line in Georgia if they were there before the official poll closure time of 7pm ET.

The call is amplified by a certain former secretary of state:

Stay dry!

Sanders, Kaine return to senate

With that last round of poll closures, we have immediate projections in the Virginia and Vermont senate races – as expected in Vermont, which is sending Bernie Sanders back to Washington.

In a quick-dropping call, Virginia will likewise send Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 running mate, back to the senate.

Andrew Gumbel reports for the Guardian: Hollywood actress turned political activist of the moment Alyssa Milano dropped in on campaign volunteers in one of the most tightly contested congressional races in the country this afternoon as Democrats looked to star power as well as people power to push them over the victory line.

“How are we doing?” Milano yelled as she walked into a room packed with phone bank volunteers for Harley Rouda, a centrist businessman hoping to beat 15-term Republican incumbent Dana Rohrabacher in one of the most conservative districts in southernCalifornia’s conservativeOrangeCounty.

The room responded with whoops and hollers, but Milano was not satisfied. “Come on, you’ve got to do better than that,” she said. Sure enough, the whoops grew louder. She thanked everyone at the Huntington Beach field office for putting in long hours, adding: “Democracy doesn’t work without active participation.”

Milano was joined by teenage actor Joshua Rush, who plays the first gay character ever to appear on the Disney Channel, in the show Andi Mack. The two shook hands and posed for pictures with the volunteers, shouting “Flip the 48th!” instead of “Cheese!”. Then Rush sat down to join the phone-banking efforts, while Milano left for another appointment.

“Anyone need a ride to the polls?” she asked.

Trump watching results 'with friends and family'

The White House has released a statement. It notes the president’s heroic efforts on behalf of his party and frames the election as a choice between a prosperous, secure horizon “or we can go backwards.” Also the president is hosting some form of results-watching gathering. Here is the statement:

As President, Donald J. Trump has headlined an unprecedented 50 rallies—30 in the last two months alone—and he has campaigned for dozens of candidates at all levels of government. The President has energized a staggering number of Americans at packed arenas and in overflow crowds at rallies across the country. Under President Trump’s leadership, the Republican National Committee has raised more than a quarter billion dollars, fueling an extraordinary ground game geared toward defying midterm history and protecting the GOP’s majorities. He has made the choice clear to the American people: Tonight, we can continue down the path of American prosperity and security or we can go backwards. The President and First Lady look forward to watching the results come in with friends and family in the White House residence.

15 minutes until polls close in Florida, Georgia, Virginia

Polls are scheduled to close at 7pm ET in an additional tranche of states including Florida, Georgia, Virginia, South Carolina and Vermont. Positions, everyone.

Note: not all polls. Voting hours have been extended for some locations.

Updated

It’s not as though Beto O’Rourke needs a helping hand from celebrities in his bid to turf Ted Cruz out of his US senate seat from Texas. After all, Beto O’Rourke is quite the superstar in his own right.

But then, who would object to having Beyonce on their side? The singer has popped up just a few hours before polls are due to close in Texas, posting a photo on her Instagram feed of herself wearing a Beto for Senate cap.

“Every vote counts, Every race matters, Everywhere,” she wrote.

Polls have been giving Cruz a small but significant lead over O’Rourke in recent days, though the gap has been tightening. O’Rourke himself likes to point out that he hates polls and has consciously avoided employing any pollsters in his campaign.

So pollsters be damned. With less than three hours to go before polls in Texas close, there is all still to play for. And maybe Beyonce is the one to swing it.

It wasn’t a swing district and no one is calling it a bellwether – but it’s first under the wire with a projected result, and as such we hail Kentucky’s fifth congressional district, which has reelected the Republican incumbent.

WSB-TV local in Atlanta reports that Georgia secretary of state Brian Kemp, who critics accuse of mounting an uncommonly blatant voter suppression campaign in the gubernatorial campaign in which he himself is a candidate, had trouble voting today.

“Kemp also had some voting issues,” the local report says. “When he tried to vote, his voter card said ‘invalid.’ He had to go back and get another card.”

As we await results... pictures!

The statue of freedom it’s called.
The statue of freedom it’s called. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Stacey Abrams final campaign stop, Fairburn, Georgia.
Stacey Abrams final campaign stop, Fairburn, Georgia. Photograph: Brian Cahn/ZUMA Wire/REX/Shutterstock
What does this button do? In Nashville, Tennessee.
What does this button do? In Nashville, Tennessee. Photograph: Rick Musacchio/EPA
Republican incumbent Dana Rohrabacher. #winning?
Republican incumbent Dana Rohrabacher. #winning? Photograph: David McNew/Getty Images

Naturalized US citizen Elon Musk has exercised the franchise.

(h/t: @bonniemalkin)

Some official early voting numbers from Iowa – not exit polls, mind you, these are officially received ballots tabulated by the secretary of state. Thanks to @bencjacobs:

In 2014, Democrats were walloped in the Senate election in the Hawkeye state, and the Republican governor, Terry Branstad, now ambassador to China, won 98 of 99 counties.

A judge in Harris County has ruled that nine Houston-area polling places must remain open an hour longer than usual, until 8pm CT, because there were delays in voters being able to cast their ballots this morning through technical issues or late opening. Two groups - the Texas Civil Rights Project and the Texas Organizing Project - had filed a lawsuit earlier on Tuesday.

The chief election officer of the third largest county in the US is the Harris County clerk, Stan Stanart. The Republican, who is seeking re-election, attracted headlines in the build-up to the election because his campaign website featured a picture of the Hungarian-Jewish philanthropist, George Soros, above the words: “George Soros is coming… Make NO mistake, George Soros wants to control Harris County Elections and Stan Stanart is in his way.”

Stanart denied the conspiracy-theory post was anti-Semitic, but after criticism following the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, he changed references to Soros to “Liberal Socialist Democrats”.

Here’s a snapshot of a different kind from Arizona, from Andrew Gumbel for the Guardian:

An Arizona man was arrested this afternoon after he walked into his polling place with a loaded firearm. But, in an only-in-Arizona twist, the firearm was not the reason he was initially arrested.

As reported by the Arizona Republic, police were called to the Desert Springs Community Church in Goodyear, west of Phoenix, because 37-year-old Brad Luebke had a video camera and was shooting footage of voters casting their ballots. State law prohibits filming within 75 feet of any polling location.

As it turns out, state law also prohibits anyone other than “peace officers” bringing a firearm into a polling place. But Arizona has unusually permissive gun laws that allow just about anyone to “open carry” in most public places, so the weapon, which was holstered, did not immediately trigger alarm bells. It was loaded with ballbearings, not bullets.

Luebke was reported to have disregarded poll workers when they told him to stop filming and to have disregarded police who told him to leave. He is expected to face charges on three counts – the illegal filming, the gun, and disorderly conduct.

Here’s a race snapshot from Nebraska’s second district, which contains the city of Omaha, which in turn harbors the state’s lion’s share of Democrats:

Kara Eastman is Nebraska nice – an unlikely principal in the ongoing drama titled The Democratic Civil War.

A social worker and the founder of a nonprofit health care organization for children, Eastman had only ever run for the local school board before she jumped into the Democratic primary contest for a House seat in Omaha.

She ran as the progressive challenger to a middle-of-the-road former congressman Brad Ashford, who had the fundraising edge and the institutional support. Against what seemed like all odds – she won. It was a stunning upset and coup for progressives.

Now she faces an uphill battle to unseat Republican congressman Don Bacon. Eastman is running on a Bernie Sanders-style platform that includes Medicare for all and has highlighted her mother’s battle with cancer. Her team says she’s running an old-fashioned campaign: pounding the pavement and getting out the vote. They brush off any suggestion that her politics are out of step with the Nebraskans in this district.

If she pulls off a win tonight, progressive will shout from the rooftops that economic populism can win in Trump country. But if she loses, moderates will use her race as a warning of what happens when Democrats run as an economic populist in Republican-leaning districts.

First polls close

The first polling stations of the night to close have now done so in Kentucky and Indiana (where however owing to time zone fun some polls remain open).

Election day 'PTSD' is making women feel anxious about their vote

Vivian Ho in San Francisco writes:

Two years ago, after I cast my ballot at my local San Francisco polling station, a middle-aged woman I had never met before flashed me a warm smile. “We’re making history today,” she said.

I couldn’t help thinking about that woman on Tuesday as I returned to the voting booth. She had been so confident that the nation was on the precipice of a historic breakthrough, only to end the night with Donald Trump as president.

Some women have taken to describing the emotions that accompany their return to the ballot as “PTSD”, a tongue-in-cheek reference to feeling traumatized by the whiplash they experienced on election day in 2016. (It goes without saying that post-traumatic stress disorder is actually an official and serious diagnosis.)

“I think so many people are having flashbacks to two years ago, especially women, when we just felt like we were on the edge of a huge moment, of not just electing the first woman president, but a full rejection of a presidential candidate who thought it was OK to grab women by the genitals,” said Sally Bergesen, 50, of Seattle.

Last month, a San Francisco State University study found that 25% of college students surveyed had “clinically significant event-related distress” because of the 2016 election, not least women.

Though Jean Chen Ho, 38, of Los Angeles, mailed in her ballot weeks ago, she had “a sense of dread” washing over her all day Tuesday, almost from the moment she woke. “Before 2016, election day used to feel like a very positive thing,” Ho said. “I was doing my civic duty. Here was a chance to cast my vote. It was a privilege. After 2016, it just felt like this complete shift.”

