Global News Podcast - US voters head to the polls in knife edge election

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

Will it be Donald Trump or Kamala Harris? Americans elect their new president. Also: workers at Boeing get back to work with a massive pay rise and it's a happy birthday for some of your smart speakers - Alexa turns ten.

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This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritzen and at 14 Hours GMT on Tuesday the 5th of November these are our main stories. After months of campaigns, mudslinging, political promises and a fair bit of name calling, US voters are heading to the polls to elect their new president. The question that people ask me is how is this election so close? How is a very unconventional candidate like Donald Trump able to do so well in American politics? And I think eight years after Trump's first victory the US media and the global media

really haven't done a good enough job of answering this question. Well we're going to try. Is Donald Trump or Kamala Harris heading to the White House? Also in this podcast workers at Boeing are heading back to the production line with a whopping great pay rise. Polish authorities say Moscow may be planning attacks on North America-bound aeroplanes and... Alexa, what's the weather like? The current weather is 76 degrees Fahrenheit with cloudy skies. Tonight you can expect some clouds with a chance of thunder showers. It's a special birthday for one virtual assistant some people can barely live without. It's being called the most consequential election

in recent US history. It's certainly expected to be one of the closest. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have ended their campaigns and now it's up to the voters to decide. There are 40 million American teenagers and young people who are eligible to vote, and they could play a decisive role in the outcome. But Gen Z seems to be as divided as the rest of the country.

I'd like inflation to come down. I'd like interest rates to come down. Every young man in America has a hardworking, a hardworking bone in their body. You just need to find it and I think Trump helps young individuals find that hard-working bone. How he has to diminish minorities and I am a minority hurts. Hearing him just spew these hates and seeing my little brother having to watch that is not a good representation of a man or a leader.

We're a border state, and so we see, you know, illegal immigrants coming and taking our jobs that we want, being treated better than we are, quite frankly. And so I think that's really sad. It's not just the economy anymore. This is my rights. This is women's rights, and it's disgusting that that's at stake. There should not be a place in time where my bodily autonomy is at stake.

Speaking to the BBC about the outcome of the election, an American lawyer and specialist in election law, Benjamin Ginsberg, said various factors could affect the timing of the results. Remember that the results that you get immediately following the election are projections by media organizations and campaigns. If there is a wide margin between the candidates,

then news organizations will feel comfortable making calls on who won. If the results are narrow, with 70% or so of the votes in, then it'll take some time. I spoke to our correspondent Anna Foster, who's in Philadelphia, and began by asking her about the turnout. Well, since the polls opened here and certainly at the church that I'm standing outside, it's a really beautiful building,

and it's a very low building among the Philadelphia skyscrapers. People were queuing here before it even opened this morning. They were queuing round the block, and that queue is only getting longer as I watch people filing. There's a real sense of anticipation. It's chilly here. You know, it's a definite November morning. People have been sort of

warming their hands on cups of hot coffee, queuing patiently waiting to go in. I've just sort of had a little look inside. The machines are ready, switched on, seem to be working fine. They've got all the instructions pasted up outside telling people how to vote. And I think people, they know, particularly in the state of Pennsylvania, the responsibility they have. This is the biggest of the swing states in terms of electoral college votes, 19 up for grabs. They have had so many visits from both candidates, their running mates, their families, key members of both parties. There have been advertising boards, there have been TV campaigns.

