Tens of hundreds of thousands of voters went to the polls in the USA on Tuesday, see-sawing between anxiousness and hope, to ship one of many closest and most consequential presidential elections hurtling in direction of an unsure end.
The Democrat Kamala Harris and her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, appeared locked in a knife-edge contest with hardly any daylight between the pair in nationwide opinion polls which have barely budged in weeks.
As the primary polls closed in Kentucky and Indiana on Tuesday night, exit polls urged considerations over the state of the financial system and the way forward for US democracy weighed closely on voters’ minds as they solid their ballots.
Based on the AP Votecast survey, 4 in 10 voters named the financial system and jobs as crucial downside going through the nation, a probably hopeful signal for Trump on condition that Republicans typically obtain increased marks on their dealing with of the financial system. However roughly half of voters cited the destiny of democracy, which has turn out to be a focus of Harris’ marketing campaign, as their largest concern this 12 months.
However election specialists typically warn towards overanalyzing the findings of the earliest exit polls. Voters will get their first clearer sense of the end result at 7pm ET, when Florida and Georgia begin reporting outcomes.
From coast to coast, in sprawling cities and small cities, in church buildings and faculty gyms, individuals waited patiently in line to play their half on the earth’s strongest democracy and select between two sharply totally different visions for America. They principally encountered a easy course of, with remoted studies of hiccups together with lengthy queues, technical points and poll printing errors.
Harris, 60, was amongst greater than 82 million individuals who voted early, having mailed her poll to California. From her vice-presidential residence in Washington DC, now secured by 8ft-high metallic fences, she carried out cellphone interviews with radio stations in battleground states. Harris then took half in a cellphone financial institution occasion on the Democratic Nationwide Committee headquarters.
Trump, 78, voted on Tuesday close to his Mar-a-Lago membership in Palm Seaside, Florida, and mentioned he was feeling “very assured”. Sporting a purple “Make America nice once more” cap, he advised reporters: “It appears to be like like Republicans have proven up in power.” The previous president mentioned he had not ready a speech concerning the final result, including: “I’m not a Democrat. I’m in a position to make a speech on very quick discover.”
Trump has been advised by some advisers that he ought to prematurely declare victory on election evening if he’s sufficiently forward of Harris in battleground states similar to Pennsylvania, in keeping with individuals near him. In the meantime the New York Instances reported that Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who has spent at the very least $119m in help of Trump, would watch the outcomes with him at Mar-a-Lago.
After billions of {dollars} in spending and months of frenetic campaigning in seven essential swing states – Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina – the candidates appeared deadlocked. Latest polling has been unable to discern a transparent sample or benefit for both Harris or Trump on this electoral battleground, although most specialists agree that whoever wins the Rust belt state of Pennsylvania is more likely to have a transparent benefit.
Robert Brady, the Democratic social gathering chair in Philadelphia, the most important metropolis in Pennsylvania, mentioned turnout at polling stations was “extraordinarily excessive” and that “is nice for us”. However elsewhere within the state Tiana Peters, a 39-year-old Democrat from Allentown, voted for Trump. “The final 4 years, nothing actually good occurred,” she mentioned. “Gifting away free cash to the individuals that may’t afford homes, financially that doesn’t work, you understand.”
It’s the swing states that may resolve the election as a result of, beneath the complicated American political system, the result’s determined not by the nationwide widespread vote however an electoral school during which every state’s variety of electors is weighed roughly by the dimensions of its inhabitants.
Every candidate wants 270 votes within the electoral school to clinch victory, and the battleground is fashioned of these states the place polls point out a state may go both approach. Democrats have received the favored vote in seven of the previous eight presidential elections however misplaced out to George W Bush and Trump within the electoral school.
The consequence might not be shortly identified. With polling so tight, full leads to the essential swing states are unlikely to be obtainable on Tuesday evening and should not even emerge on Wednesday, leaving the US on tenterhooks as to who might emerge as America’s subsequent president.
That may solely gasoline jitters in overseas capitals the place the election is being watched intently. Harris would most likely observe Joe Biden’s overseas coverage playbook, specializing in alliances and sustaining the defence of Ukraine, the place victory for Trump’s “America first” ethos would increase rightwing populists in Europe and elsewhere.
