US Election Results: Live Blog
Join us for the latest reactions to Donald Trump's election win.
Welcome to the WIRED live blog for the 2024 US presidential election! In the early hours of Wednesday morning, Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris to become the 47th president of the United States.
We’ll be bringing you coverage from David Gilbert and Vittoria Elliott as they report from, respectively, Arizona and Pennsylvania, while Dell Cameron, Leah Feiger, Makena Kelly, Tim Marchman, and Tess Owen, as well as guests from around the WIRED newsroom, let you know what they’re seeing and hearing.
Follow all of WIRED's 2024 presidential election coverage here.
Hi everyone - thanks for sticking with us this week.
We're going to shut this live blog down now, but keep tuning in to wired.com for all the coverage on what a Trump victory means for the days, months, and years ahead.
For now, check out some of our latest –
Where did you spend election night? At a bar? A friend's house? Alone on the couch? We sent our reporter Boone Ashworth on assignment to attend election watch parties in VRChat and Horizon Worlds. He put on a Quest 3S and hung out with Batman, giant robots, Wolverine, a skeleton, anime characters, and a twitchy penguin. The avatars gathered to chat, goof around, and watch the results roll in. Then it got chaotic. Read Boone's report on how election night played out in virtual reality.
New from Tess Owen:
Far-Right Donald Trump Supporters Celebrate His Victory with Violent Memes and Calls for Executions
“Many many many executions are warranted,” one Trump supporter wrote on Truth Social. “These traitors are a terminal cancer that MUST BE completely eradicated to make America healthy again.”
OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman just tweeted his congrats to president elect Donald Trump and says he wishes him “great success” in the role. Altman followed up with a tweet saying “it is critically important that the US maintains its lead in developing AI with democratic values.”
In the run-up to the election, Harris focused slightly more on potential harms of AI, wanting to address the “full spectrum of risk”; while Trump said he would cancel a 2023 Biden executive order that directed federal agencies to require certain information from AI companies in the interest of national security. Biden’s order was considered to be the most ambitious set of rules around AI technology to date.
Altman has been proactive in trying to shape whatever policies might emerge. Last year he hosted a large private dinner for lawmakers where he answered questions about advanced AI and the challenges of regulating it. This April, Altman hired Chris Lehane, a seasoned political operator, as global head of policy at OpenAI. Altman appears to be borrowing a page from Meta—or learning from its mistakes—in his approach around suggesting AI regulations before lawmakers can hammer it down.
More reactions are coming in from the tech industry as the US wakes up.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos congratulated Trump on “an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory.”
“No nation has bigger opportunities,” he said. “Wishing @realDonaldTrump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love.”
Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, faced criticism last week after he defended the newspaper’s decision not to endorse a Presidential candidate this year.
Cameron Winklevoss, co-founder of exchange Gemini, reflected the buoyant mood among the crypto industry this morning. In his campaign, Trump described his plan to turbocharge crypto growth and turn the US into a crypto mining powerhouse.
“Imagine how much we are going to accomplish in the next 4 years now that the crypto industry won't be hemorrhaging $ billions on legal fees fighting the SEC and instead investing this money into building the future of money,” he said. “Amazing awaits.”
The CEO of betting platform Polymarket described the result as a vindication of his business model. “Polymarket single-handedly called the election before anything else,” Shayne Coplan said. He claimed the Trump team found out they were winning from Polymarket.
Marc Andreessen, general partner of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, also expressed optimism. “It’s time to build,” he said, echoing an earlier statement made by Elon Musk.
Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, jumped 24 percent as the market in New York opened this morning.
Tesla was up 12.7 percent, after Trump praised Elon Musk in his speech this morning for being a “super genius”. Bitcoin remains at a record-high.
Big tech lagged slightly behind the rest of the market. Trump has suggested “something” should be done about Google to make the company “more fair.” JD Vance has also criticized Google and Facebook for censoring conservatives.
British climate activists have vandalized the US embassy in the UK, describing Trump’s election win as a sign the world is slipping “further into fascism as well as climate breakdown.”
A video posted online showed two men covering a wall of the $1 billion US embassy, in south west London, with bright orange paint.