So much of it has focused here in Pennsylvania. And so now I think it's a moment where both campaigns will sit back and hope that that work pays off. And too close to call the result. It is and that will be interesting over the next couple of days because also Pennsylvania counts its advance ballots, its mail-in ballots, it doesn't start to process them until today whereas in other states it happens a little bit differently. So Pennsylvania tends not to be one of those early results,

tends to be one that takes a couple of days. And we saw the effect that that had last time round because questions started to be asked about why it was taking a long time, why it was slow, the veracity of the process. Whereas actually that is a perfectly normal thing. We have seen officials in the run-up today stress that. Remember this is how we work. Remember it could be a few days before you get a result in Pennsylvania. The polls that you talk about, particularly in this state, have got both candidates neck and neck. It is a true swing state. It was won by Joe Biden last time round and by Donald Trump in 2016, so it really could go either way. Tell us about

how the congressional vote might pan out and how important that could be. It is vital because whoever wins the presidency, their ambitions, let's say, will be tempered and controlled by Congress. The whole of the House of Representatives is up for election this time round and 34 seats in the Senate. The early suggestions are that in fact they could change hands, both could change hands, but again there's a lot of focus and effort going into that race as well because all of the promises that the candidates make on the campaign trail

and there have been some big promises on both sides. If Congress is against them, then they won't be able to get them through. So again, some of those key decisions, key races are happening including in the state of Pennsylvania as well and that will have a really big impact on what the president, the next president can actually do. Anna Foster standing outside a polling station and unfortunately next to a very large street cleaning machine on the early morning streets of Philadelphia. So as we record this podcast, polling stations have been open for a few hours already on the East Coast

and the Midwest and Pacific Coast are getting ready to receive voters. But how will it all work and crucially, what time will a winner be declared? Stephanie Prentice is following events in the United States. Nationally, they've now started opening from the East Coast at the States, that's starting with Vermont and next up we'll see New York and Virginia. Now each state has its own rules around things like opening times, how long people have to get their vote in, but we are used to seeing images of long lines of people queuing up. And it's not always a pleasant experience either. I mean, some states have rules actually ban giving food and water to people trapped as they wait to vote. That said, we've seen a really strong

turnout for early and postal voting in this election, so we should be able to expect that trajectory to continue when it comes to the actual ballot boxes. Now the first significant closing of polls, that will be in some parts of Indiana and Kentucky at 6pm Eastern Standard Time. Then 7pm Eastern, we'll see the first six states to close entirely. And that includes a big hitter. That's Georgia. Now Georgia is a battleground state and a swing state with 16 electoral votes up for grabs. And officials there, they've said the majority of votes could be counted by 8pm ET because of that early voting. So really one to watch when

it comes to early on. Now 7.30pm ET, that's when Ohio closes. Now that really is worth noting because it's regarded as a bellwether state. It's only been misaligned with the eventual winner of US election three times in total since 1896, though one of them was in 2020. After that, we'll see a steady closing of polls through the evening until Hawaii at 12am ET and then Alaska one hour later. And of course the big question, when might we see a result or an indicator of one? when might we see a result or an indicator of one? That really is the big question. Now each state runs its own count, runs its own rules and in fact we know some of those rules have changed since the last US election. So the

short answer really is we don't know. But what we can do is watch the early indicators from those battleground states we keep hearing about because really that's where this election is being fought. So anyone out there looking to make an educated guess? Keep an eye on Georgia which could have that quick count we heard about. Same with North Carolina, that could be an early. Officials in Michigan say they hope for results early Wednesday and that's the same with Wisconsin. But the fact this is such a tight race will also likely lead to recounts, especially in key states like Pennsylvania.

And of course we've got other factors like legal challenges. That means the result could take days, it could take weeks. We will of course get opinion polls, we'll get exit polls as the actual polls close, but given how tight the race is, they might be too close to give real consideration to. One thing we can probably bet on, this is much more likely to be like the counting we saw in 2020 that went on for days, rather than 2016 when we saw Hillary Clinton concede in the early hours as those results came in. Stephanie Brantus, and we will come back to the US election later in the podcast, but first some of the other big stories of the day.

$100 million a day. That was how much American aerospace giant Boeing was losing during seven weeks of strike action involving more than 30,000 of its West Coast factory workers. After two previous pay deals were rejected machinists have now voted to return to work, accepting a whopping 38% wage increase. The IAM Union's lead negotiator, John Holden, addressed members in Seattle after the result was announced. It's time for us to come together.

