US election hurtles towards uncertain outcome

Washington — The dizzying presidential contest between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris careened towards an uncertain finish on Tuesday as Americans headed to the polls to choose between two sharply different visions for the country.

A race churned by unprecedented events — two assassination attempts on Trump, President Joe Biden’s surprise withdrawal and Harris’ rapid rise — remained neck and neck as 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 on Tuesday morning to cast their votes.

The FBI warned Americans about two new fake videos falsely citing terror threats and voter fraud, the latest in a string of disinformation that officials expect will intensify.

One fabricated video purporting to be from the federal law enforcement agency falsely cited a high terror threat and urged Americans to “vote remotely”, while another video included a fake press release alleging to be from the agency and claiming rigged voting among inmates in five prisons.

More than 80-million Americans had already voted before Tuesday, either via mail or in person, and lines at several polling stations on Tuesday were short and orderly.

Some glitches of vote-counting technology were reported in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, and a local court granted a request by election officials to extend voting hours by two hours on Tuesday night. Two polling locations in Fulton County, Georgia, were briefly evacuated after false bomb threats.

In Dearborn, Michigan, Nakita Hogue, 50, was joined by her 18-year-old college student daughter, Niemah Hogue, to vote for Harris.

Niemah said she takes birth control to help regulate her period, while her mother recalled needing surgery after she had a miscarriage in her twenties, and both feared efforts by Republican legislators to restrict women’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 said. “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 one of their three young children to vote for Trump.

Miranda, a union plumber, immigrated to the US from Mexico when he was four years old, and said he believed Trump would do a better job of fighting 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 said.

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, would 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, would also become the first president 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.

Reuters/Ipsos polling 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.

Control of both chambers of Congress is also up for grabs. Republicans have an easier path in the US Senate, where Democrats are defending several seats in Republican-leaning states, while the House of Representatives looks like a toss-up.

During the campaign, Trump hammered first Biden and then Harris for their handling of the economy, which polls show is at the top of voters’ concerns despite low unemployment and cooling inflation. But he showed a characteristic inability to stay on message, at one point questioning Harris’ black identity and vowing to protect women “whether they like it or not.”

Even more than in 2016 and 2020, Trump has demonised immigrants who crossed the border illegally, falsely accusing them of fomenting a violent crime wave, and he has vowed to use the government to prosecute his political rivals.

Polls show he has made some gains among black and latino voters. Trump has often warned that migrants are taking jobs away from those constituencies.

By contrast, Harris has tried to piece together a broader coalition of liberal Democrats, independents and disaffected moderate Republicans, describing Trump as too dangerous to elect.

She campaigned on protecting reproductive rights, an issue that has galvanised women since the US Supreme Court in 2022 eliminated a nationwide right to abortion.

Harris has faced anger from many pro-Palestinian voters over the Biden administration’s military and financial support for Israel’s campaign in Gaza. While she has not previewed a shift in US policy, she has said she will do everything possible to end the conflict.

After Biden, 81, withdrew amid concerns about his age and mental ability, Harris sought to turn the tables on Trump, pointing to his rambling rallies as evidence he is unfit, and has tried to court young voters, seen as a critical voting bloc.

Trump countered the likes of Harris supporters Taylor Swift and Beyoncé with Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who played an increasingly visible role as a surrogate and a top donor to Trump’s cause.

Tuesday’s vote follows one of the most turbulent half-years in modern American politics.

In May, a New York jury found Trump guilty of falsifying business records to hide hush money payments to a porn star.

Four weeks later, Trump and Biden met for their only debate, where the incumbent president delivered a disastrous performance that supercharged voters’ existing concerns about his mental acuity.

In July, Trump narrowly escaped a would-be assassin’s bullet at a Pennsylvania rally. Barely a week later, Biden exited the race.

Reuters