These emotions may not be limited to women. Take this Saturday Night Live sketch, which skewers Democratic hopes for a Blue Wave after being burned in 2016:

Democrats romp in Guam

The blue wave came ashore yesterday.

On Guam, a U.S. territory with over 160,000 people, Democrat Leon Guerrero was elected governor to replace two-term Republican Eddie Calvo. It represents the first Democratic pickup of the midterms.

For the territory’s non-voting delegate seat, Democrat Michael San Nicholas won election after beating longtime incumbent Madeleine Bordallo in the primary.

Although non-voting delegates don’t vote on final passage, they do participate in committees and, when Democrats have been in control of the House, they have been allowed to participate in certain procedural floor votes.

Georgia voters file lawsuit against Kemp

A group of Georgia voters has filed a federal lawsuit asking the US district court in Atlanta to enjoin Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is also the Republican candidate for governor, from exercising any further powers of the Secretary of State’s Office in presiding over the 2018 general election.

Kemp is running against Democrat Stacey Abrams, the former state House minority leader.

According to a press release, the emergency legal papers were filed at 5 PM today on behalf of five Georgia voters: LaTosha Brown, Jennifer N. Ide and Katharine Wilkinson of Fulton County, Candace Fowler of Dekalb County, and Chalis Montgomery of Barrow County.

The plaintiffs are seeking a temporary restraining order barring Secretary Kemp from being involved in the counting of votes, the certification of results, or any runoff or recount procedures that would normally be exercised by the Secretary of State’s Office or the Board of Elections, on which he also sits.

There have been separate struggles reported over voting tonight in Georgia:

By the way, you may have noticed a results widget appear atop the blog – and if you don’t see it, please refresh your browsers. It’s a couple simple bar graphs to present tallies in the Senate and House races as they are called.

There are 35 senate races tonight with incumbent Democrats exposed in 26 of those (the current Senate breakdown is 51 Republicans 49 Democrats including the two Independents who caucus with the Dems). The Democrats need to pick up 23 House seats to claim a majority.

Races to watch

When can we expect results?

It won’t be straight away. The size of some states, the high number of absentee ballots, the predicted high turnout at the polls, and the expected closeness of some of the races all mean that many results won’t come out until the small hours of Wednesday morning at the earliest.

But given that some key districts should be called relatively early in the evening, we could have an idea of who will control the House by midnight. In the 2014 midterms the Associated Press called the Senate for the GOP at 11.25pm.

In 2014 it took two weeks for California to announce the winners of two House elections. And then there is the added complication of some states requiring the winner to get more than 50% of the vote. If they don’t, the top two candidates enter a runoff, and people have to vote all over again.

And for the wonks among you – whose forecast do you prefer?

30 minutes until first polls close

A good number of polling places in Kentucky and Indiana - states that straddle time zones — are scheduled to close at 6pm EST, in about a half hour.

We could get some big results mighty quick. In Kentucky’s sixth congressional district, Amy McGrath, the former fighter pilot, is a Democrat running to swipe a seat from incumbent Andy Barr. And Indiana hosts one of those 10 tricky senate races where Democratic incumbents are trying to hold on in states Trump won (although Trump only won Indiana by *checks notes* 19 points).

Here’s the big McGrath ad:

What would he know about it?

Exit polling: majority of voters said country headed in wrong direction

Disclaimer: Exit polls do not contain election results. Use only as directed.

A majority of voters casting midterm election ballots nationally said the country is headed in the wrong direction, according to a wide-ranging survey of the American electorate conducted by AP:

As voters cast ballots for governor, U.S. Senate and members of Congress in Tuesday’s elections, AP VoteCast found that 41% of voters said the country is on the right track, compared with 58% who said the country is headed in the wrong direction.

Here’s a snapshot of who voted and why, based on preliminary results from AP VoteCast, an innovative nationwide survey of 113,677 voters and 21,559 nonvoters conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago.

Top issue: healthcare

Healthcare was at the forefront of voters’ minds: 26% named it as the most important issue facing the country in this year’s midterm elections. Smaller shares considered immigration (23%), the economy (19 %), gun policy (8 %) and the environment (7 %) to be the top issue.

State of the economy

Voters have a positive view of the nation’s current economic outlook – 65 % said the state’s economy is good, compared with 34 % who said it’s not good.

Trump factor

For 36 % of voters, Donald Trump was not a factor they considered while casting their vote. By comparison, 64 % said Trump was a reason for their vote.

Updated

Exit polling: majority of voters considered Trump 'a factor'

We have the first tranche of exit polling – simply asking questions of voters as they leave polling places – and the Associated Press reports that healthcare and immigration were high on voters’ minds.

AP also reports: “a majority of voters considered President Donald Trump a factor in their votes.”

A majority of voters overall say the country is headed in the wrong direction. Still, about two-thirds say economic conditions are good.

With control of the Senate and the House of Representatives at stake, Trump encouraged voters to view the first nationwide election of his presidency as a referendum on his leadership.

VoteCast debuted Tuesday, replacing the in-person exit poll as a source of detailed information about the American electorate.

In all, the survey included interviews with more than 113,000 voters nationwide.

A note about exit polling: this kind of information is notoriously prone to extrapolation that later turns out to be, how to put this, wrong. So don’t take it to the bank.

Updated

The American pop singer Demi Lovato has returned to social media to encourage people to vote after being hospitalized for a suspected drug overdose in late July.

Lovato, 26, posted a picture of herself voting and wrote: “I am so grateful to be home in time to vote! “One vote can make a difference, so make sure your voice is heard! 🇺🇸 now go out and #VOTE!!!!”

Lovato was hospitalized on July 24 and is reportedly in rehab.

“I have always been transparent about my journey with addiction,” she wrote in a since-deleted Instagram post in early August. “What I’ve learned is that this illness is not something that disappears or fades with time. It is something I must continue to overcome and have not done yet.”

Here’s footage of Lovato performing at the 2016 Democratic national convention:

(2020)

Win or lose tonight, Democrats will spend the next several weeks poring over the election results in search of clues on how to beat Trump in 2020.

The competing analyses – and there will be many, many takeaways and bottom lines – will echo the debate already taking place over the party’s future. Should Democrats choose a standard-bearer who appeals to conservative and Republican-leaning independent voters alarmed by the president, or should they nominate a bold progressive who can mobilize and expand the party’s base? (The debate is more nuanced, but those are the broadest strokes.)

The folks at ThirdWay, a moderate thinktank in Washington, are getting a head start with a new survey out before polls close. They say the results bolster their argument that the path to power runs down the middle – and not on the far left flank.

In a survey of voters in 72 battleground House districts rated “Lean” or “Toss Up” by handicappers at the Cook Political Report, pollsters found that healthcare was unsurprisingly the top priority. When asked what specifically about healthcare, 30% said reduce costs and 28% said protect pre-existing conditions compared with 20% of all voters who said pass Medicare for all, a progressive priority.

The poll also found that 70% of Democrats and Independents want the Democratic party to “appeal to a broad range of voters, including people who may have voted for Trump in 2016” in contrast to 17% of those voters who said the party should move “farther to the left in an effort to generate enthusiasm and participation among progressives and liberals”.

Updated

From the comments:

User avatar for FreeThinker73

Fingers and toes crossed. Please stop this brute!

You can cross your toes?

User avatar for mrjonno

I hope the American people are going to right the wrong they made in the last election. Sounds promising that the female vote that made the difference may have swung the other way this time. If the Democrats get the lead to take control from Trump I hope that impeachment will follow swiftly.

We’ll know more about the proportion of women voters this time with the first exit polls in about 15 minutes.

User avatar for GangstasParadise

Tom McCarthy

Across the world we are watching and reading Guardians coverage.

Thanks!

User avatar for HumanBoeing

Blue House *and* Senate please! And Beto for Prez while you're at it. Get to it now.

I’ll check with IT.

And YOU – where are you tonight? Please send in your election experiences so far. What’s the mood out there? Do you have an election party plan? Is it Tim Kaine-level crazy?

Our assets in the field tonight include:

Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone in Atlanta, Georgia, where the former minority leader of the state legislature, Stacey Abrams, is making a bid to become the country’s first African American woman governor

Tom Dart is in Houston, Texas, where senator Ted Cruz will find out whether he withstood a challenge from congressman Beto O’Rourke; Ed Pilkington is in El Paso, Texas, where O’Rourke will find out whether the challenge succeeded

Richard Luscombe is in Orlando, Florida, where Andrew Gillum is bidding to become the state’s first African American governor and Senator Bill Nelson is bidding not to screw up the Democrats’ very thin shot at taking control of the Senate

Jamiles Lartey is in Tallahassee keeping pace with Gillum, while Lois Beckett is in Florida with student activists from Parkland high school advocating for gun safety

Gary Younge is in Racine, Wisconsin, where Democratic senator Tammy Baldwin looks good for re-election but Republican governor Scott Walker might be in trouble

Andrew Gumbel is in Orange county, California, where Democrats are hoping to pick up multiple sweet seats in a traditionally conservative area, and

Chris McGreal is in Sioux City, Iowa, where controversial Republicans congressman Steve King could have a challenge on his hands after eight comfortable terms.

