US Election Updates: WWHL poll, accurate in 2016, now forecasts Harris' landslide lead over Trump

The results on Election Day will come down to seven states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have visited them the most. Together, these states are likely to deliver the Electoral College votes needed for the winning candidate to get a majority of 270.

It will be a game of hopscotch to keep up with key times in each of the states, which stretch across four different time zones.

A look at the Election Day timeline across the seven, with all listings in Eastern Standard Time:

Polls open at 8 a.m. in Arizona, which Joe Biden carried in 2020 by 0.3%. He was only the second Democratic presidential candidate to do so in nearly 70 years. Polls will close at 9 p.m.

Arizona does not release votes until all precincts have reported or one hour after all polls are closed, whichever is first.

In 2020, The Associated Press first reported Arizona results at 10:02 p.m. ET on Nov. 3, Election Day, and declared Biden the winner at 2:51 a.m. ET on Nov. 4.

Polls open at 7 a.m. in Georgia, which played a key role in 2020. Biden was the first Democrat in a White House race to carry the state since Bill Clinton in 1992, defeating Trump by less than one-quarter of a percentage point, a margin of 11,779 votes.

Since then, Trump’s efforts to overturn those results have been at the heart of a criminal case in Fulton County. It is on hold while his legal team pursues a pretrial appeal to have District Attorney Fani Willis removed from the case and the indictment tossed. The Georgia Court of Appeals will hear those arguments after the election.

Georgia's polls close at 7 p.m.

In 2020, the AP first reported Georgia results at 7:20 p.m. ET on Nov. 3 and declared Biden the state's winner at 7:58 p.m. ET on Nov. 19, more than two weeks after Election Day.

Polls open at 7 a.m. ET in Michigan, one of the “blue wall” states that went narrowly for Trump in 2016 after almost 30 years of voting for Democratic candidates. Biden won it back four years later. His margin was about 154,000 votes out of more than 5.5 million votes.

Michigan covers two time zones, but polls in most of the state close at 8 p.m. ET, with the rest at 9 p.m. ET.

In 2020, the AP first reported Michigan results at 8:08 p.m. ET on Nov. 3 and declared Biden the winner at 5:58 p.m. ET on Nov. 4.

Polls open at 10 a.m. ET in Nevada, the smallest electoral vote prize of the battlegrounds. But it has one of the best track records as a presidential bellwether. The candidate who won Nevada has gone on to win the White House in 27 of the past 30 presidential elections.

Polls close at 10 p.m. ET. The state doesn’t release results until the last person in line has voted, so there’s usually been a wait between poll close and the first results.

In 2020, the AP first reported Nevada results at 11:41 p.m. ET on Nov. 3 and declared Biden the winner at 12:13 p.m. ET on Nov. 7.

Polls open at 6:30 a.m. ET in North Carolina, which has been carried by Democrats only two times in presidential elections since 1968. But the state has stayed competitive for both major parties. Trump’s 2020 victory in North Carolina, by about 1 percentage point, was his smallest winning margin in any state.

Polls close at 7:30 p.m. ET.

In 2020, the AP first reported results at 7:42 p.m. ET on Nov. 3 and declared Trump the winner at 3:49 p.m. ET on Nov. 13.

Polls open at 7 a.m. ET in Pennsylvania, another “blue wall" state. Biden’s 2020 margin in Pennsylvania was about 80,000 votes out of more than 6.9 million votes. This year, it's the spot where Harris and Trump met for the first time at their sole debate in September in Philadelphia.

Polls close at 8 p.m. ET in a state with more electoral votes, 19, than any of the battlegrounds.

In 2020, the AP first reported results at 8:09 p.m. ET on Nov. 3 and declared Biden the winner at 11:25 a.m. ET on Nov. 7.

Polls open at 8 a.m. ET in Wisconsin, the third “blue wall” state in this group. Wisconsin is no stranger to close elections; the margin of victory in the state was less than 1 percentage point in 2020, 2016, 2004 and 2000.

Polls close at 9 p.m. ET.

In 2020, the AP first reported Wisconsin results at 9:07 p.m. ET on Nov. 3 and declared Biden the winner at 2:16 p.m. ET on Nov. 4.

Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump zeroed in on the Sun Belt on Saturday as they embarked on one last weekend quest to sway every undecided voter in the battleground states. They pitched rival agendas on the economy — and more — that each insisted is what Americans want.

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris campaigns in Michigan on Sunday while her Republican rival Donald Trump will stop in three eastern battleground states in the final days of an election that could be decided by a small slice of American voters.

