Polls have opened for the 2024 United States election, a national vote that will decide not only the next president of the country but also the makeup of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Tuesday caps a mad-dash stretch of campaigning that saw Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and her Republican challenger Donald Trump crisscrossing the country in hopes of shoring up voters.
For weeks, polls have shown a remarkably tight race, with no candidate having the edge going into Election Day. Whatever the outcome of the vote, the result will define US politics and policy for the next four years. It will also be historic as voters will either elect the first female president in Harris or the first convicted felon in Trump.
In the final sprint of the race, both candidates have laid out vastly different visions for the country’s future. They have also staked out divergent positions on key issues like 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 “new generation” leader who will boost the middle class, protect women’s rights and maintain the integrity of US institutions at home and abroad.
Nevertheless, she has faced regular protests over her support for Israel’s war in Gaza and Lebanon. Trump, meanwhile, has promised a return to a US “golden age”. To do that, he has sketched a plan to lift economic regulations, project US strength abroad and crack down on migrants – a line of attack that regularly dips into racist tropes.
Nearly 81 million voters already cast their ballot before Election Day, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab. That is more than half of the 158.4 million (PDF) total votes cast in the 2020 presidential election – and a sign of record turnout this year for early voting in some parts of the country.
The first voting site technically opened right after Monday midnight Eastern time (05:00 GMT, Tuesday) in the tiny New Hampshire town of Dixville Notch. The next slate opened at 5am ET (10:00 GMT) in Vermont. Other polling sites will open as morning breaks across the six time zones that cover the 50 US states.
Once the polls close in the evening, the results may take hours or days to be tabulated. States cannot begin reporting their vote counts until polls close. Results will start to trickle in by about 6pm ET (23:00 GMT) when the first polls close in states like Indiana and Kentucky. The last polls will close in the states farthest west, Alaska and Hawaii, around Tuesday midnight ET (05:00 GMT, Wednesday).
After that, the timing of the results will come down to individual states, as the US does not have a centralised election system. Each state is responsible for tallying its ballots. The tighter the margins, the longer that process may take. All eyes will be on seven key states that are likely to decide the outcome: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada and North Carolina.
In the US, the presidential election is decided not by the popular vote but by a weighted system called the Electoral College. This year’s vote will conclude an election season that repeatedly saw historic upheavals. Donald Trump, 78, has become the central figure in the Republican Party and has led a movement that has sown doubt in the US election process.
His Democratic rival Harris was not even a candidate until about three months ago. Initially, in April 2023, President Biden announced plans to run for re-election. And after four years of Trump claiming that the 2020 election had been stolen, observers have warned he and his allies could challenge the 2024 race if the results do not go his way. That means the cloud of uncertainty that has hung over US politics for months may not dissipate anytime soon.
