After a big day of voting, polls have closed in all American states and millions of people are now anxiously waiting for a final result.
Election day was a relatively smooth affair for voters, despite bomb threats, false claims of a fake Melania at a Florida poll and the spreading of misinformation on social media.
Not long after the last poll closed, it became clear Donald Trump was leading in all of the widely watched swing states.
The Republican nominee has already claimed some key battlegrounds as counting in the US presidential election extended into Wednesday morning, local time.
Kamala Harris has already confirmed she will not deliver a speech tonight, prompting her supporters to flock to the exits of her campaign’s headquarters, while it is widely expected Trump will speak shortly.
From a clear Trump lead in key swing states to a spike in women voters and wild conspiracy theories online, these were the key moments from election day.
Donald Trump leading in battleground states
In an election predicted to be close, all eyes were trained on seven battleground states that were widely seen as the deciders of the election.
Two of those states offered early signs of who might win: Georgia and North Carolina.
Both states are famous for relatively quick counts, and both were soon called for Trump.
This was obviously good news for the Republican nominee because it left Kamala Harris’s victory dependent on sweeping Wisconsin, Michigan and the real prize, Pennsylvania.
The states are known as the “blue wall”, and once were reliable Democratic strongholds, but they’ve been known to crumble in favour of Republicans now and then.
Trump is now leading in all of these states.
Earlier on Tuesday, Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon sent an email to staffers in which she urged them to “get some sleep”.
“As we have known all along, this is a razor thin race,” she wrote.
“This is what we’ve been built for, so let’s finish up what we have in front of us tonight, get some sleep and get ready to close out strong tomorrow.”
The women vote
The gender divide among voters was a key focus this election, with uncertainty about how this split would play out on polling day and what it would mean for each candidate.
Early surveys indicated there was a slight increase in the number of American women who cast ballots on November 5.
Data from AP’s VoteCast survey shows 54 per cent of voters are women in 2024, up from 53 per cent in 2020.
Republicans have long been aware that female voters could make or break Trump’s fortunes, with one of his closest advisers, Stephen Miller, going so far as to urge men to get to the polls to counteract this surge.
So why are American women so motivated to vote this year? Part of it is likely due to reproductive rights.
After Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee, the number of women who named abortion as their top election issue increased, according to New York Times/Siena polls.
The Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade in 2022, ending the constitutional right to abortion and sending the issue back to the states.
Trump’s appointment of three conservative justices to the court during his presidency paved the way for the decision, which resulted in more than 20 states introducing bans or restrictions on abortion.
Vice-President Kamala Harris and her team have campaigned heavily on the issue, insisting Trump can’t be trusted on reproductive access.
But it appears the much-discussed “gender chasm” didn’t work in Harris’ favour, even though Harris clearly dominated among younger voters, according to exit polls.
ABC America found that while young men under 30 were evenly split between Harris and Trump, the Democrat held a 26-point lead with women in the same age group.
Young voters showed up more than in 2020
There also appears to have been a surge in young voters participating in this election.
AP’s VoteCast survey found 16 per cent of voters were 18-29-year-olds. In 2020 they made up 13 per cent of voters.
Republicans and Democrats targeted this demographic throughout the campaign, with Harris telling crowds she “loved Gen Z” at a campaign rally a few days ago.
The Trump camp had focused on courting young male voters, scaling back on traditional media interviews in favour of hours-long podcast interviews with hosts popular among this cohort, such as Joe Rogan and Logan Paul.
But surveys have found the younger age group are irregular voters and are less connected to either party.
Indeed, some may have chosen to vote for independents such as Jill Stein, particularly in protest against the two major parties over key issues, such as their approach to the war in Gaza.
What about the House and Senate races?
While the focus for many is on the outcome of the presidential race, the battles for the US House of Representatives and the Senate are arguably even more crucial.
Republicans have secured control of the Senate, retaking the chamber for the first time in four years.
But control of the House of Representatives remains in doubt, with AP reporting more than 100 races are yet to be called.
Fake Melania, bomb threats and disinformation
While the voting process was largely calm on November 5, it belied a suffocating sense of anxiety among voters awaiting the outcome of a razor’s-edge election race.
On the ground, voters took part in their election day rituals, wiling away the time by exercising, catching up with friends or gathering for democracy parties.
But social media platforms quickly became a hotbed of conspiracy theories and misinformation ranging from mild claims about a fake Melania Trump to more dangerous allegations of voter fraud and election rigging in Pennsylvania.
When Trump showed up to a Florida precinct to cast his vote early on November 5, social media users were convinced the woman photographed by his side was not his wife Melania but a body double.
Users honed in on her decision to wear sunglasses indoors, missing rings and her choice of dress as signs the former first lady had been replaced by a look-a-like.
There is no evidence to suggest Melania is using a body double but it was not the only sign of things going awry on election day.
Bomb threats across precincts in four states caused disruptions as some were forced to temporarily close.
The FBI said many of the threat claims “appear to originate from Russian email domains” and “none of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far”.
Georgia’s Republican secretary of state was one of many officials who spoke out against the threats.
Meanwhile, one of the common threads that took hold early in the day was allegations of voter fraud and election rigging in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state for both parties.
Thousands of accounts on social media platform X shared a video as evidence of the “fraud”, however the ABC Verify team has found the footage is old and a widely debunked video of election workers in Arizona that was filmed in 2022 ahead of the US mid-terms.
Reuters has previously reported that what the video actually shows is a “routine procedure to install memory cards into voter machines”.
(ABC News)