Americans took the polling stations on Tuesday, in what has been one of the most tumultuous national campaigns in the country's history.
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At the top of the ticket is the US presidency, along with all 435 US House seats, 35 US Senate seats, and 11 gubernatorial races.
It is entirely uncertain a clear winner will be announced by Wednesday or even the weekend.
Join Israel Hayom as we follow one of the most important election days in United States history.
The Latest:
1:10 p.m.
Joe Biden now ahead by 1,096 votes in Georgia.
11:31 a.m.
CNN reports that Democrat Joe Biden has taken the lead in the battleground state of Georgia and is ahead by 917 votes.
10:52 a.m.
CNN reports Trump's lead in Georgia down to 463 votes.
9:48 a.m.
Trump's lead in Georgia drops to 665 votes.
8:54 a.m.
Trump's lead in Georgia shrinks to 1,267 votes, CNN reports.
8:27 a.m.
Trump leading by only 1,709 votes in Georgia. Some 3.9 million Georgia residents voted in the 2020 presidential election. Biden ahead by 11,438 votes in Nevada. Trump leads by 22,576 votes in Pennsylvania. Biden ahead by 47,052 votes in Arizona.
7:23 a.m.
Trump and Biden are reportedly tied in Georgia, each with 49.4% of the tallied votes. Democrats and Republicans tied for control of the Senate.
6.05 a.m.
Trump campaign lawsuits have been dismissed in the battleground states of Georgia and Michigan.
In Michigan, the campaign tried to halt the counting of votes and gain more access to the process, but the petition was denied as the judge ruled there was "no basis" to the move. In Georgia, the campaign claimed 53 ballots that arrived late were incorrectly mixed with other ballots. A judge in the state says there is "no evidence" of invalid votes.
Trump's campaign says it will file a fresh lawsuit in Nevada over allegations of voting irregularities.
5.30 a.m.
The Republican leadership in Congress refused Thursday to comment on President Trump's rhetoric questioning the election process. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Whip John Thune, and an array of other GOP leaders in the Senate all decline or do not respond to requests for comment from CNN. In the House, GOP leader Kevin McCarthy and conference chair Liz Cheney also do not respond to requests for comment.
04:27 a.m.
Georgia: Trump leads Biden by 2,497 votes
01:57 a.m.
US President Donald Trump addressed the media from the White House regarding the 2020 presidential election."If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they are trying to steal the election from me," Trump charged. "We grew our party by four million voters. Democrats are the party of the big donors and Republicans have become the party of the American worker."
12:20 a.m.
Georgia: Trump leads Biden by over 9,000 votes with 98% counted
9:11 p.m.
Nevada says it will not post additional results on Thursday.
7:12 p.m.
Biden's lead expands to 12,000 in Nevada.
6:49 p.m.
Pennsylvania's Allegheny County, the second-largest in the state and home to Pittsburgh, has announced it will stop counting votes until Friday, CNN reports. Trump's lead in Pennsylvania has narrowed to 121,857 votes.
6:44 p.m.
President Donald Trump's lead in Georgia has dropped to just over 14,000 votes, CNN reports.
6:36 p.m.
President Donald Trump's lead in Georgia narrows to 49.5% of the counted vote to Democrat Joe Biden's 49.2%.
5:40 p.m.
Georgia election officials say 61,367 ballots still to be counted, cite lead of 18,000 for President Donald Trump. Trump has 49.6% of the counted vote to Democrat Joe Biden's 49.2%.
5:04 p.m.
According to CNN, Democratic candidate Joe Biden leads by 7,647 votes in Nevada and 68,390 votes in Arizona. President Donald Trump ahead by 18,586 in Georgia, 76,737 in North Carolina, and 135,702 in Pennsylvania. In the 2016 election, Trump won four of those five states, with Nevada going to Democrat Hillary Clinton.
4:42 p.m.
Democrats and Republicans are tied in the Senate with 48 seats each, Fox News reports.
4:16 p,m.
US President Donald Trump's campaign is poised to announce a lawsuit over alleged voter fraud in Nevada, Fox News reports.
4:05 p.m.
The head of an international delegation monitoring the US election says his team has no evidence to support President Donald Trump's claims about alleged fraud involving mail-in absentee ballots.
Michael Georg Link, a German lawmaker who heads an observer mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, told German public broadcaster rbb Thursday that "on the election day itself, we couldn't see any violations" at the US polling places they visited.
3:49 p.m.
CNN reports 140,000 mail-in ballots still uncounted in Philadelphia County.
7.50
President Donald Trump's campaign filed lawsuits Wednesday in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia, laying the groundwork for contesting battleground states as he slipped behind Democrat Joe Biden in the hunt for the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House.
