NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-05-2024 6PM EST

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

NPR News: 11-05-2024 6PM ESTLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Enjoying the podcast so far? Get more from shows like this one with NPR+. For a simple recurring donation, you'll get perks from over 20 NPR podcasts, including sponsor-free listening, bonus episodes, early access, shop discounts, and more. Join us in making the world a more curious and well-informed place at plus. npr dot org. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear. The first polls are starting to close at this hour in a 2024 election that not only features the presidential contest between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris, but will also determine the balance of power in Congress. NPR's congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh joins me now.

Deirdre, all 435 House of Representatives seats are in play here, but which ones matter the most to the all-important question of whether the GOP will hang on to its majority or not? Deirdre Walsh, NPR's Congressional Correspondent It's really just a small percentage of the total number. About a couple of dozen House races are really the swing races to determine who will get the majority. Democrats would need to pick up a total of four seats to retake the majority. Unlike the presidential contest, which is really concentrated in a group of swing purple states,

the contest for control of the House really comes down to a couple of blue states, New York and California. There's clusters of competitive races that will be keeping an eye on there. Marc Thiessen So let's take a look at the Senate side. Democrats are hoping to hang on to their razor-thin majority there. What are the races to keep an eye on there? Danielle Pletka Right. Democrats have just a 51-49 majority. They're facing a tough map. Right off the bat, they are expected to lose a Senate race in West Virginia with the retirement of Senator

Joe Manchin. In Montana there is a tough reelection bid underway for Democratic Senator John Tester. It's a highly solidly red state and he'll need voters there to ticket split to earn another term. Other races in competitive swing states we're watching are Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Those could be tied to the contest at the top of the ticket. Another key race in the control of the Senate is in Ohio. That race is a dead heat.

Okay, quickly, anything else you should be looking at? I think we want to look at early returns in Virginia. There are a couple of key races to contests in Virginia, which we could tell us how the night's going to go. Both are going to be tight. MPR's Deidre Walsh, thank you, Deidre. A lot of ice tonight will also be on the seven so-called swing states.

They include the Blue Wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Republican Donald Trump is pinning some of his hopes on voters there, especially Pennsylvania, with its 19 electoral votes. Those three states also have relatively large concentrations of white voters without college degrees. The other states we'll be clipping an eye on tonight are North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada,

and Arizona. Both candidates need some combination of those states to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to win this race. US financial markets rallied today's voters headed to the polls on the last day of the 2024 presidential election. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 427 points to 42,221 points. The Nasdaq was up 259 points. This is NPR. South Korea's Privacy Watchdog Group says it's finding Facebook parent company Metta $21.6 billion, containing the company illegally collected Facebook user-sensitive personal

information, including data about their political views and sexual orientation, and then shared it with advertisers. It was elaced in a series of penalties against the company by South Korean authorities. South Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission concluded that it unlawfully collected information from around 980,000 Facebook users. Staff at a hospital in North Gaza say Israeli tank shelling and gunfire struck the building and wounded several children inside. Israel's military has declined specific comment on the attack, and Piers Ibetraoui has more. That's the sound of staff rushing bandaged and wounded children

down the stairs of the Kamel Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahya, an area the Israeli military wants people to leave. The hospital's director, Dr. Hossam Abu Sufiyah, says the shelling lasted several hours and targeted the upper floor, water tanks and electricity units. In a video posted online, he says a 13-year-old girl in the hospital was critically injured by shrapnel to her abdomen just after she'd undergone surgery for injuries from another

Israeli attack. Israel has laid siege on northern Gaza for the past month, saying its operation is aimed at Hamas militants trying to regroup. It raided this hospital only days ago. Ayah Batraoui, NPR News. Critical futures prices moved higher today, likely due to possible disruption to output from an expected storm in the Gulf of Mexico, oil up 52 cents a barrel to $71.99 a barrel in New York.

I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington.