Election Day 2024: Live results and analysis

There's a lot more on the ballot today than just the presidential race. A little bit ago, I posted about two governors' races that could flip from red to blue this year. Well, there are also two governors' races that Republicans entered 2024 hopeful that they could flip — but neither has quite gone according to plan.

Initially, North Carolina looked like it was going to be the most competitive gubernatorial race of the cycle. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper was term-limited, and North Carolina is obviously a major swing state. However, Republicans nominated Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who had alienated voters with a litany of sexist, antisemitic and homophobic comments. He was already trailing badly in the polls when news broke in September about racist and salacious messages he allegedly posted on a pornography website's message board. These days, Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein leads Robinson by 10-20 points in most polls.

Finally, in Washington, Republicans have a strong candidate in moderate former Rep. Dave Reichert. However, Democratic Attorney General Bob Ferguson still has the inside track to succeed retiring Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee. In an average of six polls conducted since Oct. 1, Ferguson led Reichert 53% to 39%.

Elon Musk is expected to spend election night with former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

As ABC News has previously reported, Trump is hosting multiple dinners at his private club tonight, including one with his close friends and large donors and another with Mar-a-Lago club members, sources have told ABC News.

Musk is expected to participate in at least one of the events taking place at Mar-a-Lago tonight, according to sources.

Concerns about the state of the economy continue to be top of mind for voters as a whole, but in recent months another policy issue has emerged as an almost-equally high priority for Republicans in particular: immigration.

According to an August/September Pew Research Center poll, the most important issue for Trump voters are the economy (93%), immigration (82%), and violent crime (76%). Harris supporters, by comparison, said they were most concerned with health care (76%), Supreme Court appointments (73%) and the economy (68%).

It makes sense that immigration issues take center stage for Trump supporters specifically. Racist and xenophobic messaging toward immigrants fueled most of Trump's 2016 campaign and he's now promised that, if elected, he would conduct the largest deportation in American history. Republican elected officials have taken actions to amplify voter concerns about immigrants. Several GOP governors, for instance, have spent millions of dollars busing migrants out of their states and into Democrat-led cities, a move many liberals decried as dehumanizing. And during the Republican National Convention this summer, speakers spent much of their time railing against Biden's immigration policies. Perhaps the most succinct summary of where the party is now came from Kari Lake, the Republican Senate nominee from Arizona. The goal of the GOP, she said, must be to "stop the Bidenvasion and build the wall."

This rhetoric aligns with where Republican voters are on the issue of immigration. While a majority of Americans (61%) told pollsters this summer that immigrants from other countries have a largely positive effect on American society, an equal percentage of Republicans instead felt that immigrants had a negative influence.

These findings might be due to the fact that migrant counters at the U.S.-Mexico border hit a record high at the end of last year. And even though they've since decreased, the perception that there's a so-called "invasion" at the Southern border has appeared to hurt Democrats: September polling from YouGov found that voters trust Trump over Harris on handling immigration. It's unclear, of course, just how much this will buoy Trump's campaign, as 538's final forecast essentially shows the presidential candidates in a tie.

Plus, voters also place high importance on providing a path to legal status to undocumented immigrants, a policy more aligned with Harris and Democrats. In a tight race like this, it's possible that whoever can signal to voters that they have a plan to address border security while helping to develop a path to citizenship could be given the chance to implement said plans as the next president.

In the 2020 election, close results led to delays, recounts, audits and litigation, which raised questions about electoral processes and contributed to widespread claims of misinformation among the public. According to a U.S Election Assistance Commission report, 43% of voters used mail-in ballots in 2020 to vote. This influx of ballots, coupled with narrow margins in key states, meant Americans had to wait four days until the winner of the election was projected. However on election night and in the months after, Trump declared victory despite losing and attempting to overturn results he claimed were fraudulent.

The 2024 election could be the most heavily-litigated election in U.S. history, with over 165 lawsuits already filed and more expected. On the 538 Politics podcast last week, we tried to understand what is driving this historic level of litigation and the potential misinformation and additional legal challenges we can expect after Election Day. Since 2020, there has been a rise in election certification disputes, reports of harassment targeting local election officials and changes to voting laws across several battleground states.

The race is close, and while we cannot predict what will happen after Election Day, Larry Norden, vice president of the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center for Justice sat down with us to provide a clearer picture. For more details, check out the podcast.