History in the making — slowly
Good things come to those who wait. The country will be waiting all day, and probably then some, before it gets answers about the history-making 2024 presidential election.
The campaign has taken on various forms over the last year. Democrats revolted against President Joe Biden and forced him off the top of the ticket after greasing the rails for him to slide through a primary process unaccosted. When it was clear Biden wasn’t going to pull off a 2020 repeat, Vice President Kamala Harris was tapped as the next woman up, taking the reins from her boss and righting the ship enough to make the contest a close one.
Former President Donald Trump has been running for the last two years. He left office in January 2021 under a cloud of criticism that had taken on members of his own party, as well as the regular attacks from Democrats. The Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was a nadir for the man who consistently sat underwater in his favorable-unfavorable ratings and looked like the nail in his political coffin.
Now, he’s back, more popular than ever, and looking like he’s in the best position to win any of the three contests he has participated in going into the final day of voting.
The contest is dripping with historical significance.
If Harris wins, she would be the first female president and the first president of South Asian descent. She would also be the first sitting vice president to run a successful presidential campaign since George H.W. Bush in 1988.
Similarly, Trump would become just the second man to win nonconsecutive terms in the White House, following in the footsteps of Grover Cleveland, the first Democrat to run the country following the Civil War in 1885 — he lost to Republican Benjamin Harrison in 1888 after running on a platform of lowering high protective tariffs — and returning to the Oval Office in 1892.
Both candidates surely have their eyes on the history books but for now are, generally speaking, staying on message and focusing on what is happening today.
Harris hasn’t made her race or gender a centerpiece of her campaign the way former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did in 2016. In that way, she has run much more like former President Barack Obama, who made the occasional reference to his “funny name” but preferred to hammer home other aspects of his political life.
But even if the candidate is eschewing the historical aspect of her campaign, Democrats broadly are happy to talk it up, White House Reporter Naomi Lim wrote for us this morning.
“In a high school gymnasium in Norristown, Pennsylvania, last weekend, Democrats gathered to hear former first lady Michelle Obama were optimistic the country was poised to vote for the first woman president,” Naomi wrote. “Obama, herself, was the first minority first lady.”
And the matter of Harris’s gender, or at least the gender of her supporters, could be the tipping point tonight. Trump is trailing Harris by 11 points among women, according to a recent ABC News-Ipsos poll. On the other hand, Trump is beating Harris by 5 points among male voters.
Trump, for his part, is used to sluggish polling showing him out of reach of victory, only to surge at the last moment. We mentioned earlier his horrific approval ratings after the Jan. 6 riot. He had dropped to a dismal 34%, according to Gallup, and looked like he didn’t have a chance of winning another nomination.
As Congressional Reporter Samantha-Jo Roth pointed out for us this morning, however, a lot can change in four years.
“The Republican nominee’s favorability rating is now up nearly 10 points to 43.7%, according to averages of the latest polling. He’s survived two impeachments, faced criminal charges four times, a criminal conviction, two assassination attempts, and an eleventh-hour opponent switch from President Joe Biden to Vice President Kamala Harris,” Samantha-Jo wrote. “His resurgence is now one of the most unlikely examples of political staying power the country has ever seen.”
History, however, takes time. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and U.S. electoral returns can’t be counted in a 24-hour period, either.
This year’s contest is coming down to how Trump and Harris split seven states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Arizona was at the center of a 2020 controversy when Trump declared victory there prematurely, only to have decision desks contradict his claims and give Biden the victory. Those votes were counted quickly, upending Trump’s narrative.
Pennsylvania, at the other end of the scale, was glacial in its pace. The crucial state didn’t certify its election results until Nov. 24, 2020.
Vote counting should move faster this year after the country watched what the effect of plodding processes helped foment four years ago. But a speedy process is far from certain, and Democrats are warning voters to be patient.
“It will take a long time to count every single vote, and we can’t place too much stock in the early returns. The tally in certain states is going to change a lot as additional ballots are counted,” Harris campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote in an email sent to supporters over the weekend. “For example, some states that count absentee ballots first may start off blue and shift to red as time goes on. Those would be your Michigans and Pennsylvanias.”
Adding to the confusion, Pennsylvania won’t start counting some provisional ballots until Friday, and ballots that are challenged in North Carolina won’t get added to the state’s tally until Nov. 15.
Click here to stay up to date with every twist and turn Election Day has to throw at us.
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For your radar
Biden has nothing on his public schedule.
Harris has no public appearances on her schedule. She will be in Washington, D.C., all day, where she will conduct radio interviews. She will spend the evening at her alma mater, Howard University, to watch election results.
Trump will be in Florida today and at the Palm Beach Convention Center to watch election results.
Polls in the swing states close at (all times Eastern):
Georgia – 7 p.m.
North Carolina – 7:30 p.m.
New Hampshire – 8 p.m.
Pennsylvania – 8 p.m.
Michigan – between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Wisconsin – 9 p.m.
Arizona – 9 p.m.
Nevada – 10 p.m.