Welcome to Splinter’s All-Day Election Live Blog

Welcome to the first election with new Splinter between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. The first article that I wrote as Editor-in-Chief was Should You Vote for Joe Biden? and if you told me I published that ten years ago, my body’s sense of the passage of time would think you were right. But I did not write that in 2014, I actually wrote it in March. Ten years ago I was authoring my lefty shitposter origin story, scamming selling for the banks who skim about three percent off the economy for the pleasure of being the middleman between business and customer.

This year, which is somehow 2024 and not 2034, is finally approaching its close. I fear what is on the other side of tonight, as there are a wide range of outcomes where the real slog is ahead of us, but I won’t raise those concerns today. Today is a day to celebrate small victories. This is a mile marker proving our endurance in the face of unspeakable chaos. Look at what we just went through these past four months. We’re here. We can do anything now, and let’s definitely do something else tomorrow.

This blog exists for two reasons. One, to provide updates on important election developments and news throughout the day until midnight-ish Mountain Time when I reach my threshold for pain tolerance–but don’t confuse me with Steve Kornacki or anything–I’m not going scab on the NYT Tech Union and replacing the needle. We’ve got you covered with big developments and some local and climate stuff the national networks may have missed.

Second, it’s here for staff to drop observations or jokes or comments or content any other kind of post that comes to mind throughout the day. In short, this is a place to hang out on election day well into the sicko hours on the east coast, so check back here and at Jezebel periodically throughout the day for news and insight or “insight,” and debate in the comments as we cover whatever the hell is about to happen to all of us.

Jacob Weindling (11 am MST): The first election results are in from famed small town in New Hampshire, Dixville Notch. Everyone woke up this morning to a tied popular vote. All six Nikki Haley primary voters who broke for both Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton in 2020 and 2016 split their vote between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris 3-3, proving again that this election is so close that you can look at whatever trends you want and believe whatever you want like some crazy notion that the Democrats are going to win North Carolina because of the Nude Africa forums.

Dave Levitan (11:50 am MST): Who wants to go out when it’s raining? Terrible. Related, decades of research have shown that bad weather can affect election turnout, which seems particularly relevant in an election where turnout is everything and “convincing people” is kind of secondary.

A meta-analysis published in 2023 found that rainfall can suppress turnout by almost one percentage point per centimeter of rain, while more sunshine can increase it. Younger voters are far more susceptible to the vagaries of weather — six times as much as older voters, actually. That said, the impact of bad weather seems to be diminishing in recent years, in particular as mail-in voting and early voting have ramped up.

Anyway, it’s pretty nice out today, if you want to generalize across a 3,000-mile-wide country. There are some storms likely in the midwest, which could mean trouble in swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin, but otherwise… not bad! It is currently 73 degrees and sunny in Philadelphia, an impressive bit of November warmth. It will be about the same in Phoenix today, strangely enough. The latest hurricane is still inching its way through the southern Caribbean. Go vote.

Jacob Weindling (1 pm MST): Could be something, could be nothing, but, uh, DJT, Trump’s meme stock, crashed. Hard. So hard they had to pause trading on it. They do this when markets or stocks get too volatile and is basically a Wall Street version of putting a kid in time out to cool down. DJT has rebounded since they resumed trading, but it fell 17 percent in five minutes (talk about a shitcoin), and as of this writing, is up 9 percent since trading resumed, but still a little less than 9 percent down from where it began its descent to hell. You can see what that looked like here.

Dave Levitan (1:15 pm MST): The New York Times Tech Guild is on strike as of Monday. And apparently, that might mean the death of the Times’ election needle, since some of the 600 or so staffers in the Guild are the ones who make things like that work. So contrary to the many warnings out there, some victories do come early on election day.