Thousands and thousands of Individuals have lined up at polling stations throughout the US to decide on between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris in a historic presidential race that is still too near name.
Voting was underneath approach on Tuesday with no main disruptions, as each candidates spent Election Day urging their supporters to solid their ballots, stressing that the stakes couldn’t be larger.
“Today we vote for a brighter future,” Harris wrote in a submit on X, linking to a nationwide listing of polling websites.
At the moment, we vote for a brighter future.
Polling areas throughout the nation are open. Discover yours at https://t.co/VbrfuqVy9P. pic.twitter.com/7pJzch0XJR
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) November 5, 2024
Harris spent a part of the day calling radio stations in an effort to encourage her supporters to vote. “We’ve got to get it done. Today is voting day, and people need to get out and be active,” CNN quoted Harris as telling one radio station in Georgia.
Trump, on his X account, informed voters: “I need you to deliver your vote no matter how long it takes”, slamming his opponents as “radical communist Democrats”.
He addressed the media after casting his poll in Palm Seaside, Florida, saying he felt “very confident” about his election odds.
“It looks like Republicans have shown up in force,” Trump stated. “We’ll see how it turns out.”
He added: “I hear we’re doing very well.”
A race churned by unprecedented occasions – two assassination makes an attempt in opposition to Trump, President Joe Biden’s shock withdrawal and Harris’s speedy rise – remained neck and neck, even after billions of {dollars} in spending and months of frenetic campaigning.
Greater than 80 million Individuals had already taken benefit of early voting choices earlier than Tuesday, both by way of mail or in particular person, and features at a number of polling stations on Tuesday have been quick and orderly.
Some glitches of vote-counting know-how have been reported in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, and an area courtroom granted a request by election officers to increase voting hours by two hours on Tuesday night time.
A number of states have taken further safety measures to guard voting locations.
In Georgia, election employees have been geared up with panic buttons to alert officers to doable safety threats and violence.
In Maricopa County, Arizona, the heated scene of voter fraud allegations within the 2020 election, the voter tabulation centre now seems to be like a fortress behind fencing, concrete limitations and safety cameras and with drones and police snipers.
However there have been few incidents reported on Tuesday. Two polling areas in Fulton County, Georgia have been briefly evacuated after false bomb threats.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) stated it was “aware of bomb threats to polling locations in several states”.
Many seem to originate from “Russian email domains”, it stated in a submit on X, including that not one of the threats have been decided to be credible.
Stephanie Jackson Ali, coverage director on the New Georgia Undertaking, informed Al Jazeera that threats made in opposition to polling locations in Georgia usually are not a hazard.
“The [Georgia] secretary of state’s office believes that they are from a Russian influencing troll farm, basically, so not anything that’s credible or local”, she stated.
These threats have been in opposition to polling locations in closely Black-populated areas, she stated, together with Democratic-voting Fulton County, the place Atlanta is situated.
“This signifies that the power of the Black vote in Georgia is substantial, the power of the rising electorate is substantial.”
The “rising electorate” she stated, consists of Black voters, new voters, LGBTQ voters and Latino voters, who dwell in Atlanta in larger percentages than they do in the remainder of the largely conservative rural areas of the state.
‘The American dream’
In Dearborn, Michigan, Nakita Hogue, 50, was joined by her 18-year-old school scholar daughter, Niemah Hogue, to vote for Harris. Niemah stated she takes contraception to assist regulate her interval, whereas her mom recalled needing surgical procedure after she had a miscarriage in her 20s, and each feared efforts by Republican lawmakers to limit ladies’s healthcare.
“For my daughter, who is going out into the world and making her own way, I want her to have that choice,” Nakita Hogue stated. “She should be able to make her own decisions.”
At a library in Phoenix, Arizona, Felicia Navajo, 34, and her husband Jesse Miranda, 52, arrived with considered one of their three younger kids to vote for Trump.
Miranda, a union plumber, immigrated to the US from Mexico when he was 4 years previous, and stated he believed Trump would do a greater job of combating inflation and controlling immigration.
“I want to see good people come to this town, people that are willing to work, people who are willing to just live the American dream,” Miranda stated.
Trump’s marketing campaign has steered he might declare victory on election night time even whereas hundreds of thousands of ballots have but to be counted, as he did 4 years in the past.
The previous president has repeatedly stated any defeat may solely stem from widespread fraud, echoing his false claims from 2020. The winner is probably not recognized for days if the margins in battleground states are as slim as anticipated.
Irrespective of who wins, historical past shall be made.
Harris, 60, the primary feminine vp, would turn out to be the primary girl, Black girl and South Asian American to win the presidency. Trump, 78, the one president to be impeached twice and the primary former president to be criminally convicted, would additionally turn out to be the primary president to win non-consecutive phrases in additional than a century.
Opinion polls present the candidates working neck and neck in every of the seven swing states prone to decide the winner: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Reuters/Ipsos polling reveals Harris main amongst ladies by 12 share factors and Trump successful amongst males by seven share factors.