This is a victory. This is a victory. We can hold our heads high, we all stood strong, and we achieved something that we hadn't achieved for the last 22 years. I'm proud of this membership. You can be proud of yourselves as well. You stood strong and you stood tall and you won. After rejecting the two previous offers, what made workers accept this one?

A question for our international business correspondent Theo Leggert. Quite simply, they were offered a better deal. They were offered more pay. The workers went into this negotiation asking for a 40% pay increase. Boeing's final offer was for a 38% pay increase over four years. So they pretty much got what they wanted on that side of things. There was another significant bone of contention though, which was the restoration of defined benefit pension schemes, which were taken away from them about 10 years ago in a previous round of negotiation when Boeing was in a much stronger position. And that caused a deep and long lasting sense of resentment within the workforce, which has been a major factor in this strike. So they didn't get

that back. They did get improved terms in their retirement packages, improved retirement funding, But Boeing made it pretty clear it wasn't going to restore the full pensions. So I think workers and union leaders decided this was the best they could get. Let's not forget that Boeing has spent the last week raising a lot of money on the share markets and was perhaps in a stronger position than it had been in recent weeks. So this was pretty close to what unions have been asking for, not quite there, nonetheless a much better deal than they were

offered originally. But as you say Boeing has been losing a lot of money as a result of this strike but not just because of the strike it's got all the highly publicised problems with its aircraft in the air on occasion falling out of the sky. It's a company that's in trouble. Can it afford this? It can't really afford it. Certainly not long term. If you look at the strike in isolation, analysts suggest that in the first six weeks of it, Boeing and its suppliers between them lost about eight billion dollars and the overall economic losses attributable to the strike were about 10 billion. For Boeing, if you're not building planes,

you're not making money, you're burning through cash and that is not a good thing. Boeing also has other issues. As you say, the 737 MAX program has been beset by problems. There were those two catastrophic accidents five years ago in Ethiopia and off the coast of Indonesia. In the wake of those accidents, Boeing said that it had reformed its safety processes and then at the beginning of this year there was another incident in which a door fell off brand new 737 Max shortly after takeoff and that was simply because it hadn't been bolted on properly. So that's cast a very harsh spotlight on what Boeing's done over the past five years over its safety and its quality

control procedures. So at a time when Boeing was hoping to focus on sorting these problems out and getting planes running smoothly through the factories again, it's had to deal with an extremely damaging strike in the Pacific Northwest. So now it needs to reset labour relations, it needs to get those workers back on the side so it can deal with all its other problems. Theo Lagerd. The Polish authorities say incendiary packages placed on cargo flights in July were possible practice runs by Russia's military spy agency for attacks on planes bound for the US and Canada.

One package caught fire at a warehouse in England, another on the ground in Germany. Two more packages were found in Poland. I heard the details from our security correspondent, Frank Gardner. Back on in July the 22nd, there was a mysterious fire at a DHL cargo company warehouse, just on the suburbs of Birmingham, city in the Midlands in Britain.

And there was another one that happened at a warehouse in Leipzig in Germany. Then subsequently two more devices were detected in Poland, one of which was intercepted, one of which caught fire. I think probably so much news going on in the Middle East at the time that it didn't get a great deal of attention. But it's now thought by both Polish authorities, Polish prosecutors, and I think quite possibly US intelligence officials that this is part of a more widely coordinated campaign by Russian intelligence. It's denied by the Kremlin, but it would chime with what the Director General of Britain's MI5 domestic security

agency, the intelligence agency, so-called the security service, was saying a couple of weeks ago when he talked about the GRU, that's Russian military intelligence, being on a campaign of trying to cause mayhem on the streets of Britain and Europe through arson attacks and assassination attempts. What exactly was in these packages? Right, so they were containing reportedly magnesium, a compound of magnesium which self-ignites in this case that these devices they believe were timed to explode possibly in midair, which if that had happened,

it would have been very dangerous indeed. It would have almost certainly brought down a cargo plane because this stuff burns very brightly with a white light. They were disguised in some cases in packages containing vibrating massage pillows, one report even said erotic gadgets. The fire was quite small, the one in Birmingham. Well, the one in Leipzig destroyed in content, it's an entire container. The one in Birmingham was brought under control. But as I say, Russia denies involvement. Frank Gardner. Still to come in this podcast.