Updated

90 minutes until first polls close

Hello and welcome to our live results coverage of the 2018 US midterm elections. I’m Tom McCarthy in New York picking up for Amanda and Erin.

The big question tonight is whether the Democrats can take control of the House of Representatives, which would break the uniform control that Republicans currently enjoy of the White House and both houses of Congress. The Democrats need to flip 23 seats to pull it off and we hope to bring you the first results not long after 6pm EST / 11pm GMT.

Who knows, the Senate might be in play, too. It’s a big night, the first national election since Donald Trump’s victory and the first opportunity that most voters will have had to weigh in on that victory. There are also 36 gubernatorial races tonight and some important ballot initiatives which we’ll fill you in on.

If they take the House, Democrats have said, they will try to work with Trump to pass healthcare legislation and an infrastructure spending package. But Democrats would also have the power to counterbalance and confront Trump, in the form of legislative maneuvering, the bully pulpit and corruption investigations backed by subpoena power.

A strong Election Day showing could also provide a much-needed boost of encouragement to Democrats and American progressives concerned about the course of the nation under the Trump presidency. As Barack Obama put it at a campaign appearance yesterday, “The character of our nation is on the ballot.”

How are things looking out there? Thanks for reading and please join us in the comments!

Updated

Hurricane Michael survivors: 'I can’t take that Trump shit'

It’s been a month since Hurricane Michael ripped through Jackson County, Florida, shearing off roofs, severing power to a majority of residents and making roads impassable. The area still faces massive logistical hurdles to orchestrating the midterm elections.

Many of the 14 local polling places in the mostly rural county still had no power as of a couple of weeks ago, or were being used as staging grounds for relief efforts. Elections officials decided to consolidate three emergency “super” polling places, extended early voting and made it easier for residents to cast absentee ballots – since many residents are still dispersed while their homes remain uninhabitable.

Voters at the central emergency voting site in Marianna braved a soaking rain, long lines and drive times of up to 40 minutes to cast their ballots, but all who spoke to the Guardian were in high spirits and happy to have had the chance to make their voices heard.

“It’s been crazy, it’s very confusing,” said Bobbi Frenton, who went to her normal polling place earlier in the day before discovering she had to come to the “super” site instead. Frenton and her husband lost electricity for 25 days in the storm, and sustained massive damage to their home.

“The line was around the around the building when we got here and it was storming. But if you wanna vote that’s what you gotta do – you put up with it,” said Frenton.

Rosemary Martin also sustained massive damage in the storm. She mostly lived in her car for eight days to keep access to air conditioning and electricity to charge her phone. “There was so much going on it was hard to stay focused [on the election] because you had all this other stuff on your mind,” Martin said, happily adding, “I wasn’t going to miss this, though.”

“I can’t take that Trump shit. He’s mean. He don’t care about nobody. This country was made on immigrants, they’re not all criminals – they’re mothers and kids and daddies who just wanna do for their family,” Martin said. “You just can’t believe how horrible he talks of people and thinks of people.”

Updated

Votes for gun safety in Florida

Rainbow flags and colorful floral memorials now surround Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, and photographs of the victims in happier times brighten the outside of a building where a gunman took 49 lives and wounded 53 others in one of the worst mass shootings in US history.

But voters who were taking their time to look around the memorials on a sunny election day afternoon say the horror of that June 2016 night still resonates throughout the city, and was a driving force in the decisions they made at the polling booth today.

Angie Watwood, 52, lives close to the Kaley Street club where the shooting took place, and says she was looking for candidates who would support gun reform, such as Andrew Gillum, the Democratic candidate for governor who has been vocal in his criticism of the National Rifle Association.

Orlando voter Angie Watwood, 51, at Pulse nightclub today.
Orlando voter Angie Watwood, 51, at Pulse nightclub today. Photograph: Richard Luscombe for the Guardian

“What’s wrong with common sense gun laws? We’ve got to get a grip on it. We have all these mass shootings and we act like it’s normal,” she said, walking between the memorials.

“Pulse, and those kids in Parkland, we send thoughts and prayers but what use is that? I believe in the Second Amendment and that everyone has a right to a gun, but who needs an AR-15?”

The Republican-controlled state legislature passed a gun safety bill after this February’s Parkland massacre, raising the age restrictions on the purchase of weapons, banning certain types of ammunition and providing more money for mental health care.

Ron DeSantis, the Republican candidate for governor who is endorsed by the NRA, says he would have vetoed the bill, but for Watwood, it did not go far enough: “We’re not going to stop every shooting, but if we stop just one it’s worth it.”

Donald Trump has sent a last minute tweet urging voters to support Congressman Randy Hultgren in Illinois’s 14th district.

Last week, Guardian political reporter Ben Jacobs reported from that district, where Hultgren is trailing Democrat Lauren Underwood in the polls.

Underwood is running a campaign focused on healthcare. In particular, preserving protections for those with pre-existing conditions.

“Healthcare is the No 1 issue in this election for across the board,” Underwood told the Guardian. “Not the No 1 for Democrats, not the No 1 for men. It’s No 1 across the board. I’m a nurse. And if every voter in the 14th walks into their polling place thinking, ‘Randy Hultgren OK, oh Lauren Underwood, she’s the nurse,’ we’ve done our job.”

Updated

In Virginia Beach, Virginia, there are reports a man stood outside a polling station with a German Shepherd that barked at people who walked by.

John Zogby, opinion pollster and author, briefed reporters at the Washington Foreign Press Center this afternoon.

“This is a wild one ... We do know that early voting was beyond brisk,” Zogby said. “There were, at last count, about 40 million Americans who exercised their right to vote before election day. That is an incredibly high turnout.

“Traditionally, a higher turnout would benefit the Democratic party. Some constituencies that are Democratic – young people, nonwhites – have not been voting in non-year elections.

“However, what we do know from just party registration tracking in the states is that, among these 40 million, Republicans seem to have the edge. Even in a state like Florida, where you have a very high turnout among Democrats, there are still 30,000 more Republicans that have turned out to vote.”

Typically, he noted, this category is 10% and, in a presidential year, about 19%.

To put this year’s turnout in context, the average in the past two midterms hovered around 37 or 38% of eligible voters. For recent presidential elections, it was around 55-60%.

Zogby said he is aware of one expert predicting 48% or 49% this year. “That would make this the highest turnout in an off-year election in about a hundred years.”

In 2014, he added, 80 million votes were cast. This year it is likely to be around 105 million or even 110 million. The last presidential election, which always generates higher interest, garnered 137 million votes.

Zogby was hesitant to predict the outcomes.

“What do we know? The Democrats need just two seats to win back a majority of the US Senate. At this moment in time that looks very difficult to do. Not impossible, but very difficult ... However, if that turnout is high among young people, many of these races are close. I’m going to be first person to suggest to you if it’s a young person’s election, it could very well be a Democratic majority in the Senate.”

Updated

Manuel Oliver, who lost his son Joaquin at the Parkland school shooting, is voting for the first time today as a US citizen. He’s casting his vote for his son, who would have been 18 and voting today.

Oliver said no matter who wins, he is going to start demanding action from newly elected politicians tomorrow. “There are people who owe me promises,” he said.

Meanwhile, Matthew Herz, 15, has reached 75 people at this Parkland phone bank. He was friends with Joaquin Oliver. “He can’t vote, so maybe me encouraging him to vote will be his voice,” Matthew told me

Matthew said a good outcome of this election would be: “Gun reform. Universal background checks. Banning bump stocks.”

Tom Dart reports for the Guardian from Houston, Texas, where Democrats are hoping that Beto O’Rourke’s popularity boosts turnout and helps other Texas candidates on the ballot:

One of their key targets is Texas’ seventh district, which includes some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Houston.

A corporate lawyer, Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, is targeting the nine-term incumbent, Republican John Culberson, attacking his record on healthcare and Hurricane Harvey relief. She’s run a more centrist campaign than O’Rourke, hoping to attract moderate Republicans, and it might just work. The district was once held by George HW Bush and has been Republican for 50 years, but polls suggest it’s a toss-up.

Sri Preston Kulkarni faces longer odds in his effort to flip TX-22 - a suburban Houston congressional district that’s one of the most ethnically diverse parts of the country - with a campaign that’s betting on high turnout from Asian-American voters to oust a highly conservative Republican, Pete Olson, who recently called Kulkarni an “Indo-American carpetbagger” and described the chanting of “CNN sucks” at a Trump rally as “awesome”.

So, the very tall man in this photo is former FBI director James Comey.

As you might remember, during the 2016 presidential election, some Democrats felt Comey tipped the scales in Trump’s favor by re-opening an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.

He is out canvassing in Virginia for Jennifer Wexton, a Democrat. Comey said in 2016 he was a lifelong Republican. He was also fired by Donald Trump.

In the rural town of Winterville, about 60 miles outside of Atlanta, Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp has just cast his ballot, surrounded by members of his family.

It was a carefully managed event at a small polling station in a disused railroad building. But the candidate, who has been extremely wary of media in the run-up to this closely fought election, did take a few questions after voting.

Kemp is currently Georgia’s secretary of state and thus oversees the elections here. He has been accused of suppressing the vote among thousands of minority voters. Last month it was revealed that over 50,000 voter applications, mostly from African Americans, were being held up by Kemp’s office. Under his tenure over 200 polling places across the state have been closed down as well.

