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 below method on Tuesday with no main disruptions, as each candidates spent Election Day urging their supporters to forged their ballots, stressing that the stakes couldn’t be increased.
“In the present day we vote for a brighter future,” Harris wrote in a publish on X, linking to a nationwide listing of polling websites.
In the present day, we vote for a brighter future.
Polling places 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 obtained to get it finished. In the present day is voting day, and other people have to get out and be energetic,” CNN quoted Harris as telling one radio station in Georgia.
Trump, on his X account, advised voters: “I would like you to ship your vote irrespective of how lengthy 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 assured” about his election odds.
“It appears like Republicans have proven up in power,” Trump stated. “We’ll see the way it seems.”
He added: “I hear we’re doing very nicely.”
A race churned by unprecedented occasions – two assassination makes an attempt towards Trump, President Joe Biden’s shock withdrawal and Harris’s fast 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 contours at a number of polling stations on Tuesday had been quick and orderly.
Some glitches of vote-counting expertise had 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 additional safety measures to guard voting locations.
In Georgia, election staff have been geared up with panic buttons to alert officers to attainable safety threats and violence.
In Maricopa County, Arizona, the heated scene of voter fraud allegations within the 2020 election, the voter tabulation centre now appears like a fortress behind fencing, concrete boundaries and safety cameras and with drones and police snipers.
However there have been few incidents reported on Tuesday. Two polling places in Fulton County, Georgia had been briefly evacuated after false bomb threats.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) stated it was “conscious of bomb threats to polling places in a number of states”.
Many seem to originate from “Russian e-mail domains”, it stated in a publish on X, including that not one of the threats have been decided to be credible.
Stephanie Jackson Ali, coverage director on the New Georgia Venture, advised Al Jazeera that threats made towards polling locations in Georgia are usually not a hazard.
“The [Georgia] secretary of state’s workplace believes that they’re from a Russian influencing troll farm, principally, so not something that’s credible or native”, she stated.
These threats had been towards polling locations in closely Black-populated areas, she stated, together with Democratic-voting Fulton County, the place Atlanta is situated.
“This signifies that the ability of the Black vote in Georgia is substantial, the ability of the rising voters is substantial.”
The “rising voters” she stated, contains Black voters, new voters, LGBTQ voters and Latino voters, who reside in Atlanta in increased 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’s going out into the world and making her personal method, I would like her to have that selection,” Nakita Hogue stated. “She ought to have the ability to make her personal choices.”
At a library in Phoenix, Arizona, Felicia Navajo, 34, and her husband Jesse Miranda, 52, arrived with one in every of their three younger youngsters 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 need to see good folks come to this city, folks which are prepared to work, people who find themselves prepared to simply reside the American dream,” Miranda stated.
Trump’s marketing campaign has recommended he could declare victory on election night time even whereas tens of millions of ballots have but to be counted, as he did 4 years in the past.
The previous president has repeatedly stated any defeat might solely stem from widespread fraud, echoing his false claims from 2020. The winner might not be identified for days if the margins in battleground states are as slim as anticipated.
Regardless of who wins, historical past shall be made.
Harris, 60, the primary feminine vp, would develop into the primary lady, Black lady 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 develop into 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 more likely to decide the winner: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Reuters/Ipsos polling reveals Harris main amongst ladies by 12 proportion factors and Trump successful amongst males by seven proportion factors.