It's so sad, horrible, like you see people crying, people lost their homes, some people that lost family. The cleanup operation is underway in Spain, but for some the damage has been done. I'm Lucy Hockings from the Global Story podcast, where we're looking at the questions that remain in the US presidential election on polling day. In a race which is too close to call, will undecided voters across the country tip the balance for either Trump or Harris? And what is the path to victory for both candidates? We bring you unique perspectives from BBC journalists around the world. Find the global story wherever you get your BBC podcasts. We tend to think of space technology as using the most cutting-edge equipment.

So how about a satellite made entirely from wood? Built in Japan, it was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in an early test for using timber in lunar and Mars exploration. Ella Bicknell reports. Five, four, three went without a hitch. The world's first wooden satellite was launched into space on Tuesday, soaring its way towards the International Space Station. Developed by a team at Kyoto University, the palm-sized box named Lignosat was crafted

from a magnolia tree. It will spend six months in orbit 400 kilometres above the Earth, where temperatures fluctuate from minus 100 to 100 degrees Celsius, testing to see if wood could be a feasible space-grade material. Researchers say with no water or oxygen to rot or inflame it, wood is much more durable in space than it is on Earth. And when the mission is over, the decommissioned satellite will burn up on its re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere and with no screws or glue it will emit far fewer pollutants than ordinary metal satellites. Scientists hope it's the first step in a 50-year plan to build timber houses

on the moon and Mars. Ella Bicknell, now do you have a smart speaker? Alexa, what's the weather like? The current weather is 76 degrees Fahrenheit with cloudy skies. Tonight you can expect some clouds with a chance of thundershowers. Amazon's virtual assistant Alexa answering one of its most asked questions. Since it launched on Echo devices 10 years ago this week, users have called on Alexa to tell them the news, set timers and play songs on demand. But in an increasingly competitive digital market, Alexa has been criticised for its

lack of advanced features and has even been accused of spreading misinformation. So will it remain popular for another decade? Here's Chantal Hartle. Alexa's roots can be traced back to Poland, to a small company called Evona specialising in voice-activated technology. Amazon bought the firm and the software quickly helped it shape the voice of its own product. Alexa is also said to have been inspired by the computer voice on board the Starship Enterprise in the Star Trek sci-fi movies and TV series.

Earlier this year, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos announced that Alexa had made its way into 100 million homes and onto 400 million devices. Its aim was that the smart speaker would encourage users to shop more through the site instead of sales, the devices mostly used for setting alarms and adjusting lighting at home. And the Wall Street Journal says that miscalculation lost the business tens of billions of dollars between 2017 and 2021. As smart speaker owners can testify, their accuracy can also be hit and miss. Recently, the fact

checking group Full Fact accused Alexa of giving out false information. Claire Milne is an editor at Full Fact. We asked if whether the Northern Lights, which were recently seen worldwide, whether they were a natural occurrence. And the answer that the Alexa gave was that they were not a natural occurrence, but in fact generated by a research facility in Alaska. And that information is incorrect. Amazon says it's trying to fix these issues. And it's not just humans who've been interacting with Alexa. There are several stories of parrots

communicating with the device, including some that have used it as Amazon intended to place orders online. Here's the moment one woman in Illinois discovered the items her parrot, Bebe, had added to her online shopping list. Alexa, read my shopping list. Poetry.