When asked by the Guardian if he had a message for those who would be finding it harder to vote today, Kemp interrupted the question and struck a defiant tone.

“I would disagree with that question completely. Because you have no factual basis on making it harder for people to vote,” he said. “It has never been easier for people to vote in the state of Georgia than it is right now. In fact, right now we’re having record turnout – did you realize that? We set a record for midterm turnout for midterm turn out, so you do not have your facts right.”

Although Kemp is right about record turnout among early voters in the state we’re still yet to see how same day turnout will go and, pivotally, where voters will turn out in the highest numbers.

Updated

Here is a bingo card for things to look out for during the cable news midterms broadcasts tonight – if you’re so inclined.

Put one mark on “2020 conjecture before first result” for me, please.

Updated

Voting delays reported in Georgia

Khushbu Shah writes for the Guardian from Snellville, Georgia, where volunteer election monitors said eight polling machines went down earlier this morning at Annistown elementary:

The lines that snaked down the school’s hallway are much shorter now, with some voters picking up slices of delivery pizza on their way out. One voter estimates it took 30 minutes for him to get in and out.

Gabe Okoye, chairman of the Gwinnett county Democratic party said he got four phone calls about the location this morning he had and he had to spring into action.

“They don’t have patience, they don’t have time to wait. All these people did not vote,” Okoye said of those who left after the machines were said to have gone down. “Once you discourage them like that, they are not coming back.” So with every vote you chip away, the advantage is to the other party, he added, referring to the Republican party.

He thinks this happened in Gwinnett County because, he says, there is a saying in Georgia: “As goes Gwinnett, so goes the governorship.”

Lines are still reported to be long in other parts of metro Atlanta this afternoon. Volunteers handed out popcorn to those who has waited more than an hour at a polling location in Midtown.

Advancement Project, an organization working on election protection in Georgia, said Christian City Assisted Living Center in Fulton county is reporting lines of upwards of two hours.

Updated

On 5 November 1872, the activist Susan B Anthony illegally cast a vote in the presidential election.

Anthony was a leading figure in the fight for women’s suffrage and in honor of her work, people are posting “I voted” stickers on her tombstone at the Rochester cemetery in New York.

This happened during the 2016 presidential election as well (see video below).

Voters flock to Susan B Anthony’s grave on election day

Updated

Summary

It’s 2.30pm on the east coast and Americans are out voting. The final polls close in 10 and a half hours - when Alaska concludes voting at 1am ET.

Here’s where things stand:

  • Reports of long lines at polling stations are coming in from across the country. At a polling place in Snellville, Georgia, more than 100 people took turns sitting in children’s chairs and on the floor as they waited in line for hours.
  • The stormy weather across the south has disrupted voting. Voters in some locations were forced to use paper ballots instead of electronic machines because of power outages, according to the Associated Press. Other polling places are operating on generators and have emergency ballots ready for voters.
  • Top Democrats are optimistic about taking the House – at least in public. “I am confident the Democrats will win the majority of the US House of Representatives,” Congressman Ben Ray Lujan, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), told reporters in Washington.
  • Iowa Republican Steve King, facing an unexpected challenge from his Democratic opponent, has barred the state’s top newspaper from attending his election event tonight. His campaign called the newspaper “leftist propaganda”.
  • Fox News host Sean Hannity is under fire for appearing onstage with Donald Trump at a rally last night. Fox News said in a statement it does not condone campaign appearances by Hannity and another host and that the issue has been addressed, though it was not immediately clear how it was addressed.
  • Beto O’Rourke attracted more than 100 camerapeople and reporters from all over the world to watch him vote. O’Rourke is banking on an army of young voters who have never voted before coming out to the polls.
  • Hillary Clinton, failed 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, urged voters to “vote against radicalism, bigotry and corruption” and “for fantastic candidates all over the country – including a historic number of women”.
  • In Kissimmee, Florida, Puerto Rican voters are weighing Donald Trump’s response to Hurricane Maria and his denial of the official death toll, according to US congressman Darren Soto, who showed up to encourage voters.

Updated

Writer JC Lee is one of several people taking to dating apps to encourage people to vote.

Lee, who wrote for HBO’s Looking, the cancelled dramedy about a group of gay men in San Francisco, is highlighting that California is one of the states that has same day registration for voting.

via @Dominic Rushe

Updated

Steve King bars Iowa's top newspaper from election event

Iowa representative Steve King has barred his state’s most prominent newspaper, the Des Moines Register, from attending his election night event.

King, a Republican, is running for his ninth two-year term but is facing an unexpected tough challenge from his Democratic opponent, JD Scholten.

Jeff King, who is Steve King’s son and a paid staffer of his campaign, told the Register by email on Tuesday: “We are not granting credentials to the Des Moines Register or any other leftist propaganda media outlet with no concern for reporting the truth.”

Register executive editor Carol Hunter on Tuesday said: “The Des Moines Register will continue doing everything in its power to cover Rep King fairly. This decision is unfortunate because it not only shuts out the Des Moines Register reporter, but also the people of Iowa.”

Not only are polling stations dealing with power outages and inclement weather, humidity is apparently affecting voting tabulators in North Carolina.

The Associated Press reports:

North Carolina’s state board of elections and ethics enforcement said in a news release Tuesday that it received reports that ballots can’t be fed through tabulators in some precincts in Wake county and elsewhere. Officials say such ballots are stored securely in “emergency bins” and will be tabulated as soon as possible.

Officials also announced the state board will meet Tuesday afternoon to consider the Columbus county board of elections’ request to extend voting hours at a precinct where workers didn’t have the correct ballot when polls opened.

Updated

Beachside voting at the Venice Beach Lifeguard station in California on November 6, 2018
Beachside voting at the Venice Beach Lifeguard station in California on 6 November. Photograph: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images
Long lines as people wait to cast their votes at Grady High School in Atlanta, Georgia
Long lines as people wait to cast their votes at Grady high school in Atlanta, Georgia. Photograph: Jessica McGowan/Getty Images
Abigail Spanberger, Democratic candidate to represent Virginia’s seventh Congressional district, votes with her daughters in Virginia
Abigail Spanberger, Democratic candidate to represent Virginia’s seventh congressional district, votes with her daughters in Virginia. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA

Updated

The small Kansas town Dodge City has been the subject of nationwide controversy because it moved its only polling station, something Democrats said would further disenfranchise Latinos who make up a majority of the city’s residents.

The Guardian’s Chris McGreal reported from the town last month and explained:

The Ford county clerk Debbie Cox, an elected Republican, said she chose the Expo site because it has large amounts of parking and can handle thousands of people. Although the new voting site is closer to mainly Latino neighbourhoods than white ones, it is still a drive or a 50-minute walk from downtown.

But there is a piece of the story missing from the national uproar.

While the only place to vote on election day itself is at the Expo center, there is a polling station in the heart of Dodge City at the county’s offices on Gunsmoke Street open weekdays for three weeks before the election

Here’s a look at Dodge City today, courtesy the LA Times national correspondent Matt Pearce:

Updated

How is Trump spending election day?

In case you are wondering what Donald Trump is up to today, his schedule lists “executive time” as his only activity.

New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman explained that this is time the president spends on the phone, television and Twitter.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, who told reporters she voted today, released this statement on Trump’s schedule:

After 11 rallies in eight states and weeks of campaigning for Republican candidates, the president will spend today making phone calls, monitoring congressional, Senate and gubernatorial races across the country and meeting with his political team for real-time updates. Later this evening the president and first lady have invited family and friends to join them in the residence as they watch election returns.

Updated

Ohio groups file lawsuit asking jailed citizens to be allowed to vote

Ohio groups filed an election day lawsuit asking for an order that citizens locked up in jail be allowed to vote.

The plaintiffs are two Ohioans arrested on Friday for misdemeanors, who remain jailed because they cannot pay $10,000 bail, according to Chiraag Bains, director of legal strategies at Demos, which is bringing the suit along with other voting rights groups.

“They are eligible, registered voters who will be denied their fundamental right to vote because they are locked behind bars,” Bains said on Twitter.

Ohio bars people incarcerated for felony convictions, but people in jail who have not yet gone to trial are eligible to vote. People who are in jail can request absentee ballots, but the deadline to request a ballot was Friday. That leaves people arrested since then with no way to vote.

The suit argues denying them the ability to vote violates the constitution, and asks for a last minute order to let recently jailed Ohioans vote. There’s already an exception to the deadline for people who are suddenly hospitalized, who can request an absentee ballot up until 3pm on election day and have it delivered to them in person. The plaintiffs ask for the same procedure to be used for jails. You can read the court documents here.

Updated

Google says that “donde votar”, which means “where to vote” in Spanish, was the top trending search in the country this morning.

Three of the five top trending searches were election related.

Updated

Fox News rebukes Sean Hannity's Trump rally appearance

Fox News says it does not condone campaign appearances by hosts Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro at a Donald Trump rally Monday night, according to a statement sent to several reporters. The network said the issue has been addressed, though it wasn’t immediately clear how it was addressed.

Updated

The border patrol’s “crowd control exercise” scheduled for Tuesday in El Paso was cancelled.

US Customs and Border Protection (CPB) scrapped the event shortly before it was set to start at 10am in Chihuahuita, the oldest neighborhood of this city, after receiving criticism.