Just Stop Oil, a climate group best known for blocking roads, said it was behind the protest.
“As long as democracy is hijacked by corporate interests and billionaires, it will fail to deliver the change people are crying out for,” the group said on X. “This will always leave the door open for fake populists like Trump to exploit the disaffection many feel.”
Police in London said two men, aged 25 and 72, had been arrested on suspicion of criminal damage.
More news on reproductive rights! Montana has enshrined the right to abortion in its constitution, becoming the seventh state to either protect or expand abortion rights.
Here’s the full (updated) tally of the abortion ballots:
Florida: Failed
Arizona: Passed
Missouri: Passed
Nevada: Passed
Montana: Passed
Colorado: Passed
South Dakota: Projected to fail
Nebraska: Projected to fail
New York: Passed
Maryland: Passed
More exit poll data coming in shows that as expected, there was also a stark difference in how people who did and did not go to college voted.
Sixty-two percent of people who never attended college voted Republican, whereas 61 percent of Americans with advanced degrees (including MBAs, Masters and PHDs) voted Democrat, according to NBC exit polls.
Around 45 percent of voters said they felt poorer than four years ago, according to the CBS exit poll, and of the people that felt that way, 8 in 10 backed Trump.This was yet another election where polls were blamed for not capturing the extent of Trump support during the campaign.
Comedian Jon Stewart sent an angry message to the polling industry in his election day edition of The Daily Show last night. “I do want to very quickly send a quick message to all the election pollsters,” he said. “I don’t ever want to fucking hear from you again.”
Here are some images of jubilant Donald Trump supporters, who celebrated his victory in the early hours of Wednesday, as the result of the election became clear a lot earlier than predicted by experts.
The former (and incumbent) president swept to victory in an astounding career comeback as he promised voters that he would once again “Make America Great Again.”
Once Trump sets foot in the White House, how easy will it be for him to enact change?
My colleague Matthew Champion reports:
Republicans have regained control of the Senate after establishing a majority for the first time in four years.
With a third of 100 seats up for election and 51 required for a majority, the Republicans flipped three seats in red states–Montana, Ohio and West Virginia–to give them 52 seats.
There are 6 seats still to be called at time of writing, including Kari Lake’s race against Democrat Ruben Gallego in Arizona.
With Trump now declared as the winner of the election, a Republican-controlled Senate will allow him to push through appointments, including potentially RFK Jr. at the Department of Health and Human Services.
During his first term in office, Trump was able to get 234 judges confirmed, including three Supreme Court justices who reshaped the ideological balance of the highest court in the land.
All 435 seats in the House of Representatives were also up for election, but with around 100 races to be called, the balance of power there is still up for grabs.
Elon Musk worked arguably harder than any other Trump ally to put him back into the White House, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on his campaign and financing a controversial network of canvassers to prompt people to vote. He faced legal action for offering people the chance to win $1 million for registering to vote in the key swing state of Pennsylvania.
The close friendship has not been tempered by the fact that Trump is pro-oil and thinks EVs are overhyped.
So far, it's too soon to see whether that political gamble may have paid off for Musk's businesses. Tesla stock (Musk's only listed company) was up by just over 12 percent in pre-market trading on Wednesday morning.
Musk's financial bet will pay off if he secures an expected advisory role in Trump's government.
The warm words exchanged between the men, who allegedly spent election night together, have escalated to Trump calling Musk a genius and an “amazing guy” on stage during his victory speech.
Online, Musk even attempted to revive his rather literal joke from the Twitter takeover era involving a sink as a prop, posting a picture of himself badly photoshopped into the oval office, carrying the washbasin. “Let that sink in,” he said on X.
“America is a nation of builders,” Elon Musk said late last night. “Soon, you will be free to build.”
If you're waking up right now, you might be wondering…How did Donald Trump do it?
Political pundits are analyzing how exactly Trump managed to secure a second term.
The gender divide in US politics has been confirmed in CNN exit polls, showing men were more likely to vote for Trump than women.Throughout the campaign, Trump’s team courted apolitical young men, typically a difficult demographic to get to turn up on election day.
