Good morning. We’re watching the clock for the U.S. election – more on that below, along with Murray Sinclair’s remarkable life and further tensions between India and Canada. But first:
Today’s headlines
- U.S. voters head to the polls with Harris and Trump virtually tied
- Elections BC discovers a missed ballot box with 861 votes and seeks a fresh recount
- North Korean soldiers reportedly face Ukrainian fire for the first time since training in Russia
This is it.Charlie Neibergall/The Associated Press
U.S. election
Countdown to the call
After record-breaking early turnout in the 2024 election, the final votes for Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will be cast today. Here’s what to expect on the hour this evening as polls close, ballots roll in, and anxieties reach a fever pitch.
⏰ 5 p.m. (all times Eastern): first batch of exit polls released
Honestly, you should probably ignore these. Exit polls are meant to provide a snapshot of which candidate is leading and how certain demographics voted, but they aren’t particularly reliable – especially this early in the night, when polling stations are still open. (Older people tend to show up first.) Exit interviewers will be stationed today at 600 locations across America, but roughly 75 million people – as many as two-thirds of eligible voters – already cast early ballots, and early exit polls were only conducted in North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Ohio.
⏰ 7 p.m.: polls close in six states, including Georgia, the night’s first swing state
Georgia smashed early-voting records with more than four million ballots cast, and good news for impatient viewers: Since these early and absentee votes can be processed in advance, the secretary of state anticipates that 70 to 75 per cent of Georgia’s total vote will be reported by 8 p.m. That means the state could be called late tonight, although if the margin is as close as in 2020 – when Joe Biden carried it by just 0.23 per cent – we may be in for a much longer wait.
⏰ 7:30 p.m.: polls close in three states, including North Carolina
New rules in North Carolina mean that early in-person votes can’t be tabulated before the polls close, but the state’s board of elections estimates it’ll only take two hours to count those 4.4 million ballots. Today’s votes will be reported between 8:30 p.m. and 1 a.m., which should get the state up to 98 per cent of all ballots – so it’s possible (again, depending on margins) that we’ll have a call tonight.
⏰ 8 p.m.: polls close in 16 states, including Pennsylvania and much of Michigan
Chances are good that a bunch of states – Mississippi and Tennessee; Illinois and New Jersey – will be called in quick succession, although all anyone on TV will want to talk about is Pennsylvania. They’ll be talking for a while: Election officials warn that it’s unlikely we’ll know tonight who takes the battleground state. The first results to come in will be from mail-in ballots, which counties started tallying this morning and tend to skew Democrat – expect the race to get tighter as the hours drag on.
Getting ready in New Orleans.Chris Granger/The Associated Press
⏰ 9 p.m.: polls close in 15 states, including the rest of Michigan and Wisconsin
Harris’s most likely path to the White House runs through Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as Pennsylvania, so these results will be crucial for her – if Trump can win just one of the states, he’s well on his way to a second term. A new law in Michigan allows absentee ballots to be processed before today, which should speed up the count, though the state’s top election official anticipates that she won’t know early results until tomorrow.
Wisconsin, on the other hand, doesn’t let poll workers tally absentee votes until Election Day. Many of the state’s big cities also transport their mail-in votes to a centralized location for processing – and they can’t report their results until every last ballot has been counted. This means an especially late night for returns in Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest city and a Democratic stronghold, so the race might not be called before the wee hours of the morning.
⏰ 10 p.m.: polls close in three states, including Nevada
Two rules will delay the call in the night’s final swing state. Nevada can’t report any results until the last person in line has voted, usually hours after the polls officially close. (In the 2022 midterms, it was well after midnight ET.) Plus, most Nevadans vote by mail, and postmarked ballots can arrive as late as four days after the election – that’s Nov. 9 – and still count. Officials say it might take nearly two weeks to process them all, which could make a difference in a nail-bitingly close race.
⏰ 11 p.m.: polls close in four states, including California
Once upon a time, the U.S. election could be called pretty much as soon as voting wrapped in California, and the dejected loser would shuffle out to deliver a concession speech shortly thereafter. No longer!
That leaves ample room for misinformation to spread – about election machines flipping people’s votes, or noncitizens voting multiple times, or ballots going up in smoke, much of it likely to be amplified by Trump himself. “False and misleading claims around voting do centre on swing states, particularly Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania,” The Globe’s Patrick Dell, who has been fact-checking this election, told me. “But nowhere is immune.”
He advises verifying anything that feels questionable with reliable search engines and newsrooms, and resisting the urge to comment on disinformation, even to debunk it, since that engagement just makes it likelier to appear in people’s feeds. Instead, join me in compulsively refreshing The Globe’s election live blog, which will tell you everything you need to know throughout the long day – and night – ahead.
The Shot
‘You cannot leave a life unfinished.’
Murray Sinclair after being invested as a companion of the Order of Canada in 2022.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
From the courthouse to the Senate, Murray Sinclair – who died yesterday in Winnipeg at 73 – challenged racism, championed Indigenous rights and sought reconciliation. Discover more about Sinclair’s extraordinary life and career here, and read Tanya Talaga’s tribute to their friendship here.
The Wrap
What else we’re following
At home: After violence erupted at a Hindu temple in Brampton, Ont., this weekend, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared it an attempt to “intimidate” Indian diplomats in Canada.
Abroad: As Israel prepares to sever ties with the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees, the Biden administration says Israel is not doing nearly enough to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza.
His money: A state judge has allowed Elon Musk’s $1-million-a-day giveaway to swing state voters to go ahead in Pennsylvania.
Your money: Whatever happens in the U.S. election, The Globe’s Rob Carrick thinks you might want to hold off on any major financial decisions.