The agency said it would reschedule the training for another day.

CPB had said the exercise was necessary to prepare for the caravan of Central American asylum seekers heading to the US border, which is still hundreds of miles away from El Paso.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Texas denounced the move as an “election day stunt”.

El Paso is the Texas home town of Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate who is locked in a tight race against Ted Cruz for one of Texas’s two US senate seats, and immigration has been at the heart of the bitter campaign. Cruz has taken Trump’s lead, calling for a wall along the Mexican border and warning about caravans of “illegal invaders” pouring into Texas; O’Rourke has countered that immigration makes America strong.

Updated

Poll site snags in Georgia

There are additional reports of voting troubles in Georgia, where some voters are waiting in line for three hours to cast ballot.

The Associated Press reports:

At a polling place in Snellville, Georgia, more than 100 people took turns sitting in children’s chairs and on the floor as they waited in line for hours.

Voter Ontaria Woods said about two dozen people who had come to vote left because of the lines.

At a poll site in Atlanta, voters waited in the rain in long lines that stretched around the building.

Hannah Ackermann said officials at the polling site offered various explanations for the delay, including blaming workers who didn’t show up and overloaded machines.

Updated

Maricopa County, Arizona, has a history of staggering Election Day dysfunctions, but this was a new one even for them: a polling place that failed to open because the property went into foreclosure overnight.

Voters and poll workers who showed up on Tuesday morning at the Golf Academy of America building in Chandler, an affluent suburb southwest of Phoenix, found the premises padlocked and a foreclosure notice in the window.

Poll workers were as surprised as voters and were unable to access ballots and voting equipment that they had stored inside. Frustrated voters who had hoped to beat the rush by arriving at the polling station close to the 6 a.m. opening had no idea what they were supposed to do.

“I’ve got things to do. I can’t stand around all morning trying to find a place to vote,” Chandler resident Thomas Wood told a videographer for the Arizona Republic.

By 8:30 a.m., poll workers had set up a temporary polling station in the parking lot and were optimistic that they could obtain a court order allowing them access to the building before too much of the day elapsed.

The foreclosure was one of several headaches for Maricopa County’s election chief, David Fontes, a Democrat elected after he promised to end the county’s ignominious history of long voting lines, closed polling stations and discrimination against the Phoenix area’s large Latino population.

At least two other locations failed to open on time. Fontes’ teams were up all night racing to prepare as many as 72 locations that needed last-minute support.

Two years ago, Maricopa County made international headlines because Fontes’ predecessor, Helen Purcell, cut 60 of the county’s 500 polling places for a hotly contested presidential primary and then blamed the voters when they faced lines of five hours or more. Purcell lost her job to Fontes in the November 2016 elections, but Fontes’s tenure has been far from problem-free.

In this year’s primary, held in August, 95 polling places failed to open on time. Fontes told the Arizona Republic on Tuesday: “It’s been one long day since the 28th of August.”

David Hogg rode into this Parkland phone banking room on an electric skateboard.

“It’s just to get the stress off,” Hogg explains, looking for a place to plug it in.

Hogg is one of the leaders of the nationwide youth movement to prevent gun violence that he and his classmates helped catalyze after the February 14 shooting at their high school. Hogg and his fellow activists have been fighting and campaigning nonstop since the mass shooting at their high school on February 14. Spending time with them, it’s hard to overstate how deeply tired these 18-year-olds are. They have been fighting for nine months and they are still going and talking fast and walking fast, trying to find ways to keep calm and keep going and still be 18 sometimes. Their exhaustion is so palpable.

Here are some more Guardian readers weighing in on their voting choices:

Kirk Thomas, 55, from Cordova, Tennessee, is excited by what appears to be high turnout:

“Tennessee is typically a red state but the early voter turn-out has been phenomenal. I believe this is because voters who normally sit on the side lines realize that our country is headed in the wrong direction and they want to send a clear message.

“I hope this ground-swell of early voters will send a strong and clear message to the current administration that divisive, racist politics is not the direction we want to go in as a country.”

Mary Camille Cunningham, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, says “people who have not been active in politics are now active”:

“One of my therapist colleagues is running for office in her district. My 75+ mentor who attended the Women’s March 2017 was out in the cold knocking on doors last weekend. There are kids who look like they’re only 15-years-old working at my local Democratic office to get out the vote, and Albuquerque had a good turn out every day for early voting.

“I’m cautiously optimistic that there will be a ‘blue wave’ and the Dems will take back Congress. I’m socially progressive and don’t love everything about their platform, but the alternative is far worse.”

Updated

Here in El Paso, Texas, there’s no “Republican weather” as one GOP candidate described the heavy rains through the mid west and east that could dampen down turnout. It’s a beautiful sunny day, with distant views across the US border into Mexico.

Turnout is steady though not overwhelming so far this morning. Itzel Loya, 28, told me why she had just voted for Beto O’Rourke in his home town. She said she is fed up with “the whole Republican thing, the president, the senators. Beto can bring change for us.”

She said she’s definitely detected a surge in energy and new voters this time. Several of her friends are voting for the first time, fired up by O’Rourke’s insurgency campaign that seeks to unseat the incumbent Republican Ted Cruz.

It’s the first time that Brigid McCarthy, a professional violinist, has voted since she moved to Texas, and she’s backing O’Rourke. Why?

“He’s the man. He’s for the people.”

Richard Cano, 67, has just voted for Cruz at the Putnam elementary school polling station in the West Side of El Paso, a better-off more conservative part of town. That he voted Republican is a sign of how entrenched politics can be in Texas, given that he is a huge fan of O’Rourke whom he has known personally since the Democratic candidate was a young boy.

“I love Beto to death. He’s a fine, fine person.”

So why not vote for his friend?

“He’s for open borders. I’m for closed borders and for sticking strictly to the constitution. I’m a Republican. That’s all there is to it.”

In Racine, Wisconsin, more than a hundred high school activists gathered at Monument Square for a rally before spreading out around the city to get out the vote.

Standing in front of a banner reading “Shithole Public High School Proud” three speakers - two of whom are immigrants seeking asylum in the United States - called on those who are eligible to vote to head to the polls.

“A lot of [high school students] have parents who cannot vote because they are undocumented,” said Ari Antreassian, an organiser for Voce de la Frontera in Racine. “And a lot of them can’t vote because they’re too young. But whether it’s education spending or immigration reform, they’re affected by the current politics. So they are calling on people who have a vote to use it and not choose to be voiceless.”

Wisconsin has a hotly contested governor’s race pitting incumbent Republican Scott Walker against Democrat Tony Evers.

Also Tuesday, Racine’s most prominent Latino activist, who was detained over the summer, is scheduled to face a deportation hearing.

John Lewis: Georgia race laid bare 'scars and stains of racism'

Representative John Lewis said on Tuesday the Georgia governor’s race has laid bare the “scars and stains of racism” still present in American society.

“The scars and stains of racism are still deeply embedded in American society,” the Georgia Democrat and civil rights movement icon told CNN. “As Dr Kind said on many occasions, we must learn to live together as brothers and sisters. If not, we will perish as fools.”

Lewis predicted Democrats would take control of the House and said they would “do everything in our power to bring the American people together”.

“I think the president – the person in the White House – has created the climate, the environment, through his actions and through his words,” Lewis told CNN.

He also expressed shock at an ad from Trump widely condemned as racist, featuring a man who entered the country illegally and killed two cops. Several TV networks have pulled it.

“I was not only surprised, but I couldn’t believe it,” Lewis said. “I think the television stations and network did what was right to take it down. It was vicious, sick, and not becoming of a political party, not becoming of the American people.”

Updated

Former vice-president Joe Biden said he would be “dumbfounded” if Democrats don’t take control of the House of Representatives.

“This is the single most important off-year election in my lifetime,” Biden told reporters after voting near his home in Wilmington, Delaware, according to the Washington Post. “It’s about the character of the country.”

Biden also predicted Democrats would pick up at least six governor’s seats, the Post reported.

Updated

Top House Democrats 'confident' they will win majority

Top House Democrats have left no room for doubt that they will inherit the gavel on Tuesday night.

“I am confident the Democrats will win the majority of the US House of Representatives,” congressman Ben Ray Lujan, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), told reporters in Washington.

He was joined by House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, who said the result would turn on one issue: healthcare.

“This election is about healthcare,” the California Democrat said at a news conference.

After Donald Trump won the election, she said Democrats “didn’t agonize, we organized”. They immediately began strategizing ways to protect the Affordable Care Act and in 2017 remained united in their opposition to the House GOP’s repeal of the 2010 healthcare law.

“One hundred per cent,” Pelosi reminded reporters. The bill narrowly passed the House but was defeated in the Senate.

She said Democrats “made our environment to make sure people knew the difference between Democrats and Republicans on this subject and what was at stake for them”.

Asked how she intended work with Republicans if they take back the House, Pelosi replied: “We will strive for bipartisanship because we have a responsibility to find common ground where we can, stand our ground where we can’t.”

She added: “We are not going after the Republicans the way they went after us. We are no they.”

Pelosi and Lujan urged voters in districts where voter suppression tactics have been reported to stay in line and cast their ballot.

“Do not let their scare tactics frighten you away from the polls,” Pelosi said.

Luján added: “We have robust legal strategy to make sure that we’re protecting the integrity of the vote.”