Opinion polls show a historically close race, and both campaigns say they are not sure who will prevail in the seven states that are likely to determine the outcome on Tuesday.

Iran’s leadership and allies are bracing for what they would regard as a dreadful outcome of the imminent U.S. presidential election: A return to power of Donald Trump.

Opinion polls suggest the Republican Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris remain locked in a close contest. But Iranian leaders and their regional allies in Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen are concerned that Trump could well triumph on Nov. 5 and this could spell more trouble for them.

Iran's main concern is the potential for Trump to empower Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to strike Iran's nuclear sites, conduct targeted assassinations and reimpose his "maximum pressure policy" through heightened sanctions on their oil industry, according to Iranian, Arab and Western officials.

Europe will need to rethink its support of Ukraine if Donald Trump is elected president of the United States, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Sunday, as the continent "will not be able to bear the burdens of the war alone". He backs former president Trump, the Republic candidate, to beat Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in Tuesday's U.S. election.

"We (in Europe) need to realize that if there will be a pro-peace president in America, which I not only believe in but I also read the numbers that way, ... if what we expect happens and America becomes pro-peace, then Europe cannot remain pro-war," Orban said.

With just days to go before the 2024 election, actor Harrison Ford has revealed his choice for president.  The Indiana Jones star, who admitted he “never really want[ed] to talk about it very much,” spoke out to encourage voters to “move forward” with Kamala Harris.

• Activists who dispute the severity of human-caused climate change are quietly preparing to seize their moment should Donald Trump win a second term as U.S. president.
• Pushed to the political fringes during Joe Biden’s presidency, they are now laying the groundwork to bring back coal-fired power plants, gut science at the Environmental Protection Agency and neuter the modeling used in the federal government’s national climate assessment and other reports.
•  "Everything Biden did will be looked at. The question is: Is there enough time in the the day over the next four years?” said Steve Milloy, who formerly advised Trump’s EPA transition team and who serves on the board of directors of the Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank that has espoused the benefits of a warming climate. "How much can you get rid of?” (Bloomberg)

• Taiwan's defence ministry said on Sunday it had spotted 35 Chinese military aircraft, including fighters and bombers, flying to the island's south on the way to exercises in the Pacific, a second day in a row it has reported such activities.
• China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory despite the strong objections of the government in Taipei, regularly sends its military in the skies and waters near the island seeking to enforce its sovereignty claims.
• China's defence ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the missions, reported just days before Tuesday's U.S. presidential election. (Reuters)

• Armando Iannucci has expressed concern over the influence of figures like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
• In an interview this week, the writer—whose new satirical series The Franchise is now airing on Sky Atlantic—shared that he is “obsessed with the data oligarchs—the Musks and the Zuckerbergs.”
• Speaking to The Independent, he said, “We’re witnessing in this [US] election the enormous impact they wield, not only through financial contributions but in shaping the news agenda."
• He added, “They also seem to believe they’re beyond the law, so powerful that taxes and regulations shouldn’t really apply to them.”

• Donald Trump will rally supporters in North Carolina every day until Tuesday's election, a flurry of late activity in the only swing state that he won in both his 2016 and 2020 campaigns.
• Even as Trump looks to expand the electoral map and project strength with trips to New Mexico and Virginia, two Democratic states not widely viewed as competitive, he is putting considerable time into North Carolina, which last backed a Democrat for president in 2008.
•  The former president's path to the 270 electoral votes needed to capture the presidency gets significantly more complicated if he loses North Carolina. The fast-growing Southern state gave Trump his smallest margin of victory — 1.3 percentage points — over Democrat Joe Biden four years ago. (Read More)

A recent poll conducted by "Watch What Happens Live" (WWHL) has drawn attention to the upcoming race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Host Andy Cohen highlighted that the WWHL audience had correctly predicted Trump’s 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton. In this poll, Harris received a substantial 73% of the votes, while Trump garnered only 27%. Cohen expressed surprise at the result, calling it a “landslide” in Harris's favor.

• The Trump campaign criticized a new Iowa poll on Saturday that shows former President Donald Trump no longer leading in the state, which he previously won in 2016 and 2020.
• “Every cycle, there’s one idiotic survey,” Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller said to reporters in Greensboro in response to a CNN question.
• Later on Saturday evening, the campaign issued a memo calling the new poll “a clear outlier,” arguing that a separate poll by Emerson College, released the same day, “far more closely reflects the state of the actual Iowa electorate.”

