Unchanging polls place Republican and Democrat neck and neck as Americans wait with bated breath for results
Tens of millions of voters went to the polls in the United States on Tuesday, see-sawing between anxiety and hope, to send one of the closest and most consequential presidential elections hurtling towards an uncertain finish.
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 national opinion polls that have barely budged in weeks.
As the first polls closed in Kentucky and Indiana on Tuesday evening, exit polls suggested concerns over the state of the economy and the future of US democracy weighed heavily on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots.
According to the AP Votecast survey, four in 10 voters named the economy and jobs as the most important problem facing the country, a potentially hopeful sign for Trump given that Republicans generally receive higher marks on their handling of the economy. But roughly half of voters cited the fate of democracy, which has become a focal point of Harris’ campaign, as their largest concern this year.
But election experts often warn against overanalyzing the findings of the earliest exit polls. Voters will get their first clearer sense of the outcome at 7pm ET, when Florida and Georgia start reporting results.
From coast to coast, in sprawling cities and small towns, in churches and school gyms, people waited patiently in line to play their part in the world’s most powerful democracy and choose between two sharply different visions for America. They mostly encountered a smooth process, with isolated reports of hiccups including long queues, technical issues and ballot printing errors.
Harris, 60, was among more than 82 million people who voted early, having mailed her ballot to California. From her vice-presidential residence in Washington DC, now secured by 8ft-high metal fences, she conducted phone interviews with radio stations in battleground states. Harris then took part in a phone bank event at the Democratic National Committee headquarters.
Trump, 78, voted on Tuesday near his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, and said he was feeling “very confident”. Wearing a red “Make America great again” cap, he told reporters: “It looks like Republicans have shown up in force.” The former president said he had not prepared a speech about the outcome, adding: “I’m not a Democrat. I’m able to make a speech on very short notice.”
Trump has been told by some advisers that he should prematurely declare victory on election night if he is sufficiently ahead of Harris in battleground states such as Pennsylvania, according to people close to him. Meanwhile the New York Times reported that Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who has spent at least $119m in support of Trump, would watch the results with him at Mar-a-Lago.
After billions of dollars in spending and months of frenetic campaigning in seven crucial swing states – Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina – the candidates appeared deadlocked. Recent polling has been unable to discern a clear pattern or advantage for either Harris or Trump in this electoral battleground, though most experts agree that whoever wins the Rust belt state of Pennsylvania is likely to have a clear advantage.