1.18 a.m.
Joe Biden won the battleground prizes of Michigan and Wisconsin on Wednesday, reclaiming a key part of the "blue wall" that slipped away from Democrats four years ago and dramatically narrowing President Donald Trump's pathway to reelection.
11 p.m.
Joe Biden delivers a speech saying he expects his campaign to win at least 270 electoral votes after counting ends, vows to be everyone's president. CNN projects Michigan will be blue.
10.15 p.m.
Wisconsin moves to Biden's column after CNN and AP project he is the winner in the crucial Midwestern state.
7.15 p.m.
Democratic challenger Joe Biden opened up leads in Wisconsin and Michigan, as the two Midwestern battleground states that the Republican president won in 2016 continued to count mail-in ballots that surged amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Together with Nevada, another state where Biden held a small advantage with votes still left to be tallied, those states would deliver Biden the 270 votes needed in the state-by-state Electoral College to win the White House. But Trump still had a path to victory with those states officially undecided.
6.54 p.m.
US President Donald Trump "will be in for one of the most embarrassing defeats a president ever suffered before the highest court in the land" if he asks it to invalidate ballots counted after Election Day, former White House counsel Bob Bauer, a senior adviser on the Biden campaign, said.
Biden campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon said the campaign expects "that at some point later today that the Vice President will address the American people."
6.16 p.m.
Twitter, Facebook warnings on US election hit both parties, as social media giants flag posts by Democrat and Republican officials in the battleground states of Wisconsin and Florida, warning users that the information may be contested or inaccurate.
Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key States, in almost all instances Democrat run & controlled. Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted. VERY STRANGE, and the "pollsters" got it completely & historically wrong!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 4, 2020
5.45 p.m
Democratic nominee Joe Biden says his campaign "won't rest until every vote is counted." The statement followed remarks by President Donald Trump, who said he would seek Supreme Court intervention to halt the counting process.
5.07 p.m.
A top Biden adviser tells CNN, "We're going to win today," as votes in key battleground states place the Republican and Democratic candidates in a neck-to-neck race. The Democrats are "confident" they will win Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. "We feel good," the senior adviser said, "We're going to win today."
4.14 p.m.
Democratic nominee Joe Biden has carved out a thin lead over President Trump in Michigan. The latest tally of votes also places Democrats "a whisper away from turning Georgia blue," CNN says.
3.54 p.m.
Anti-Trump protesters armed with assault rifles burned US flags and marched through Portland as tensions over the undecided vote rose nationwide. Portland has been bracing for possible violent clashes after months of divisive rallies involving left-wing activists, right-wing militias and federal officers deployed by the Trump administration.
The FBI has warned of the potential for armed clashes in Portland linked to the polls, but there were no signs of election night activity from radical right-wing groups such as the Proud Boys.
2:40 p.m.
The Trump and Biden campaigns are preparing for a legal fight over the election results as key battlegrounds remain undeclared. Democratic challenger Joe Biden slightly expands his narrow lead in Wisconsin, while in Michigan the two seem to be in a very tight race.
With 83% of votes in Michigan counted, Trump leads with 49.8% of the vote, ahead of Biden's 48.5%, the New York Times said.
1:37 p.m.
President Donald Trump's lead in the key state of Michigan is narrowing, wtih CNN reporting 49.8% of votes tallied so far for the president vs. 48.5% for Democrat Joe Biden. The election in Michigan has not yet been called.
1:33 p.m.
Stock markets and US futures were volatile on Wednesday as the world awaited results of tight races in battleground states that will determine the outcome of the US presidential election. Markets were jolted but soon recovered after US President Donald Trump, in an early morning appearance at the White House, made premature claims of victories in several key states.
As of 6 a.m. Eastern time, Trump and his Democratic challenger Joe Biden still were awaiting vote counts from a handful of key states.
12:56 p.m.
Dems pick up a Senate seat as AP calls Colorado race for John Hickenlooper.
12:48 p.m.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf tweeted that his state had over 1 million ballots to be counted and that he "promised Pennsylvanians that we would count every vote and that's what we're going to do."
11:56 a.m.
CNN declares Joe Biden the winner in Hawaii (4 electoral votes).
11:44 a.m.
Reports: Joe Biden is now leading in Wisconsin.
11:42 a.m.
Democrat Joe Biden's campaign says it will fight any efforts by President Donald Trump's campaign to go to the US Supreme Court to prevent ballots from being tabulated.
In a statement sent before 4 a.m. Wednesday, Biden campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon called Trump's statement that he will "be going to the US Supreme Court" and that he wants "all voting to stop" "outrageous, unprecedented and incorrect."