Strawberries. Strawetry. Strawberries. Strawberries. Strawberries. Strawberry yoghurt. Easy water. Big tofu. Although Alexa has provided users and millions more online

with some entertaining moments, Amazon is struggling to compete with newer chat models introduced by Google and OpenAI. It's announced that it will update Alexa to make it more conversational and intuitive. Chantal Hartwell. The Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has announced an $11 billion aid package for the areas worst hit by devastating flash floods a week ago. Those affected will be able to claim tens of thousands of dollars to help pay for repairs and replace lost belongings.

Mr Sansher said the government was also doubling the number of troops and police officers deployed to help. Meanwhile, the clean-up continues in the Valencia region, where dozens of people remain missing and at least 217 people are now known to have died. Our Europe correspondent Bethany Bell has been to watch the operation. I'm in a park near the Turia River in Valencia in front of an ever-growing mound of debris. Bulldozers and pick-up trucks are bringing the contents of people's homes. Mud-stained mattresses, fridges, ovens, all destroyed, ruined in the mud and water. There was water in houses, people don't have where to stay.

Close by I met Kautar, a student, covered in mud. She's one of thousands of volunteers helping to clean up people's homes. She told me it's difficult work. It's so sad, horrible, like you see people crying, people lost their homes, some people that lost family. They need some help because it's not normal to wake up and find that your neighbours are dead. Thousands of soldiers, police and emergency workers are here,

as part of what Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has called the biggest peacetime deployment in his country's history. Jorge is from the Spanish Marines. The catastrophe is big. What are you doing? All the cleaner, cleaner, cleaner, cleaner. Businesses have been hit hard too. Basmotor, a small company which sells cleaning products online,

has its warehouse in Picanha, one of the worst affected areas close to Valencia. Its press officer Diego Navarro Rodriguez says they've lost almost all their stock. First we need to get the mud out of the warehouse. From there see how we can recover and how the central Spanish government and aid agencies are responding. At the moment, nothing much is getting through. It will take weeks, if not months, before the extent of the damage is clear. Diego, another volunteer, says he's been helping in Paiporta, where dozens of people died. People that live there are very grateful that we go help them. They need our help, so they

are very grateful. In fact, we had one woman and she was crying and very helpful, telling us that we did a very great job. Diego, a volunteer, ending that report by Bethany Bell. We end the podcast where we began with the start of what could be one of the most momentous elections in recent US history. Voters face a choice between a new chapter, electing the country's first woman president and first commander-in-chief of Indian stroke Jamaican heritage, or turning the page back for a second bite of Donald Trump's promise to make America great again. Lauren

Freyer is one of millions of Americans watching from abroad as their country goes to the polls. She's also the American public broadcaster NPR's correspondent in London. She's been giving me her personal perspective on the election and what it means for her and her country. I'm an American who's lived abroad for nearly 20 years, just a year and a half or so in the UK. But I think the question that people ask me is, how is this election so close?

How is a very unconventional candidate like Donald Trump able to do so well in American politics? And I think eight years after Trump's first victory, the US media and the global media really haven't done a good enough job of answering this question, exploring the conditions that made the US sort of ripe for a candidate like Trump, the socioeconomic conditions that gave birth to his candidacy. And I think being in the UK, like you think this country has a rigid class system. Like the US actually has more economic inequality and less social mobility than any other time

since World War II. And so in a lot of ways, the American dream is broken and it's sort of given rise to a very unconventional, to say the least, candidate like Trump. So, I mean, I also think just as an American looking at this, this election from abroad, it's so consequential, possibly the most consequential, you know, for Americans, reproductive rights, the possibility of mass deportations that Donald Trump has promised if he is reelected, things like climate policy.

And I look at foreign policy, cause that's sort of I've been abroad, I've been an international correspondent and the idea of what will happen in Ukraine. Trump says he will end the war on day two of his presidency, probably on terms favorable to Vladimir Putin. His vice presidential partner, JD Vance, is very skeptical of the US funding any support for Ukraine. I think also about the Middle East and the devastation in Gaza and Trump's son-in-law has a desire to redevelop the Gaza warfront as a real estate project.

