When the polls close on this doozy of a day, it’ll mark two things: 1) No more texts begging you to save democracy for $5 (for now) and 2) the most expensive election season in American history is finally ending.

A projected $15.9 billion has been dumped into the presidential and congressional campaigns on the ballot today, according to the nonpartisan nonprofit OpenSecrets.

• By comparison, the 2020 campaigns raised $15.1 billion, and the 2016 ones $6.5 billion (not inflation-adjusted).
• More than 11,000 PACs and other political groups helped fund this election’s record spend. Nearly two-thirds of the donations came from just 100 groups that got boatloads of money from billionaires.
• Over 400 Americans donated at least $1 million, up from 23 people for the 2004 election.

This year, high-earners swayed both ways, but more veered left: Forbes counted 83 billionaires backing Vice President Kamala Harris and 52 in former President Donald Trump’s corner.

Between their campaign committees and the PACs that supported their election efforts:

• Harris raised $1.6 billion with help from deep-pocketed donors like Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, Laurene Powell Jobs, Reed Hastings, and Dustin Moskovitz (a Facebook co-founder).
• Trump raised $1.1 billion, with one-fifth of the pile coming from Elon Musk and Timothy Mellon—a banking heir who was this election’s largest individual donor. The former president also got $100+ million from Miriam Adelson, the majority owner of Las Vegas Sands Corp.

For perspective, campaigns for Canada’s last federal election in 2021 cost just $69 million (inflation-adjusted). Similarly, elections in the UK and Germany are 1/40th the price of US races per person, according to the Wall Street Journal. Eight in 10 Americans think money has too much influence on US elections, per Pew Research.

Election night resources

You can watch the big show on C-Span or any major network. Harris’s campaign expects “near-complete” tallies of Georgia, North Carolina, and Michigan tonight, with full pictures from Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada potentially taking a few days to emerge.—ML

Boeing machinists accept an offer, will return to work. Fifty-nine percent of the rank-and-file members of the International Association of Machinists at Boeing’s West Coast factories voted yes to the struggling plane company’s third contract offer, which will provide them with a 43% pay increase over the next four years. They will also get a ratification bonus of $12,000, but they won’t get the traditional pension plan they fought for. However, union leaders had urged the membership to vote yes on the offer and “lock in these gains and work to build more in future negotiations.” The Anderson Economic Group estimated that the workers lost $600 million in wages while striking, and Boeing lost $6.5 billion through the end of last week. The biggest loser was the US economy, which shed $11.5 billion due to the strike. The union members will return to work tomorrow.

🪧 About 600 members of the New York Times Tech Guild went on strike. Tech workers at the New York Times walked off the job yesterday, endangering the outlet’s ability to send push notifications and keep apps and websites running as scores of viewers press “refresh” every five minutes today. The employees are protesting stalled contract negotiations and alleged unfair labor practices, according to Axios. The NYT said it had a plan in place to ensure consistent Election Day coverage. The Tech Guild appealed to NYT readers to stop playing games and accessing the newspaper’s popular Cooking app to avoid crossing the “digital picket line.”

Exploding packages bound for North America traced back to Russia. In July, two “incendiary devices” caught fire at DHL facilities in Leipzig, Germany, and Birmingham, UK, respectively. European investigators just revealed that the packages contained electric massagers “implanted with a magnesium-based flammable substance,” according to the Wall Street Journal, which were sent from Lithuania. Officials say the packages were sent by a proxy for Russian spies and that they were part of a broader plot to test whether dangerous packages could infiltrate the US and Canada. When asked for comment by the Wall Street Journal, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called the story “traditional unsubstantiated insinuations from the media.”—HVL

Those who wagered their life savings on the presidential race aren’t the only ones whose financial future hinges on today’s results: The green energy industry, in particular, has a lot riding on whether Trump prevails at the ballot box.

While investors believe a second Trump presidency could boost industrial manufacturers, fossil fuel companies, and banks, many analysts think it could herald tough times for renewables.

Less government green

Trump has pledged to rescind unspent cash from the nearly $400 billion in clean energy funding in President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), in contrast to Kamala Harris, who is expected to continue blowing wind in the sails of the green tech boom if elected. Axing the IRA would result in a 17% drop in renewables going online between 2025 and 2035, according to a Bloomberg NEF estimate.

The stakes are highest for offshore wind projects (which Trump promised to end “on day one”) since they depend on federal permitting and subsidies.

Looking ahead: Politics wonks note that Trump might tighten eligibility guidelines for EV tax rebates and other IRA subsidies, but deep cuts could be challenging to make since much of the clean energy manufacturing investments the IRA is funding are concentrated in red states.—SK

You’ve already heard the professional pollsters’ forecasts for the election (it’s a toss-up), but have you considered what a random Ohio bakery’s cookie sales might have to say about our next POTUS? Here’s a look at some under-the-radar election predictors that have had some success in the past.

Bake sales: Sometimes a cookie isn’t a cookie at all—it’s a poll. Lochel’s Bakery in Hatboro, PA, and Busken Bakery in Cincinnati, OH, have been selling Trump and Harris cookies. Busken began the unconventional poll of conventionally baked sweets in 1984, and Lochel’s started in 2008. Both bakeries have been accurate for every presidential election except for 2020. As of last week, both bakeries sold more Trump than Harris cookies.

Kids pick: Every election, Nickelodeon hosts a “Kids Pick the President” poll, which has correctly predicted the winner in all but two elections since 1988. This year, the kids picked Harris to win.

Markets decide: Apparently, the invisible hand works for elections, too. The state of the S&P 500 in the three months prior to an election can indicate whether the incumbent party will stay or go. If the index is up, the incumbent will stay, and if it posts losses, then the incumbent will lose—this has been the case for 20 of the last 24 elections. The S&P three-month return is up.—CC

This year, 38.1 million TVs that were at least 97 inches wide were sold between January and September, according to Circana. That’s an order of magnitude (10x) more than the amount of TVs of that size that were sold during the same period in 2023. The research firm also maybe found the reason why: The average cost of a TV that size was $3,113, compared to $6,662 in 2023. As consumer technology improves, it tends also to get cheaper. When Samsung introduced its first 98-inch TV in 2019, it cost $99,000. Now, it has four versions that start at $4,000. A large TV enthusiast explained the devices’ appeal to the Associated Press, saying, “You’re sitting watching TV with a person on TV that is the same size as you. You can put yourself in the scene.”—HVL