The race for the White House is extremely close, according to the final nationwide CNN poll conducted by SSRS before votes are cast. The poll reveals that 47% of likely voters support Vice President Kamala Harris, while an identical 47% back former President Donald Trump.

• The Electoral College consists of 538 electors representing all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
• Each state has between three and 54 electoral votes, determined by the sum of its US senators (always two) and US representatives. The District of Columbia receives three electoral votes, the minimum for any state.
• A candidate needs a majority of electoral votes (270) to win the presidency.
• In 48 states and D.C., all electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who wins a plurality of the popular vote in that state, following a “winner-take-all” system.
• Two states, Maine and Nebraska, do not use the winner-take-all system. Instead, they operate under a “district system,” which awards electoral votes based on both the statewide vote and the vote in each congressional district.
• Each congressional district won by a candidate awards one electoral vote.
• The remaining two electoral votes are awarded to the statewide winner.
• For example, Maine could have a 3-1 split of its four electoral votes, while Nebraska could have a 4-1 or 3-2 split of its five electoral votes.
• Electors meet in their respective states on the first Tuesday after the second Wednesday in December to cast separate ballots for president and vice president. In 2024, this meeting will take place on December 17.
• The Electoral College results are counted and certified by a joint session of Congress on January 6. This count occurs in the House of Representatives chamber and is presided over by the vice president, who announces the names of the next president and vice president once a majority is confirmed.

The candidate who receives the majority of the popular vote on election night does not automatically win the White House. To secure the presidency, a candidate must achieve a majority of votes in the Electoral College.

On November 5, when Americans cast their votes, they are not directly electing the presidential candidates. Instead, voters are choosing slates of “electors” who will cast the actual votes for president and vice president on December 17. The electors from all 50 states and the District of Columbia together make up the “Electoral College.”

Tech giant Elon Musk has started an online campaign against the Democratic Party as US citizens prepare to vote on Tuesday, November 5, to elect their next president. Musk, who owns the social media platform X, expressed his outrage over the killing of internet sensation Peanut the Squirrel by authorities. The squirrel was seized from its owner’s home and euthanised by state officials. The tech giant criticised the authorities, claiming that former President and Republican candidate Donald Trump would “save the squirrels.” (Read More)

• The November 5 US presidential elections, Federal Reserve interest rate decision, trading activity of foreign investors, and the upcoming quarterly earnings from domestic firms are the major triggers that would influence sentiments in the equity market this week, analysts said.
• In an eventful week ahead, a host of macroeconomic data announcements and global trends would also drive the markets, experts said.
• "The upcoming week is poised to be eventful on the global front. The US presidential election on November 5 is a key focus, and the US FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) meeting will be crucial. Geopolitical tensions and oil price movements will remain key variables as well," said Santosh Meena, Head of Research, Swastika Investmart Ltd.
• Domestically, the final phase of Q2 earnings will be critical, while foreign institutional investor (FII) behaviour will remain under close watch, Meena added. (PTI)

CNN data shows that 71.5 million Americans have already cast early ballots.

• Former President Donald Trump was fired by 80 million American people in the 2020 presidential poll and they still do not trust him, Indian-origin Democratic leader Neil Makhija said, days ahead of the election day.
• In an interview with PTI, Harvard-educated Makhija, who is emerging as a prominent face in the Democratic Party and overseeing Vice President Kamala Harris' campaigning in Pennsylvania said it is even concerning to think that Trump could even be close to being back to the White House.
• He said the people of the US are all set to create history by electing Harris as the first woman president of the country. (PTI)

In her appearance alongside actor Maya Rudolph playing her on Saturday Night Live, Harris gives this message in the skit: “It is nice to see you, Kamala, and I’m just here to remind you: You got this because you can do something your opponent cannot do. You can open doors,” Harris told Rudolph, referring to Trump briefly struggling to climb inside a garbage truck.

• Kamala Harris' appearance on "Saturday Night Live," a late surprise by the Democratic presidential candidate in her race against Republican Donald Trump, follows in the footsteps of past candidates, including Trump himself.
• In October 2015, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared on the NBC-TV comedy and political satire show as she was preparing to engage in a string of Democratic primaries early the following year.
• Clinton, playing a bartender, was told by an SNL cast member that she was "really easy to talk to." Clinton, in character, responded, "That's the first time I've ever heard that" - a dig at her reputation for appearing icy in public.
• The following month, the long-running late-night show gave equal time to Trump, who would beat Clinton in the 2016 election, appearing in a sketch looking ahead two years into a White House term. (Reuters)

