No surprises: Harris, Trump continue to win expected states

It's Election Day in the U.S. This year, voters around the country will choose whom they want to send to the White House for the next four years. Also to be decided are 34 Senate seats, all 435 House of Representatives seats, 13 governorships and a plethora of local elected positions.

This blog will be updated throughout the night.

Harris, Trump continue to win expected states

With polls in half of the country closed, Vice President Kamala Harris has won eight states, and former President Donald Trump has won 10. So far, Harris' and Trump's state wins have followed predictions.

In addition to Harris' earlier Vermont win, she has also won Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island. She now has 71 electoral votes.

Trump, meanwhile, has added Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia to his list of wins, following his victories in Indiana and Kentucky. The Republican candidate now has 101 electoral votes.

At least 270 electoral votes are needed to win the presidency.

Various Senate races are also being called.

Longtime Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent, won reelection to a fourth six-year term. The 83-year-old is a self-described democratic socialist who caucuses with the Democrats.

Also in New England, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy won reelection in Connecticut; Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren won reelection in Massachusetts' and Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse won reelection in Rhode Island.

Meanwhile, in West Virginia, Republican Jim Justice won his Senate race, as predicted, flipping the first seat in the battle for control of the chamber. Justice has served as governor of West Virginia since 2017.

In Indiana, Republican Jim Banks has won Indiana's open Senate seat. Senator Mike Braun left the Senate after one term to run for governor, which he won. Banks, a military veteran, has served in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2017.

Adding to the Republican Party's wins are Senator Rick Scott, who won reelection in Florida; Roger Wicker, who won reelection in Mississippi; and Marsha Blackburn, who won reelection in Tennessee.

These wins are taking place against the backdrop of more warnings from the FBI about influence operations designed to promote election falsehoods. The FBI has warned of three new fake videos and posts using the bureau's name and insignia to promote false information about the election.

One video involved a purported statement warning journalists not to publish information about violence at polling stations. Another falsely claimed schools were closed until November 11 because of the risk of election-related violence. The third falsely claimed the FBI had received 9,000 complaints about malfunctioning voter machines.

"These three instances are the latest in a series of fabricated videos and statements falsely attributed to the FBI designed to mislead the American public," the FBI said in a statement.

Trump wins Indiana, Kentucky, Harris wins Vermont

Former President Donald Trump has won Indiana and Kentucky, while Vice President Harris has won Vermont.

The results do not come as a big surprise.

The Republican candidate has carried Indiana in seven of the last eight presidential elections and Kentucky in six of the eight last elections.

Vermont, meanwhile, has gone to the Democratic candidate in each of the last eight elections.

Indiana carries 11 electoral votes, and Kentucky is worth eight. That means Trump currently has 19. Harris, meanwhile, has three electoral votes from her Vermont win.

At least 270 electoral votes are needed to win the presidency.

Abortion is on the ballot

This presidential election is the first since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago. That decision, made possible by three justices appointed by former President Donald Trump, laid the groundwork for states to impose restrictive rules on abortion around the country.

Defending a woman's right to choose has been central to Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign, saying she would sign a bill restoring the protections of Roe nationwide. Trump has said it should be decided state by state.

An October KFF poll found that abortion had become the biggest issue in the election for women younger than 30. And a September poll from Quinnipiac University showed women favoring Harris 53% to 41% for Trump.

In addition to deciding who they want to be the next U.S. president, voters in 10 states will vote on whether to add abortion rights protections to state constitutions. Those amendments are on ballots in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and South Dakota.

In some states, including Arizona and Florida, voters will decide whether to overturn restrictive bans that state legislatures passed after Roe v. Wade was overturned. In other states, voters are deciding on whether to enhance existing abortion protections.

Strong voter turnout

Voter turnout appears to be strong in the United States this Election Day, especially in the swing states expected to ultimately decide the election.

Election officials in Georgia, a key battleground state, estimated that total state turnout this year would surpass that of the 2020 presidential election. More than 4 million Georgia residents voted early, either in person or by mail. That's a turnout of 55.4%, according to the secretary of state's office.

And in Michigan, another major swing state, "turnout is off the charts," said Jocelyn Benson, Michigan's secretary of state, in a post on the social media platform X. At least 3.3 million people in Michigan voted early, putting the state on track to match or beat its highest election turnout on record in 2020 when 5.5 million people voted.

Meanwhile, the battleground state of North Carolina is on track to either meet or surpass its voter turnout record set in 2020, according to the State Board of Elections and the New York Times.

More than 5.4 million people voted in North Carolina in 2020. But this year, more than 4.4 million people voted early.

By 3 p.m. Eastern time in Pennsylvania's usually red Lancaster County, elections workers had finished opening and scanning more than 50% of the estimated 64,000 returned mail-in ballots, county officials said during a news conference.

"This could be record turnout," said Commissioner Josh Parsons. He noted long lines at polling stations, especially in suburban and rural parts of the country.

Trump won Lancaster County in 2016 and 2020.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro predicted Tuesday that counting the ballots won't take as long as it did in 2020, when counting continued until the Saturday after the election.

First polls close at 6 p.m.

The first polls to close will be in parts of Indiana and Kentucky at 6 p.m. Eastern time. Voting locations in parts of both states that are in the Central time zone will remain open until 7 p.m. Eastern time.

At 8 p.m. Eastern time, all polls will be closed in half of the country's states: Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia.

Polls stay open the latest in Alaska, where they will close at 1 a.m. Eastern time.

As of Tuesday, tracking from The Associated Press of early voting nationwide showed more than 82 million ballots were cast before Election Day, which is slightly more than half the total number of votes in the presidential election four years ago.

Still, results in many of those states will take hours, if not days, to be announced.

The presidential election is expected to come down to results in a few battleground states.

Hoax bomb threats were directed at polling locations in three of those swing states – Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin, the FBI said on Tuesday. Many of the threats appeared to originate from Russian email domains, according to the FBI.

"None of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far," the FBI said in a statement, adding that election integrity was among the bureau's highest priorities.

At least two polling sites targeted by the hoax bomb threats in Georgia were briefly evacuated on Tuesday.

Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger blamed Russian interference.

"They're up to mischief, it seems. They don't want us to have a smooth, fair and accurate election, and if they can get us to fight among ourselves, they can count that as a victory," Raffensperger told reporters.