11:07 a.m.
AP and CNN have called Arizona (11 electoral votes) for Democrat Joe Biden.
9:30 a.m.
President Donald Trump speaks at the White House, says: "We're winning everything. We won the great state of Ohio, we won Texas by 700,000 votes. It's also clear we've won Georgia, we've clearly won North Carolina. We're winning Pennsylvania by a tremendous number, we're up 690,000 votes in Pennsylvania. We're winning Michigan.:
Trump decries "fraud on the American public" and says Republicans will not hesitate to go to the US attorney over results.
8:59 a.m.
Democratic Congresswomen Ilhan Omar (Minnesota) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have won reelection in their respective districts.
8:03 a.m.
Twitter has restricted a tweet from Trump election official Mike Roman alleging that Democrats are trying to "steal" the election.
7:44 a.m.
Joe Biden at an event in Delaware: We're confident about Arizona. We're feeling real good about Wisconsin and Michigan. it will take a while to count all the votes, but we're going to win Pennsylvania.
5.34 a.m.
Biden, Trump score wins, but battleground states remain too close to call. Early polling shows Trump takes slight lead in Ohio; Biden still leads in North Carolina, Pennsylvania.
3:30 a.m.
Trump wins the crucial state of Florida. All eyes on North Carolina and Pennsylvania, with possible surprises in Georgia and Texas.
1:14 a.m.
New York Times: "With 101 million votes cast early, the US heads toward its highest turnout in over a century."
11.30 p.m.
Wall Street closes sharply higher on US Election Day stimulus hopes
5.30 p.m.
Joe Biden signs the wall of his former home in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he grew up.
4.22 p.m.
Trump says he may declare victory without the election being called, but will not take things lightly, and "only when there's victory." He added: "There's no reason to play games. I look at it as being a very, a very solid chance of winning here. I don't know how they rate the chances," Trump tells Fox. "I think a lot of that has to do with the tremendous crowd size."
3.45 p.m.
Trump tells Fox News he "will top" his earlier projection of getting 306 electoral votes. Axios reports that Biden will address the nation as soon as networks declare him the winner.
2.05 p.m.
Polling stations opened in New York, New Jersey and Virginia, marking the official start of Election Day in the US. Lines could be seen forming in many areas for several hours before voting began.
The vote is widely seen as a referendum on US President Donald Trump's divisive presidency while Democratic challenger Joe Biden urged Americans to "restore our democracy."
12.53 p.m.
The latest Trafalgar poll, released Tuesday morning, gives Trump a razor-thin 0.7-point lead over Biden in Nevada, with Trump polling at 49.1% to Biden's 48.4%.
The polls show support for the president surging in some battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Florida, and Michigan.
The previous Trafalgar Group poll, conducted on Oct. showed Biden leading Trump 49.4% to 47.1%.
11.08 a.m.
Residents living in and around Thulasendrapuram, the ancestral village of Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris, gathered at a temple for special prayers ahead of the elections.
One local politician conducted an "Abhishekam," a practice that involves pouring milk over a Hindu idol amid recitation of religious verses, in the presence of about 20 villagers.
Harris was born to an Indian mother and a Jamaican father who both immigrated to the US to study.
8:29 a.m.
More than 99 million early votes had already been cast in person or by mail as of Monday night, according to the US Elections Project at the University of Florida, a record-setting pace fueled by intense interest in the election and concerns about voting in person on Election Day during a pandemic.
The number was equal to 72.3% of the entire turnout in 2016 and represents about 40% of all Americans who are legally eligible to vote.
7:40 a.m.
Since the 2000 presidential election, which was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court, both parties have enlisted legal teams to prepare for the unlikely event that voting wouldn't settle the contest. But this year, there is a near presumption that legal fights will ensue and that only a definitive outcome is likely to forestall them.
Roughly 20 states allow for late-arriving ballots, but Pennsylvania's Republican-controlled legislature did not authorize an extension, even with the huge increase in mailed ballots because of the coronavirus pandemic.
On Sunday, Trump said that as soon as the polls close, "We're going in with our lawyers."
There's already been roughly 300 lawsuits over the election filed in dozens of states across the country, many involving changes to normal procedures because of the coronavirus pandemic. Legal battles ensued over signature matches, drop boxes and secrecy envelopes.
6:47 a.m.
President Trump is traveling to four critical states where he lags in polls and is already gearing up to challenge the results in Pennsylvania, where Joe Biden is holding three rallies today. Biden told supporters in Cleveland, "The power to change the country is in your hands."