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent proponent of debunked public health claims whom Donald Trump has promised to put in charge of health initiatives, said Saturday that Trump would push to remove fluoride from drinking water on his first day in office.
• Fluoride strengthens teeth and reduces cavities by replacing minerals lost during normal wear and tear, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The addition of low levels of fluoride to drinking water has long been considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century. (PTI)

• Trump has just concluded his nearly 90-minute rally in North Carolina.
• As he wrapped up, he told the crowd that he considered delivering a shorter speech than his usual full-length address, but he added, "I'm giving you the full bore. You wouldn't let me leave in half an hour."
• He joked, "I could have run up here, shouted 'make America great again' five or six times, and then left to cheers from the crowd. I would have been home sleeping right now."
• He finished his speech by outlining key campaign pledges, declaring, "We will not be invaded. We will not be occupied. We will not be overrun. We will not be conquered."
• As the Village People's "YMCA" began to play, the former president spent a few moments dancing on stage and mingling with his supporters.

• Trump is conveying a message of confidence to his supporters in North Carolina while emphasizing the importance of early voting. He stated, "When you're winning by a lot, you can still lose by a little."
• He added, "The United States is now an occupied country, but it will soon no longer be occupied."
• Trump described the November 5 election as "liberation day in America; it's going to be liberation."

Will America see its first woman president, or will Donald Trump clinch a second term? Most opinion polls indicate a dead heat, making the seven battleground states crucial, as they have historically not aligned with either party and could swing either way. These states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—hold a total of 93 electoral college votes. Pennsylvania has the most at 19, followed by Georgia and North Carolina with 16 each, and Michigan with 15. Current polls show that neither candidate has a decisive lead in any of these states. But what exactly are swing states, and why are they so pivotal in the electoral process, potentially making or breaking a candidate's chances? (Read More)

According to a new Des Moines Register and Mediacom poll, Trump is no longer leading in Iowa. The poll indicates there is no clear frontrunner in the state, which Trump won in both 2016 and 2020.

• Vice President Kamala Harris, who is the Democratic presidential candidate, in an op-ed on Saturday, recollected her frequent visit to India as a child, and her mother's mission to cure cancer.
• "Growing up, my mother raised my sister and me to appreciate and honor our heritage. Nearly every other year, we would go to India for Diwali. We would spend time with our grandparents, our uncles, and our chitthis," Harris said in the op-ed for The Jaggernaut, an online South Asian publication.
• "And as Vice President, it has been my honor to host Diwali celebrations in my home — the Vice President's Residence. Not only to celebrate the holiday, but to celebrate the rich history, culture, and heritage of the South Asian American diaspora, which is bound together by a shared sense of possibility and belief in the promise of America," she said. (PTI)

• Trump has repeatedly called Harris a "liar," especially over her claims that his presidency would lead to restrictions on in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments.
• Speaking to the crowd, Trump declared, "I consider myself the father of fertilization," reaffirming his claim to be the "father of IVF."

The Harris campaign has not confirmed her rumored appearance on SNL, where comedian Maya Rudolph typically portrays her. Journalists traveling with Harris departed from North Carolina, only learning mid-flight that they were en route to New York City rather than Detroit.

• Kamala Harris arrived at New York’s LaGuardia Airport amid reports from US media that she’s set to make a surprise appearance on NBC’s final Saturday Night Live (SNL) episode before the election.
• SNL is famous for its satirical political sketches, with actor Maya Rudolph portraying Harris, the vice president and Democratic nominee, in recent seasons.

• Trump revisited his usual talking points, questioning the reliability of pre-election polls that show him in a close race with Democrat Kamala Harris.
• In Greensboro, North Carolina, Trump asked the crowd, “You promise that you’re going to be voting on Tuesday, right?”
• He continued: “Because I’m not supposed to say this. I’m going to be like the fake news. They’re saying it’s very close. It’s really not very close based on what’s been happening. It’s not so close.”
• Trump claimed, “We’re leading. We’re leading in all seven swing states, as you probably heard.”

With Election Day 2024 only three days away, Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris are intensifying their campaigns across the South to make their final appeals to voters. Trump is visiting North Carolina with a stop planned in Virginia, while Harris is rallying in Georgia and North Carolina, where she appeared alongside rockstar Jon Bon Jovi to energize supporters.

Campaigning with musician Bon Jovi in Charlotte, Harris reinforced her stance on Trump, calling him "increasingly unstable" and accusing him of seeking "unchecked power." Trump, in turn, held a rally in suburban Gastonia, where he reiterated his pledge to deport millions of immigrants and claimed a Harris victory would turn every town in America into a "dangerous refugee camp."