This might be explained, in part, by his guest appearances. At the end of October, Trump appeared on a three-hour episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience”, which has a large young male audience.
The YouTube version alone was watched by 45 million people. The day before the election, Rogan endorsed Trump.
Rogan said he had invited Harris to also feature in his podcast but rejected her team's suggestion that he should travel from his studio and limit his interview to an hour.
Although Kamala Harris held a strong lead among Black men and women, Trump pulled ahead among Latino men, CNN said.
As the news of a confirmed second term for Donald Trump spreads, let's take a look at other decisive votes in US healthcare.
Voters in Massachusetts rejected a measure that would have legalized medicinal psychedelics, in a blow to advocates who said it would have given psychiatric patients more options for treatment.
The measure would have allowed substances—including those found in magic mushrooms—to be purchased at approved locations and used under the supervision of licensed facilitators.
Opponents, however, warned psychedelics could be abused if legalized. Florida also rejected a measure that would have allowed recreational marijuana to be sold to people over 21.
The state was one of four to vote on various marijuana ballots alongside Nebraska (passed), North Dakota (result pending) and South Dakota (result pending.)
It's official. Multiple news outlets are now projecting that Donald Trump has won the US election, cinching key swing states including Wisconsin. CNN, Sky News, Reuters and Bloomberg have pronounced Trump the 47th president of the US in the last few minutes.
Trump has already declared victory in a speech to his followers in Florida. Kamala Harris has yet to issue a statement.
Here's the WIRED story.
The crypto industry is popping the champagne over a successful night in the congressional races, too.
In Ohio, Democratic senator Sherrod Brown, a critic of the crypto industry, has been unseated by Republican Bernie Moreno. A super PAC funded by crypto donors spent more than $40 million in support of Moreno’s campaign.
“Being anti-crypto is simply bad politics,” wrote Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, one of the largest donors to crypto-focused super PACs, in an X post. “Welcome to America's most pro-crypto Congress ever,” he added in a threaded post.
It’s party time for the denizens of cryptoland, who have been courted by Donald Trump throughout his campaign.
Multiple crypto industry figureheads, like Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, cofounders of crypto platform Gemini, are celebrating Donald Trump’s apparent return to the White House after throwing money at the Republican candidate’s campaign.
“We are on the brink of a new American Renaissance,” wrote Tyler, in a post on X.
David Bailey, the conference organizer behind the Crypto 2024 event where Trump was a keynote speaker, said on X: “The people have spoken. Tomorrow we start work on fixing the money.”
Following hot on the heels of world leaders who rushed to congratulate Trump on his victory (which has still not been confirmed for those joining us now,) other politicians in Europe have started issuing ominous statements about what they expect from the next four years.
“This is a dark, dark day for people around the globe,” said Ed Davey, leader of the UK’s Liberal Democrats, an opposition party, in a post on X. “Millions of Americans—especially women and minorities—will be incredibly fearful about what comes next.”
“Trump wins and this is the price that will be paid: action on climate; decency in public life; the rule of law; women’s right to choose,” said Adrian Ramsay, co-leader of Britain's Green Party.
(Both these statements contrast with that of UK prime minister Kier Starmer, who said on X that he looked forward to working together.)
Aura Salla, a member of the center-right EPP party in the European Parliament, struck a similar tone. “Another era of uncertainty in US politics is here,” she added in a LinkedIn post. “Let’s face it, Trump’s presidency is not ideal for Europe. With Trump we cannot trust the US to value transatlantic cooperation, fight the climate crisis or continue supporting Ukraine.”
And already we're seeing the effects of a likely Trump presidency.
Shares in one of the world’s biggest wind power companies, Denmark's Ørsted, dropped sharply this morning as traders expect Trump to deprioritize climate policies.
At the time of writing, shares in Danish company Ørsted were down over 9 percent.
The developer was behind the US' first commercial scale offshore wind farm, east of Montauk Point.
Rival Danish renewable energy company Vestas also saw a drop in shares of over 8 percent Wednesday morning.
Trump had pledged to end offshore wind projects on his first day in office. “I’m going to write it out in an executive order,” he said back in May, on the campaign trail. “It’s going to end on day one.”