I worry about the future of multilateralism and the rule of law and erosion of international institutions and international law under a Trump administration. What's your abiding memory, your striking personal image of this election campaign, the thing that's going to sum it up for you, that's going to stay with you for the rest of your life? All elections were boring in comparison before this. I think the two moments that stick out for me were the assassination attempt on Donald Trump and him being sort of hurried off the stage and raising his fist and the blood on the side of his face.

So that became a very iconic image for a lot of his supporters. And I think then also the moment when President Biden stepped aside and Kamala Harris stepped up and sort of invigorated the Democratic side and really made this a race that was so close when it looked like the Democrats were trailing. And I think the historic aspects of her campaign, I mean, that she would be the first female president, first black woman, first woman of South Asian descent, and how fast her campaign was forced to get up to speed and run this campaign. I think both of those things are really historic for me.

Lauren Freyer from NPR with her personal take on the choice facing her American compatriots. America's choice obviously matters to the wider world, so we thought it made sense to hear how people around the world are viewing the US election. In a moment we'll be hearing from the most populous country in Africa and then from the world's biggest Muslim nation. But we begin on the migrant trail in Central America, source of one of the touchstone issues in the election, immigration. My name is Renato Lacayo and I'm talking to you from the streets of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. As we wait and see how the American people vote on these bitterly contested elections,

many Honduran families are deeply worried and concerned that if Donald Trump is elected president, he would make good on his promise, vowing to massively deport undocumented immigrants back from the US. The Honduran economy and many of its families heavily rely on remittances sent from the US. These remittances make up almost 30% of the country's gross domestic product. Failing to receive these remittances would only send an already dwindling economy into a bottomless downward spiral. Now from an

African view on these elections, here's Nkechi Ogbana in Nigeria. Here in Lagos, Nigeria's commercial nerve center, there are mixed feelings about the US elections. Some people are keen to know what Kamala Harris would do about migration and visa applications for many Africans, especially some of whom want to US elections. Some people are keen to know what Kamala Harris would do about migration and visa applications for many Africans, especially some of whom want to relocate to the US for

greener opportunities. However, her campaign agenda, which supports LGBTQ rights and abortion, are of concern to some religious and moral groups in the region, especially in countries where these acts are illegal. On the other hand, some citizens are drawn to Donald Trump based on his stance on the war in the Middle East. Others also believe he may have the willpower to mediate and end the Russia-Ukraine war. But some remain weary of his immigration policies during his presidency, which saw a migration ban on some countries including Nigeria with a huge impact on remittances from West Africa to Southeast Asia.

Here in Indonesia the ongoing US election could significantly influence the climate trajectory of the world's biggest Muslim population. As Southeast Asia's largest economy, Indonesia has set ambitious targets to address climate change and relies on international support under the Paris Agreement to cut emissions by over 40 percent by 2030. Environmental activists suggest that if Kamala Harris wins, she'd likely prioritize international climate cooperation, maintaining initiatives like the $20 billion Just Energy Transition Partnership, supporting Indonesia's green initiatives.

A Republican administration, however, might roll back this commitment, affecting Indonesia's access to climate financing and slowing its renewable energy transition. This is Astudestra Ajangrastri in Jakarta. And for a full round up ahead of US election night including the essential swing states, the importance of undecided voters and when we might expect a result why not check out another podcast from BBC World Service The Global Story. At the top of their feed you'll find a brand new episode titled, Election Day, Everything You Need To Know. Just search for The Global Story wherever you listen to us. And that's all from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of The Global News podcast later.

If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Martin Williams and the producer was David Lewis. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritzen. Until next time, goodbye. that remain in the US presidential election on polling day. In a race which is too close to call, will undecided voters across the country tip the balance for either Trump or Harris?

And what is the path to victory for both candidates? We bring you unique perspectives from BBC journalists around the world. Find the global story wherever you get your BBC podcasts.