Americans vote in cliffhanger
The dizzying race between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris for the 47th President of the US hurtled toward an uncertain finish on Tuesday as millions of Americans headed to the polls to choose between two sharply different visions for the country.
How electoral college works
- Americans don’t vote directly for president, they vote for presidential electors in their state. Electors from all states together form a 538-member electoral college that picks president for four years
- Each state has certain number of electors based on representation in House or Senate. Candidate winning more popular votes in a state takes all electoral college votes there. The winner must get 270 votes
A race churned by unprecedented events — two assassination attempts against Trump, President Joe Biden’s surprise withdrawal and Harris’ rapid rise — remained neck and neck as the election day dawned, even after billions of dollars in spending and months of frenetic campaigning.
The first ballots cast on Tuesday mirrored the nationwide divide. Overnight, the six registered voters in the tiny hamlet of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, split their votes between Harris and Trump in voting just past midnight.
Across the East Coast and Midwest, Americans began arriving at polls Tuesday morning to cast their votes.
In Raleigh, North Carolina, Taylor Grabow, a 27-year-old nurse, said she voted for Harris after previously voting for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020, favouring Harris’ opposition to criminalising abortions. “I woke up in such a good mood and feeling excited,” she said. In Asheville, North Carolina, Ginny Buddenberg, a 38-year-old stay-at-home mother, brought her two twin daughters with her to vote in Haw Creek. She voted for Trump. “There’s just a lot of politics in the classroom, and I feel like there’s too much of a push about politics and introducing different kinds of sexual education at a younger and younger age,” she said. “Let’s go to school and learn how to read.”
Trump’s campaign has suggested he may declare victory on election night even while millions of ballots have yet to be counted, as he did four years ago. The former President has repeatedly said any defeat could only stem from widespread fraud, echoing his false claims from 2020. The winner may not be known for days if the margins in battleground states are as slim as expected.
No matter who wins, history will be made. Harris, 60, the first female Vice-President, will become the first woman, black woman and South Asian American to win the presidency. Trump, 78, the only President to be impeached twice and the first former President to be criminally convicted, will also become the first to win non-consecutive terms in more than a century.
Opinion polls show the candidates running neck and neck in each of the seven states likely to determine the winner: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
One of the polls shows Harris leading among women by 12 percentage points and Trump winning among men by seven percentage points.
The contest reflects a deeply polarised nation whose divisions have only grown starker during a fiercely competitive race. Trump has employed increasingly dark and apocalyptic rhetoric on the campaign trail. Harris has urged Americans to come together, warning that a second Trump term would threaten the underpinnings of American democracy.
