Election Day 2024 live results: Trump projected to win North Carolina, a swing state

Is the United States ready to elect a female president? As polls continue to close around the country, that remains one of the implicit questions facing voters. Women have slowly gained political power in the House and Senate and Harris, as vice president, is the first woman to ever hold that position. As Meredith wrote earlier, though, not only are women candidates more likely to be Democrats, but polling shows that Democrats also are more likely to think it's important to elect a woman.

Overall, a little more than half (53%) of Americans say that there are too few women in elected office, according to the Pew Research Center. But that number has gone down in recent years, possibly because the number of women serving in Congress has gone up. Women made up 28% of all congressional representatives of those sworn in last year, the largest share in history.

In general, party identification tends to matter more on issues related to gender, with Republicans more likely to have a traditional view of the role of men and women. Those attitudes also shape attitudes on abortion. Democrats are also more likely to say its extremely or very important to them to elect a woman in their lifetimes, according to Pew.

Polling from PerryUndem, a nonpartisan research firm that has surveyed voter attitudes on gender and women in power since 2015, found similar splits. 83% of Democrats said, "I want there to be equal numbers of men and women in positions of power in our society" in a 2022 PerryUndem survey, while only 40% of Republicans agreed. Many voters have become more attuned to gender in politics since Clinton, the first woman major-party candidate for president, narrowly lost the race to Trump in 2016. Their polling has found that voters became more likely to attribute her loss to sexism in the years that followed.

Abortion is already legal in Maryland, but tonight voters will decide whether they want to enshrine the right to an abortion and "reproductive freedom" in the state's constitution. If there are enough yea votes on Ballot Question 1, there would be an amendment to the state's constitution guaranteeing "the ability to make and effectuate decisions to prevent, continue, or end one's own pregnancy." Polling ahead of tonight suggests that the initiative should easily pass. A September UMBC survey found that 69% of likely voters plan to vote in favor of Question 1, while only 21% said they planned to vote against it. Of course, in a solidly blue state like Maryland, support for abortion rights isn't all that surprising. The same poll found that 57% of likely voters preferred Harris, compared with 35% who said that they backed Trump.

Beyond that, I'll also be keeping an eye on the congressional race taking place in Maryland's 6th District. The seat is now up for grabs after Rep. David Trone abandoned his post to run for U.S. Senate — where he lost in the Democratic primary. Tonight, Democrat April McClain-Delaney and Republican Neil Parrott will go head-to-head, and polling suggests the race will be a tight one. According to the Washington Post, an early poll of the race showed Delaney and Parrott deadlocked in the district, which has a partisan lean of R+1. Delaney's husband — John Delaney — once represented the now-swing district and is marketing herself as the best candidate to address issues affecting women. To that end, she's repeatedly attacked Parrott for a vote he took while serving as a state delegate that made spousal rape harder to prosecute. Parrott, however, has defended this vote and argued that "having workplace sexual harassment laws in marriage doesn't make sense." His campaign is largely focused on issues important to Republican voters, including border security and stricter immigration reform.

The vice president is preparing to deliver a speech tonight, sources close to Harris' campaign team told ABC News.

The sources said they are expecting her to speak, but what she says depends on the results that are known at that time.

Regardless, one source says the Harris wants to thank everyone.

The plans are subject to change, according to the sources.

ABC News is projecting that independent Sen. Bernie Sanders has won reelection in Vermont, and it's also projecting that Republican Gov. Phil Scott has won reelection. Sanders sits to the left of most Democrats in the Senate (but is part of that party's caucus), so it's fascinating to see such a split result in one of the country's bluest states. However, Scott is incredibly popular and is one of the only high-profile Republicans left in office who has turned against Trump — so much so that he said he voted for Harris in the presidential election.