Millions of people are rushing to the polls to vote for candidates who offer an opposing vision of America. Harris and Trump need at least 270 electoral votes to win the election.
Millions of Americans head to the polls in the final race for the White House
In one of the closest presidential elections ever, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are vying to become the next US president.
Harris, who became the Democratic candidate after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, is in favour of abortion rights and has promised to lower food and housing prices for working families.
Republican candidate Trump, who has survived two assassination attempts this year, has vowed to shut down the border and proposed trillions in tax cuts.
More than 81 million people have already voted in what polls say will be a historically close election. States such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are expected to be crucial to their victory.
When are the results of the 2024 presidential election expected?
In some presidential races, the winner has been named late in the evening or early the next morning. This time around, because of the intense competition in many states, the media may wait longer before naming a winner.
Minor victories could also lead to recounts. For example, in the key state of Pennsylvania, a statewide recount would be required if there was a half a per cent difference between the votes cast for the winner and the loser. In 2020, the difference was just over 1.1 percentage points.
Litigation is also a possibility. Republicans have already filed more than 100 election lawsuits, including over eligibility and voter roll management.
The 2020 election was held on Tuesday. However, US TV stations did not declare Joe Biden the winner until late morning on Saturday, after the result in Pennsylvania became clearer.
Close Harris-Trump election race in “swing” states
There are 50 states in the US, but because most of them almost always vote for the same party, there are realistically only a few where both candidates have a chance of winning. These are places where elections will be won and lost, and they are known as battleground states, or swing states.
Currently, the lead in the “swing” states is so small that it is impossible to determine who is really ahead by looking at polling averages.
Stakes are high
According to CNN, if Trump wins on Tuesday, he will become only the second president to be defeated and win more than one term in a row. He would complete one of the most stunning political comebacks in history after being convicted of a crime and escaping two attempts on his life this year.
Harris could break a nearly 250-year streak of male commanders-in-chief and become the first female president. That would be a stunning achievement after she united a demoralised Democratic Party in July, when ageism destroyed President Joe Biden’s re-election bid, CNN adds.
Ms. Harris spent Election Day in Pennsylvania, speaking at a recent rally attended by Lady Gaga, Oprah Winfrey and Ricky Martin.
On the night in Pennsylvania, Harris delivered a final message of unity, telling the crowd:
I pledge to listen to those who will be impacted by the decisions I make. I will listen to experts. I will listen to the people who disagree with me. Because, you see, unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe that people who disagree with me are the enemy.
Trump held his last rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the Republican candidate said he was already ahead by hundreds of thousands of votes.
In the final hours of his campaign, Trump secured the support of scandal podcaster Joe Rogan, who held rallies in North Carolina and Pennsylvania before his last campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Election Day in 2024, when the contenders are separated by a minimal margin, will make history.
“Nostradamus” of US election makes huge prediction
Allan Lichtman, known as the “Nostradamus of the polls,” has correctly predicted the results of nine out of ten presidential elections since 1984. He claims that all of them have been correct except for George W. Bush’s victory in 2000.
The historian claims his prediction of who will win the 2024 presidential race is correct, even though recent polls say otherwise. Lichtman, who admitted he has never before felt “so much hatred” for his views during an election cycle, has a method of predicting outcomes known as “‘The Keys to the White House.” He said he developed the system to “accurately calculate” the results in 1981 with Russian academic Vladimir Keilis-Borok.
Lichtman believes the Democrat will win and become the first female president of the United States. He said in a new YouTube video:
My prediction has not changed. I have frequently made my prediction correctly in defiance of the polls, it’s based on 160 years of precedent.
However, he acknowledged there is still a chance he could be wrong. He said:
The keys are very robust. But it’s always possible that something so cataclysmic and so unprecedented could change the pattern of history.
The academic evaluates 13 factors, including scandals, social unrest, comparative charisma and the state of a country’s economy, and assigns a “true” or “false” score for each category. He also added:
My predictions have stood the test of time, my indicators have always been right.
