When might we get a winner?
The size of the country and the tightness of the race make it hard to predict when a winner could be declared.
Election Day in the United States is now often considered election week as each state follows its own rules and practices for counting ballots.
In 2020, AP declared President Joe Biden the winner on Saturday afternoon – four days after polls closed. But four years earlier, the 2016 election was decided just hours after most polls closed.
It is possible that only three states will decide the election: Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia. The winner could thus be determined when polls close in the eastern time zone – by 2am Paris time (GMT+1).
Winning all three would put Trump on course for the White House. Should Harris lose Pennsylvania, she must win either Georgia or North Carolina as well as Michigan and Wisconsin and either Arizona or Nevada.
False claims and threat of Russian disinformation
Russia-linked disinformation operations have falsely claimed officials in battleground states plan to fraudulently sway the outcome of the extraordinarily close US presidential election, authorities warned hours before Election Day.
“Russia is the most active threat,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said Monday.
“These efforts risk inciting violence, including against election officials,” they added, noting the efforts are expected to intensify through Election Day and in the following weeks.
Donald Trump has been aggressively promoting baseless claims in recent days questioning the integrity of the election. He falsely insists that he can lose only if Democrats cheat.
Trump could again claim victory on election night regardless of the results, just as he did in 2020.
Below, our Truth or Fake programme dissects a viral video falsely claiming to show Haitian immigrants committing voter fraud in support of Kamala Harris.
- It’s Election Day in the US, with Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump vying to become the next US president in what polls suggest is a historically close race.
- Polling stations open in some states at 5am EST (10:00 GMT), while more than 82 million people have already cast early ballots.
- All eyes are on seven battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – that are likely to determine the winner.
- Either result on Election Day will yield a historic outcome, with Harris bidding to become the first woman president and Trump hoping to secure the first comeback win in more than a century.
Control of Congress may come down to a handful of House races in New York
New Yorkers could play an outsized role in determining control of the US House, AP reports, with Republicans clinging to suburban seats they won two years ago by seizing on fears of crime – and Democrats trying to claw them back by warning that a right-wing Congress might ban abortion.
On Long Island, Republican Anthony D’Esposito is in a tough rematch with Democrat Laura Gillen, a former town supervisor he defeated in 2022, but who might do better with Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket.
In central New York, the GOP’s Brandon Williams is trying to hold off a challenge from Democratic state Senator John Mannion in a district that has been redrawn to exclude some rural areas where he had garnered support two years ago.
In a trio of districts that include parts of the Hudson Valley, three incumbents — two freshman Republicans and a Democrat — are trying to hold on to seats they won by thin margins in the last election.
Thai baby hippo Moo Deng ‘predicts’ US election win for Trump
A staple of social media memes, Thailand’s superstar baby hippo Moo Deng has predicted a comeback victory for the Republican over Harris.
Offered two dishes of carved fruit, each emblazoned with one of the candidates’ names, the four-month-old pigmy hippo chose Trump, in video posted online by the zoo.
Moo Deng has proved a particular hit in the United States, where comedian Bowen Yang portrayed her in a “Saturday Night Live” comedy sketch.
She also beat both Trump and Harris in an unofficial presidential poll run by “The Tonight Show”, taking 93 percent of the vote.
Tens of millions of ballots already cast
While the vast majority of polling stations are yet to open across the US, tens of millions of Americans have already cast their ballots, including record numbers in Georgia, North Carolina and other battleground states that could decide the winner.
The early turnout in Georgia, which has flipped between the Republican and Democratic nominees in the previous two presidential elections, has been so robust — over 4 million voters — that a top official in the secretary of state’s office said the big day could look like a “ghost town” at the polls.
As of Monday, Associated Press tracking of advance voting nationwide showed roughly 82 million ballots already cast — slightly more than half the total number of votes in the presidential election four years earlier.
That’s driven partly by Republican voters, who were casting early ballots at a higher rate than in recent previous elections after a campaign by former President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee to counter the Democrats’ longstanding advantage in the early vote.
New Hampshire hamlet tied in first US Election day votes
Voters in the US hamlet of Dixville Notch launched Election Day in the first minutes of Tuesday with a tied vote, mirroring the incredibly close national polls.
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump each got three ballots in the tiny community in the northeastern state of New Hampshire, which for decades has kicked off Election Day at the stroke of midnight Monday – hours before the rest of the country’s polling stations open.
To a gathered crowd of journalists, the vote opened with a rendition of the US national anthem performed on an accordion.
Dixville Notch’s residents voted unanimously for then candidate Joe Biden in 2020, reportedly only the second presidential hopeful to get all the votes since the midnight voting tradition began in 1960.
Trump and Harris on the key issues, domestic and international
Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris are offering US voters a vastly different future for the next four years.
While one seeks isolationism and would willingly cede the US role in international leadership in favour of a unilateral “America first” approach, the other sees stability in a global order based on partnerships and diplomacy with America, as ever, at the helm.
On the domestic front, Trump is expected to emphasise tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation for businesses, including environmental deregulation, as well as take a hard line on immigration.
A Harris presidency would likely seek to help the middle class as part of her plans for an “opportunity economy”, ensure healthcare access and take action on the environment as well as encourage social equity.
Harris and Trump set sights on Pennsylvania in final push for votes
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump closed out the presidential race with a fierce battle for Pennsylvania on Monday, making their final pitch to voters across a state that could prove decisive in the campaign for the White House.
Harris ended her night in Philadelphia at the art museum steps made famous in the movie “Rocky,” where she said “the momentum is on our side.”
She also rallied with supporters in Allentown, Scranton and Pittsburgh, and she swung through Reading to visit a Puerto Rican restaurant and do a little canvassing herself, knocking on doors alongside campaign volunteers.
Trump started the day in North Carolina and finished it in Michigan, but he spoke in Reading and Pittsburgh in between – at each stop blending false claims about voter fraud with warnings about migrants committing crimes and promises to revitalize the United States.
“With your vote tomorrow, we can fix every single problem our country faces and lead America, and indeed the whole world, to new heights of glory,” he said.
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of US Election Day
In a matter of hours, the final votes in the 2024 presidential election will be cast.
In a deeply divided nation, the contest between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump has been billed as one of the tightest in decades, with just seven battleground states set to decide the outcome – barring a huge surprise.
Major questions persist about the timing of the results, the influx of misinformation, and even the possibility of political violence, with both sides prepared for a protracted legal battle that could complicate things further.
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