Tuesday’s election introduced the curtain down on a exceptional and historic election marketing campaign that deeply divided American society and upped the stress ranges of lots of its residents amid warnings of civil unrest, particularly in a state of affairs the place Harris wins and Trump contests the consequence.
Harris put collectively a whirlwind marketing campaign in simply over 100 days after 81-year-old Biden stepped apart. She is bidding to turn out to be the primary girl, first Black girl and first girl of south Asian descent to be elected president however, not like Hillary Clinton in 2008, she downplayed the historic nature of her candidacy.
She centred her marketing campaign on the autocratic menace that Trump represents. In her remaining huge signature occasion, Harris staged a rally of 75,000 supporters on the Ellipse in Washington – the spot the place Trump helped encourage his supporters to assault the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.
“On day one, if elected, Donald Trump would stroll into that workplace with an enemies record. When elected, I’ll stroll in with a to-do record filled with priorities on what I’ll get performed for the American individuals,” Harris advised the gang.
Harris’s marketing campaign has tried to characterize a web page turning on the Trump period and menace of his return to the White Home. She has acknowledged that calling Trump a fascist was a good reflection of his political opinions and the intentions of his motion, whereas insisting that she represents a selection that may serve all sides of America’s deeply fractured political panorama.
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The vice-president has additionally emphasised reproductive freedom within the first presidential election for the reason that supreme court docket, with three Trump appointees, ended the constitutional proper to abortion. Opinion polls counsel a report gender hole, with males backing Trump and girls supporting Harris.
Trump, in the meantime, can be the oldest president ever elected. He would even be the primary defeated president in 132 years to win one other time period within the White Home, and the primary particular person convicted of against the law to take over the Oval Workplace.
He ran a marketing campaign fuelled by a deep sense of grievance, each private, at his authorized travails, and the notion amongst lots of his supporters of an ailing America that’s beneath menace from the Democrats.
That sense of victimhood has been fueled by lies and conspiracy theories which have baselessly painted Biden and Harris as far-left figures who’ve wrecked the American financial system with excessive inflation and an obsession with id politics.
The previous president advised supporters “I’m your retribution” and threatened to prosecute political foes, journalists and others. He additionally urged turning the US army towards what he calls “the enemy from inside”.
Trump put immigration and border safety on the coronary heart of his marketing campaign pitch, portray an image of America as overrun with crime brought on by unlawful immigration with language that has typically veered into outright racism and fearmongering. He has referred to undocumented immigrants as “animals” with “unhealthy genes” who’re “poisoning the blood of our nation”.
Learn extra of the Guardian’s 2024 US election protection
Throughout the marketing campaign, Trump vowed to switch hundreds of federal staff with loyalists, impose sweeping tariffs on allies and foes alike and stage the most important deportation operation in US historical past.
The large divisions between the 2 campaigns and the language utilized by candidates – particularly Trump and his allies – have led to widespread fears of violence or unrest as voting day performs out and particularly because the rely goes on. Within the run-up to election day, poll drop packing containers used for early voting have been destroyed in a number of US states.
Jocelyn Benson, the Michigan secretary of state, advised the Washington Put up newspaper: “There’s the potential for small flare-ups all through our state and different states – little fires in all places. Collectively they may turn out to be a large firestorm that’s harder to include as a result of the embers have been burning all through the nation.”
On the similar time, nonetheless, it was Trump himself who was the topic of two assassination makes an attempt through the marketing campaign. At a rally in Pennsylvania, an murderer’s bullet grazed his ear and at a golf course in Florida, a gunman lay in look ahead to an ambush, solely to be foiled by an eagle-eyed Secret Service agent earlier than he may open hearth. Neither shooter appeared coherently politically motivated or definitively aligned with one aspect or one other.
Tuesday wouldn’t resolve the presidency alone. All 435 seats within the Home of Representatives have been up for grabs, together with 34 of the 100 seats within the Senate. 13 state and territorial governorships and quite a few different state and native elections have been additionally happening. Ten states together with Arizona, Colorado and Florida had abortion-related measures on the poll.
Extra reporting by Sam Levine in Allentown, Pennsylvania and Hugo Lowell in West Palm Seaside, Florida
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