Asked if Pelosi is 100% confident her party will win tonight, she pulled the microphone close.

“Yes, yes, I am.”

Updated

Parkland students get out the vote in Florida

In Parkland, Florida, more than two dozen teenagers gathered Tuesday morning to make calls to remind voters to go to the polls. Many of the Parkland students, who had lost 17 classmates and teachers to a school shooting at their high school in February, were still too young to vote themselves.

“I can’t vote, so I wanted to do my part and get other people to vote for me,” said Ariana Ali, a 17-year-old senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school.

“Hi, I’m Kelly, I’m with March for Our Lives. Can I count on your vote?” Kelly Mathesie, another 17-year-old senior, said brightly. She and her friends were sitting in tight circle, their sticker-covered laptops open in front of them. “Thank you so much for voting!” she said. One of her friends cheered.

Nine months after the shooting at their school, the students who helped organize a national youth violence against gun.

“I think we’ve already reached victory,” said Sarah Chadwick, 17, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Early youth voting had surged in multiple states, including 700% in Tenneesee, more than 500% in Texas.

Struggling to get their online phone banking interface working, some students started going through their phones and leaving messages for everyone they knew. Others broadcast live on Instagram.

“I’m going through all my phone contacts as making sure that everyone I’ve ever met has voted,” Sofie Whitney explained, leaving a message for one contact. “If anyone you know isn’t voting, cut off all ties with them,” she said on another message.

“Everyone I know and love is voting,” she said.

Whitney said she wanted to see youth voter turnout rise to match the turnout for the oldest voters in the 2014 midterm elections: fewer than 20% of voters 18 to 29 had voted in 2014, compared with nearly 60% of voters over sixty, giving the oldest voters a decisive power over the election.

Getting the youth vote turnout rate as high as 60% or 70% would be unprecedented. Even a smaller jump in youth vote turnout could point to a dramatic change in youth voting culture, experts said.

“Honestly, everything is possible at this point, we’re proving everyone wrong,” Whitney said.

On the west coast, armies of enthusiastic Democratic party volunteers fanned out across southern California in the pre-dawn gloom to hang door signs reminding target voters to cast their ballot in some of the most competitive congressional races in the country. Four of those races are being fought in suburban Orange county, south of Los Angeles, in districts where Republican candidates prevailed in 2016 but where Hillary Clinton won more votes than Donald Trump.

Los Angeles’s progressive armies of the night descended on all four, as well as a fifth tightly contested district northwest of the city. At the campaign headquarters for Mike Levin, the Democrat favored to take the seat currently occupied by the powerful retiring congressman Darrell Issa, cars jammed the parking lot at 5am – two hours before the polls opened – and the candidate himself was on hand to greet his supporters. The volunteers, in festive mood, high-fived, took selfies with the candidate, and called him “congressman” . Levin resisted that label, but he welcomed the outpouring of support and said a couple thousand door-hangers could make a crucial difference against his Republican opponent, Diane Harkey.

“The nation is watching our district,” the door hanger read, under a picture of Levin with former president Barack Obama. “Vote for Democrat Mike Levin to flip Congress and place a check on Donald Trump’s destructive agenda.”

Updated

Over 5 million people cast early ballots in Florida

Richard Luscombe reports from Orlando, Florida:

More than 5 million voters, or 38.4 percent of those registered in Florida, had already cast their ballot, either early in person, or by mail, before election sites opened at 7am Tuesday, according to a mid-morning update from the Florida division of elections.

The figures, which keep the state on track to far surpass 2014’s overall turnout of 51% by the time election-day polls close at 7pm, appeared to offer more comfort to the Democrats.

Of the 5.1 million early votes cast, 2.08 million were by registered Republicans and 2.11 million by Democrats. No-party affiliation voters accounted for another 973,304 ballot papers.

Final opinion polls in the two marquee races also favored Democrats, although both are considered to be on a knife-edge. Incumbent US senator Bill Nelson maintained a slim 3.3% advantage over his Republican challenger, the outgoing state governor Rick Scott, in the Real Clear Politics average of polls.

Meanwhile Andrew Gillum, the Tallahassee mayor running to succeed Scott as governor, was 4.4% up on Republican Ron DeSantis, who resigned his Congress seat in the summer to concentrate on the election.

Updated

Andrew Gillum votes in Florida

Andrew Gillum cast his ballot Tuesday morning in Tallahassee and told reporters that if he wins Florida’s governor’s race tonight, it will send a message about Donald Trump’s hateful rhetoric.

“If we win tonight, I think that will send a message to Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis as well that the politics of hatred and division come to an end- at least in this election,” Gillum said after voting at the Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Tallahassee. His opponent, Ron DeSantis has been accused of using racist “dogwhistles” throughout the campaign.

“We’re going to show that people are going out and voting for something, not against. And by voting for something, we’re restoring the politics of decency and what’s right and common between all of us,” Gillum said, adding:

“We’ll worry about history later. Today we’re working to win.”

If elected, Gillum will be Florida’s first black governor.

The two candidates were locked in a virtual tie running up to election day.

It’s a humid day in the Florida capitol, sunshine peeking out from behind grey clouds and intermittent showers giving voters reason to tote umbrellas. A group of Gillum boosters waited for him outside his polling place and loudly burst into his campaign slogan “bring it home” as he emerged from the ballot.

Common in the apparel of the fans who turned up was the florescent green and orange colors of Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, or FAMU. Not only is Gillum an alumnus, but his political career actually began as student body president of the Historically Black College and University, which is located in Tallahassee.

Last night a get out the vote rally on the school’s campus brought megastars like DJ Khaled and Diddy out to try and mobilize the youth vote. As a DJ cranked bass-heavy favorites from Fast Life Yungstaz and 21 Savage, students stepped and strolled around the gymnasium- an HBCU tradition- as the MC and guest speakers encouraged them to make it out to vote Tuesday.

“I want you to show them just how powerful we are. I want you to show them just how brilliant we are. I want you to show them that we cannot be stopped,” said Brittany Packnett, an activist and organizer, to rousing applause.

“Show up tomorrow with 10 of your home girls and 10 of your home boys and bring it home for Andrew Gillum.”

Updated

On Donald Trump’s mind this Election Day morning is a supposed rumor that a Missouri Senate candidate he held a rally with left his event early.

Trump also made a last minute plug for Rep. Pete King in Long Island, New York, who faces a challenge from Democrat Liuba Grechen Shirley.

Young voters increase dramatically in Tennessee

Turnout by young voters in Tennessee surged dramatically, the Tennessean reported.

In early voting, 98,000 people ages 18 to 29 cast ballots – seven times the 12,800 who voted in 2014, according to data from the group TargetSmart.

Tennessee is where pop star Taylor Swift made a plea for fans to vote, endorsing Democrat Phil Bredesen in a hotly contested Senate race against Republican Marsha Blackburn.

Updated

Technical difficulties forced voters to use paper ballots at some precincts in Gwinnett county, Georgia, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.

The machines used to check voters in at their precincts were down for a time at three sites, according to the paper.

The county, the most diverse in Georgia, has been the target of lawsuits for its high rate of rejecting absentee ballots.

The troubles led to long lines, as voters began to cast their ballots in the razor thin governor’s race between Stacey Abrams and Brian Kemp.

Updated

In Georgia, a closely watched gubernatorial race between Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp is expected to come down the wire. With record early voting in the state, canvassers for Abrams were out until dusk on Monday evening in Atlanta’s low income black neighborhoods urging as many people as they could to get out to vote, despite the rain that was forecast.

From left to right: Osunanmi Akinsegun-Oyewole, 35 Sanae Lahgazi Alaoui, 23 Assata Aminifaa, 33
From left to right: Osunanmi Akinsegun-Oyewole, 35 Sanae Lahgazi Alaoui, 23 Assata Aminifaa, 33 Photograph: Tom Silverstone

Abrams, who will become the first African American female governor in America if elected, has pushed hard to get out the vote in communities with low turnout in prior elections.

Canvasser Assata Aminifaa, 33, who did not vote in 2016, said the response she had encountered since she began knocking on doors had been overwhelming.

“They didn’t really feel that their voice mattered before. But now we have someone that is listening to what you think. If you’re not going to vote, other people control your reality and what’s going to happen in your life. And a lot of people haven’t thought about it like that [before],” she said.

As Aminifaa and her group of two other canvassers knocked on doors, many people said they planned to line up to cast their ballot. One construction supervisor, who did not want to be named, said he planned to give his crew the day off to go and vote.

“It’s too important not to,” he said, confirming he planned to vote for Abrams.

Updated

Puerto Ricans turn out in Florida

Richard Luscombe reports from Kissimmee, Florida:

Most of the campaign signs are in Spanish outside the Robert Guevera community center in Kissimmee, Florida, where the tailwinds of Hurricane Maria 14 months ago appeared to still be blowing as voters arrived at the polls early on Tuesday.

The population of the Buenaventura Lakes, or BVL as it’s known to locals, is strongly Puerto Rican, and Donald Trump’s response to the aftermath of the devastating hurricane and denial of the official death toll on the island were uppermost in many people’s minds, according to US congressman Darren Soto, who showed up to encourage voters.

“Without question the deaths of 3,000 fellow Puerto Ricans are on the hearts and minds of the 1.2 million of us here in Florida and is one of the big factors in the higher turnout,” Soto, the state’s first elected congressman of Puerto Rican descent, told the Guardian.

