Polls open for US Election Day 2024 as Kamala Harris and Donald Trump face off | US Election News 2024

Election day in Washington, DC has finally arrived.

Polls are open for the 2024 US elections, a national vote that will decide not only the country's next president but also the makeup of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Tuesday caps a frantic campaign that has seen Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and her Republican challenger Donald Trump crisscross the country in the hope of rallying voters.

For weeks, polls have revealed a remarkably close race, with no candidate having the advantage on Election Day.

Whatever the outcome of the vote, the outcome will define American policy for the next four years. It will also be historic as voters will elect either the first woman president in Harris or the first convicted felon in Trump.

In the final sprint of the race, the two candidates presented very different visions of the country's future. They also took divergent positions on key issues such as the economy, immigration, women's rights and democracy.

Harris has pledged to turn the page on what she calls Trump's divisive rhetoric. She has also positioned herself as a next-generation leader who will energize the middle class, protect women's rights, and uphold the integrity of American institutions at home and abroad.

However, she regularly faces protests over her support for the Israeli war in Gaza and Lebanon.

Trump, meanwhile, has promised a return to America's golden age. To do so, he has outlined a plan to lift economic regulations, project American strength abroad and crack down on migrants, a line of attack that regularly dips into racist tropes.

But even though the candidates' platforms contrast sharply in both substance and tone, they overlap on a noble theme: The outcome of this year's vote is crucial.

Trump has called the 2024 race the most important the country has ever seen, while Harris says it is the most important in voters' lives.

Both candidates spent the last 24 hours before Election Day actively campaigning in key states.

With your vote tomorrow, we can solve every problem facing our country and lead America and the world to new heights of glory, Trump said during his closing remarks at his campaign's final rally in the wee hours in the morning. Grand Rapids, in the swing state of Michigan.

Harris said the momentum was on our side as she signed in Philadelphia.

We have to finish strong, said the Democratic candidate. Make no mistake, we will win.

Register early voting

Election Day is the culmination of weeks of early voting in some localities. Several states began early voting, whether by mail or in person, as early as September.

Nearly 81 million voters have already cast ballots before Election Day, according to the University of Florida Election Lab.

That's more than half of the 158.4 million (PDF) votes cast in the 2020 presidential election and a sign of record turnout this year in early voting in some parts of the country.

Election Day will ultimately reveal not only which candidate comes out on top, but also the full extent of the changing demographics of the American electorate.

The first voting site technically opened shortly after midnight Monday Eastern Time (0500 GMT Tuesday) in the small town of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire. The following listing opened at 5 a.m. ET (10:00 GMT) in Vermont.

Other polling stations opened at dawn in the six time zones covering all 50 US states.

Once polling stations close in the evening, tabulating results can take hours or even days. States cannot begin releasing vote counts until polls close.

Results will start coming in around 6 p.m. ET (11 p.m. GMT) when the first polls close in states like Indiana and Kentucky.

The last polling stations will close in the westernmost states, Alaska and Hawaii, around midnight ET (0500 GMT, Wednesday).

After that, the timing of results will depend on each state, as the United States does not have a centralized electoral system. Each state is responsible for counting its ballots. The narrower the margins, the longer this process can take.

All eyes will be on seven key states that could decide the outcome: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada and North Carolina.

In the United States, the presidential election is decided not by popular vote but by a weighted system called the Electoral College.

Under this system, each state is worth a certain number of votes in the Electoral College, equal to the number of senators and representatives in Congress each state has.

For example, the swing state of North Carolina has 14 representatives in Congress based on its population size. Two senators represent each state, bringing the total number of Electoral College votes for North Carolina to 16.

The outcome of the presidential race in a given state determines which candidate receives that state's electoral college votes.

All but two states have a winner-take-all system: If a candidate wins the state, even by a small margin, they get all the Electoral College votes.

There are 538 total electoral college votes, spread across the United States. Whoever crosses the threshold of 270 wins the race.

Given that some states lean consistently Republican or Democratic, Harris is likely to easily win 226 Electoral College votes, and Trump is likely to get 219 no problem. Beyond that, Harris has 20 paths to victory and Trump has 21.

Al Jazeera will rely on the Associated Press news agency to determine who won each state and, ultimately, the general election. The AP does not publish projections. It only declares the result of a race once a winner appears and no other results are possible.

Historic race

This year's vote will conclude an election season that has repeatedly been marked by historic upheaval.

Donald Trump, 78, became the central figure of the Republican Party and led a movement that sowed doubt in the American electoral process.

Trump first entered the White House in 2016 after a surprise victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton. But he failed to win re-election in 2020, when Joe Biden defeated him at the polls.

The Republican leader, however, never conceded defeat and instead claimed that widespread electoral fraud cost him the race, a baseless claim.

Critics say that since his defeat in 2020, Trump has never really stopped campaigning, laying the groundwork for his current candidacy. He officially announced that he will seek re-election in 2022 at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

But his campaign has sometimes been overshadowed by historic trials. Trump is the first president, past or present, to face criminal charges.

Four separate indictments were issued against him: one for withholding classified documents, one for falsifying business records and two for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

In the New York business records case, Trump was convicted on 34 counts. But rather than slowing down his chances of re-election, his legal troubles have largely energized his base, according to polls.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him and called the indictments evidence of a coordinated witch hunt intended to derail his presidential bid.

But he wasn't the only candidate facing historic obstacles in his race for the White House.

His Democratic rival Harris wasn't even a candidate until about three months ago. Initially, in April 2023, President Biden announced his intention to run for office.

He sailed through the Democratic primary season, running largely unopposed in state-level elections. But concerns about the 81-year-old's age and abilities began to grow as he hit the campaign trail.

A special counsel report released in February, for example, said Biden did not remember, even after several years, the death of his son Beau, something the president later denied. And Biden made several high-profile gaffes, calling Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi the president of Mexico.

Concerns about Biden crescendoed after a stumbling debate in June, during which the president appeared to drift away from his thinking.

By July, Biden abruptly withdrew from the race and Democrats quickly coalesced around his vice president, Harris.

By early August, enough Democratic delegates had sided with Harris in a virtual vote for her to be nominated as the party's nominee for president.

But it was an unorthodox process: Never before had an incumbent president dropped out so late in a race, and never in recent history had a major party candidate bypassed the traditional primary process .

On Tuesday, Trump spoke to the media after voting in Palm Beach, Florida, saying he felt very confident about his election chances.

It appears Republicans showed up in force, Trump said. Well, see how it goes.

He added: “I hear we're doing really well.

The elections could still innovate. In a tense political climate, fears of physical threats to polling stations have increased like never before.

And after four years of Trump claiming the 2020 election was stolen, observers have warned that he and his allies could contest the 2024 election if the results don't go his way.

That means the cloud of uncertainty that has hung over U.S. politics for months may not dissipate anytime soon.

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