Voters wait in line to cast their ballots at John F Kennedy Library in Hialeah, Florida on 6 November.
Voters wait in line to cast their ballots at John F Kennedy Library in Hialeah, Florida on 6 November. Photograph: Cristóbal Herrera/EPA

Voters were more blunt. “Trump is a racist pig,” said Carmen Colon, 71, explaining why she voted Democrat right down the ticket, including for Andrew Gillum, the Tallahassee mayor who’s aiming to become the first black governor of Florida, and Bill Nelson for US senator.

“The president didn’t want to help. Trump just wants to make America white again. He’s stupid,” she said.

Soto, facing his own re-election battle, shook hands with supporters and encouraged them to vote for “healing”, observing that the packed community center parking lot was in stark contrast to poor turnout of the 2014 midterms.

“People are fired up. It’s a race between love and hate, a United States and divided States,” he said. “It’s a race about respect for the Hispanic community, and really for all communities. Over the last two years we’ve seen the country morph into a horrible visage of itself that we don’t recognize.”

Updated

Here’s a new election day cartoon from Rob Rogers, the cartoonist fired by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette after a series of cartoons skewering Donald Trump.

Updated

The stormy weather across the south today has disrupted voting in some locations.

The storms have caused power outages, forcing voters to use paper ballots instead of electronic machines, the Associated Press reported.

In Tennessee, 20,000 customers were without power in Knox County. Tennessee coordinator of elections Mark Goins told the AP the polling places that had electricity knocked out are operating on generators and have emergency ballots ready for voters.

At a polling place in Knoxville, Tennessee at Cedar Bluff middle school, power was out and backup generators had also failed, CNN reported. Citizens were voting by paper ballot outside of the darkened building.

Updated

You tell us how you're voting and why

Guardian readers have been in touch about how they’re voting and the reasons why.

For Lynne in New Mexico, universal healthcare and abortion rights are key issues.

“I’d like to see universal healthcare provided for all, I also think that government should keep its hands off of women’s healthcare and that includes abortion. I definitely want to see a complete separation of church and state. I’m an atheist and find many, if not most, of the issues that are objectionable in this election, such as abortion rights, gun control laws, lack of universal health care, tend to relate back to evangelical Christians figuring out ways to push their agenda through political means.

“There’s no way to tell at this point but I hope Trump gets a resounding thumping in this election. In this election I did something that I have never done in the past. I voted a straight Democratic ticket. After the last two years of watching even moderate Republicans pinch their noses and climb into bed with this nasty excuse of a president, I feel that the Republican party in general has been compromised in just about every way possible.”

In California, 48-year-old Vivek Sharma said he lives in a “red conservative island in the blue ocean” where the tension is palpable:

“This neighborhood went for Trump largely along racial lines – whites (the majority of the neighborhood) went for Trump and Asians (about 40% of the neighborhood) went for Hillary. We will see if the vote for governor breaks down in a similar way this time.

“My congressional district is overwhelmingly Democratic and while I voted for Judy Chu (Democrat) there is no doubt about the outcome. Similarly, I voted for Gavin Newsom (Democrat) for governor but there is no doubt about this outcome either. More difficult were the propositions that California voters are being asked to render a judgement upon. I largely voted along with the progressive wing of the Democratic party with one exception – Proposition 6 (the gas tax). I voted for repeal because I dislike the regressive nature of the tax. It overwhelmingly impacts the poor and I would like California to find a different way to finance transportation related infrastructure. Most progressives will vote for the gas tax (so against Proposition 6) but I believe that the affordability crisis in California cannot be addressed without dealing with the gas tax.

“I am hoping that there is an overwhelming repudiation of Donald Trump. However, I expect that while the Democrats will pick up the House and make progress in a variety of state level races, that there will be no decisive check on Trump.”

A woman with her children votes at a polling station in Lorton, Virginia on 6 November.
A woman with her children votes at a polling station in Lorton, Virginia on 6 November. Photograph: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images

Daniel from North Adams, Massachusetts, said controversy there centered on local ballot questions.

“I voted on local issues. There are three referenda on the ballot concerning hospital staffing, campaign finance and LGBTQ rights. Of course, Trump is the elephant in the room, but there are no strong Republican candidates on the ballot for any office, hence the concentration on local issues.

“I voted on the liberal ‘positive’ side of the three referenda on the ballot. I also voted for Elizabeth Warren to keep her in the Senate. I am undecided about whether I’d support her for the presidency in 2020. I do hope other progressive Democrats will step forward to challenge Trump.”

Updated

Beto O'Rourke casts his vote

Beto O’Rourke just voted at the polling station around the corner from his house in El Paso, Texas. It is a sign of the superstar status he’s acquired in a little over a year of campaigning that this unlikely insurgent Democratic candidate, who is seeking to unseat Ted Cruz from a US senate seat, attracted more than 100 camera people and reporters from all over the world to watch him vote.

He came with his wife Amy and three kids. After voting, O’Rourke came to talk to us and told us why he was feeling good about today’s results and his chances of winning as a Democrat in a Texas senatorial race for the first time in 25 years. “I don’t have a poll to point to, I don’t have a pollster,” he said. “Just traveling all the counties in Texas, knocking on millions of doors. People are ready to be brought back together, I feel it. So yeah, it feels good today.”

O’Rourke is banking on an army of young voters who have never voted before coming out to the polls. He said early voting among 18 to 29-year-olds in Texas was up 500% on 2014. “I’m so grateful for all these first-time voters,” he said.

Updated

Beto O'Rourke delivers final message in El Paso

Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke returned to his home town of El Paso and made the closing pitch that Americans have nothing to fear from immigrants.

“This community defines the positive story of immigration,” O’Rourke said Monday night, the Dallas News reported.

“From Chihuahuita to the Segundo Barrio to Sunset Heights where we live, we are a city of immigrants. We are made far stronger, we’re more successful, than we would have been without their presence. So we will continue to do what we have always done, be a nation of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers.”

O’Rourke, a Democratic congressman, is taking on Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.

The border patrol has announced a “crowd control exercise” for El Paso on Tuesday, drawing criticism of voter intimidation.

“No walls, no CBP exercise is going to keep us from honoring our laws, our commitments,” O’Rourke said, according to the Dallas News. “Why is this happening now? Why is the president stirring these issues up at this moment with 24 hours before we decide this election? I leave that to you to conclude.”

Updated

Former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele said Republican candidates have failed to contest Donald Trump’s “inherent racism”.

“They feel they can peddle or at least stay silent on inherent racism, misogynistic language, and bad behavior. And somehow they think the American people are going to sit back and go, ‘Yeah, we want more of that,’” the ex-GOP big said Tuesday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

“Well, this election is going to be a very important tell as to which direction America wants to go in,” he said. “Based on the fact pattern right before us now, I think today could have a bigger impact in the long run than anything we’ve seen.”

Meanwhile, a few longtime Republicans are urging Americans to vote for Democrats.

Here’s former John McCain speechwriter and strategist Mark Salter:

And here’s John Weaver, a strategist for McCain and John Kasich:

Updated

James Comey and Mike Pence pen contrasting op-eds

In an op-ed in the New York Times, former FBI director James Comey accused Donald Trump of “lying, misogyny, racism and attacks on the rule of law” and said the American people are “stirring” to oppose them in the midterms.

“The awakening is slow, but it is underway,” he wrote. “It falls to all of us to awaken the giant so that we shorten the period before we resume our upward march. Every American should be speaking about our nation’s values. Every American should be voting those values, which are far more important than even the most passionate policy differences.”

In another op-ed pitch Tuesday morning the vice-president, Mike Pence, wrote in USA Today that the election revolves around the question of whether Americans are better off than they were two years ago.

“The American economy is booming after only two years under our administration. This happened because of the president’s leadership and support from Republicans in Congress. Tuesday, we’re counting on the American people to re-elect Republicans to deliver even more results,” he wrote. “While Republicans have delivered results, Democrats have chosen a one-word agenda: Resist.”

Updated

Hillary Clinton urges voters to 'vote against radicalism'

Hillary Clinton said it was time for Americans to say “enough” after two years of watching the Trump administration “attack and undermine our democratic institutions and values.”

The failed 2016 Democratic presidential nominee urged voters to “vote against radicalism, bigotry and corruption” and “for fantastic candidates all over the country – including a historic number of women”.

Updated

Former US attorney Preet Bharara branded Fox News host Sean Hannity a “liar” for campaigning onstage with Donald Trump after saying he would not do so.

Updated

“Our country is doing awesome,” Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump said Tuesday morning on Fox and Friends.

The younger Trump said Republicans can expect wins if his father’s supporters turn out to vote, touting the strong economy.

“His name’s not on the ballot, but America’s winning. America is winning. We are winning at everything we do. Our economy’s winning, our military is winning, our veterans are winning. We’re winning with jobs, we’re winning with trade. We’re winning with everything right now guys,” he said. “If that army of Trump gets out there, if they vote today, we win.”

In a video posted on Instagram, Oprah Winfrey responded to racist robocalls that went out mocking her after she campaigned for Stacey Abrams for governor in Georgia.

“I just want to say, Jesus don’t like ugly,” Oprah said. “And we know what to do about that: vote.”

In the racist robocall, the fake Oprah said: “This is the magical negro Oprah Winfrey asking you to make my fellow negress Stacey Abrams the governor of Georgia,” the Washington Post reported.

Updated

Bob Hugin: rainy forecast is 'Republican weather'

Senator Bob Menendez, the New Jersey Democratic incumbent embattled after corruption charges, cast his ballot this morning in Harrison.

Monday night, his opponent Bob Hugin was cheered by the rainy forecast, calling the rain “Republican weather”, according to the New Jersey globe. He was referring to the theory that rainy weather can depress turnout in a way that helps Republicans.

“I don’t know what it says about his thoughts about a democracy that he hopes that it pours so people don’t come out. I hope it pours with votes. There’s only one way to create a blue wave – and that’s to get in the water and come out to vote,” Menendez told reporters after casting his ballot Tuesday. “You can’t stop Trump from your couch. We can only do it by coming out to vote. So I hope everybody will come out to vote, rain, sleet, hail, whatever it is.”

Rainy weather is forecast in much of the east and midwest.

Updated

Former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon will be hosting election night coverage on Gatway Pundit, a conspiracy-friendly rightwing site, the site says.

Bannon has spent election season hosting a series of poorly attended rallies and campaign events shunned by the Republican candidates they were meant to support.

Updated

Donald Trump aides are steeling themselves for special counsel Robert Mueller to drop his report in the Russia investigation as soon as Wednesday, though it’s more likely he’ll wait until later in the month, Vanity Fair reports.

Trump types are most worried about former aide Roger Stone and the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr, the magazine says.

Updated

Fox News host Sean Hannity is drawing additional criticism for appearing onstage at a Donald Trump rally and praising the president, after promising he would not do so.

There’s bad election day weather brewing in much of the country. A storm system could bring rain to every state east of the Mississippi.

Meanwhile, possible tornadoes have touched down in Louisiana and Mississippi, according to the Associated Press.

The border patrol is conducting a “crowd control exercise” in El Paso, Texas today, drawing criticism for its activity on election day.

The “mobile field force demonstration” is scheduled for 10am local time next to a mostly Hispanic neighborhood with about 100 homes near the US-Mexico border, the Washington Post reported.

A Senate race in Texas pits Republican senator Ted Cruz against Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke.

“The location, next to a totally Hispanic neighborhood, is suspicious. The timing of this – election day —– is suspicious. This administration, and by extension the [Texas governor Greg] Abbott administration, have done quite enough to intimidate voters without staging military rehearsals on the day our nation exercises our most important democratic obligation: voting,” Terri Burke, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Texas, told the Post.

Updated

Facebook removes 115 accounts engaged in 'coordinated inauthentic behavior'

On the eve of election day, Facebook removed 115 accounts that appeared to be engaged in “coordinated inauthentic behavior”, and is investigating whether the accounts were linked to foreign entities or attempting to influence the election, the company said.

Facebook said it was alerted by law enforcement Sunday night, and has so far identified 30 apparently fake Facebook accounts and 85 Instagram accounts. The accounts have been blocked. The Facebook pages associated with the accounts were mostly in Russian or French, while the Instagram accounts were in English, Facebook said.

“We immediately blocked these accounts and are now investigating them in more detail,” Facebook’s statement said.

Updated

Donald Trump “hated” the economy-focused ad his campaign ran as a closing message and insisted on focusing on immigration instead, CNN reports.

Trump’s campaign spent $6m on the ad, which we noted represents the more scripted, poll-tested message that many establishment Republicans would prefer to deploy, focusing on the strong economy. It touts the low unemployment rate, contrasted with scenes from the 2008 election, and warns the boom could disappear if Democrats win.

“He hated it,” a Republican official told CNN.

Trump instead tweeted an ad widely condemned as racist, featuring an undocumented Mexican immigrant who killed two police officers, and falsely claiming Democrats let him into the country. CNN, Fox Newsand NBC have all refused to air or pulled a TV version of that ad.

Updated

Joe Scarborough slams Sean Hannity for appearing at Trump rally

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough ripped Fox News’s Sean Hannity Tuesday morning for his appearance Monday night at a Donald Trump rally.

Hannity spoke on stage at the rally alongside Trump – despite promising earlier in the day that he would not do so and was there as a journalist to interview the president.

“You have Sean Hannity saying: ‘I am not campaigning.’ I mean, if you’re going to campaign, own it. There’s Sean Hannity, campaigning,” Scarborough said on his Morning Joe show, according to the Hill. “Again: free country. Free to do it if they want to. But everybody is following Donald Trump’s lead. They’re lying through their teeth.”

At the rally, Hannity praised Trump and attacked the press. The one thing that has made and defined your presidency more than anything else – promises made, promises kept,” he said. Pointing at reporters in the room, he said: “All those people in the back are fake news.”

Another Fox News personality, Jeanine Pirro, also joined Trump on stage.

Updated

It’s not just the candidates on the ballot – Michigan and North Dakota voters will decide today whether to legalize recreational marijuana, the Associated Press reports.

If the referendums pass, they would be the first states in the midwest to legalize the drug.

Nine states and Washington DC have already made pot legal for recreational use for adults.

Updated

Before polls opened this morning, 36 million Americans had already cast ballots.

The early vote turnout far outstripped the last midterm election in 2014, Politico reports. Early votes alone in three states with competitive races, Texas, Arizona and Nevada, exceeded total midterm turnout in 2014.

Donald Trump is done campaigning and plans to spend election day monitoring key races and watching returns with family and friends.

That doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll stay quiet - there’s always his Twitter feed for any last minute thoughts.

“After 11 rallies in 8 states and weeks of campaigning for Republican candidates, the president will spend today making phone calls, monitoring congressional, Senate and gubernatorial races across the country and meeting with his political team for real-time updates,” press secretary Sarah Sanders told Politico. “Later this evening the president and first lady have invited family and friends to join them in the residence as they watch election returns.”

Updated

Will Democrats achieve the “blue wave” they covet? The Guardian’s Tom McCarthy reports:

Election night could end with the Republicans retaining their majority in the House of Representatives and strengthening their majority in the Senate, despite a historic exodus of Republicans retiring from Congress, widespread disapproval of Trump and the customary strength of the opposition party at this stage in the elections cycle.

Yet some prominent Democrats – starting with the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi – are predicting a blue “wave” that will deliver a strong Democratic majority to the House. (Predictions of the Senate flipping blue are notably fewer.)

What do we really know about what is going to happen? The short answer is nothing, be patient, it won’t be long now and we’ll know for real.

A slightly longer answer notes that we can point to certain factors likely to be significant on election day that are encouraging for Democrats.

We know that Trump’s approval rating has hovered in the low 40s, a slack tide for hundreds of local Republican candidates. Democrats, meanwhile, have notched a string of unexpected wins in special elections, have attracted an unprecedented slate of first-time candidates, especially women, and have lots of encouraging polling to point to, if they dare.

We know that Democrats need a net gain of 23 seats to gain control of the House, and that they could pull that off by winning as few as about one out of every three “tossup” races – races too close at this point to call. One in three does not seem like such a tall order, especially if one believes polls indicating that a plurality of voters right now prefer Democrats to Republicans.

Today’s the day! Americans are heading to the polls, and we’ll be bringing you live election day coverage straight through the day, overnight and into tomorrow. By the time we’re done, we hope to know what party will control the House and Senate and who will win key governor’s races, but some nail-biters are likely.

Last night, Donald Trump wrapped up campaign season with a final rally in Missouri. He has focused relentlessly on stoking fears over immigration, including with an ad that TV networks pulled Monday for being racist, even as many Republican leaders would prefer to hone in on the strong economy.

Here’s a primer on key House races to watch, and another on key Senate races.

And check out our roundup of several historic firsts that could potentially come out of the election.

Stay tuned!

Updated

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
'90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After?' Feud: Loren Accuses Elizabeth of Gaslighting, Says Friendship is Over
Besties and now bitter rivals - Loren Brovarnik and Elizabeth Castravet's friendship has hit a breaking point in 90 Day Fiancé Tell-All drama.
International Business Times UK
International Business Times UK
'Unbelievable' Footage From Canadian Cargo Ship Sparks Major UFO Sighting Frenzy
Canadian cargo ship footage sparks UFO frenzy with mysterious object seen hovering and speeding into the night sky.
International Business Times UK
International Business Times UK
Hilary Duff's Family Drama: Husband Matthew Koma 'at Centre' of Haylie Feud
Hilary Duff confirms 'family drama' with sister Haylie. Is husband Matthew Koma the reason behind the lasting feud?
International Business Times UK
International Business Times UK
Nikki Glaser SNL Monologue Criticised Over Paedophilia, Trafficking, Rape Jokes: 'Truly Disturbing'
Nikki Glaser made her debut as Saturday Night Live host on 8 November, but some felt that it would probably be her last due to her distasteful and disturbing jokes.
International Business Times UK
International Business Times UK
Gloria Estefan calls for hologram bullfighting shows
Gloria Estefan thinks someone should make hologram bullfighting shows so that people can attend them if they do not fancy seeing a real contest where an animal dies.
BANG Premier
BANG Premier
‘Potato bed’ is going viral on TikTok – but can it actually help you sleep?
No, it doesn’t involve putting potatoes in your bed…
T3
T3
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.
Download on the AppStore Get it on Google Play