US voters cast ballots in tight race as turbulent campaign nears climax

A race churned by unprecedented events – two assassination attempts against Trump, President Joe Biden’s surprise withdrawal and Harris’ rapid rise – remained neck and neck, even after billions of dollars in spending and months of frenetic campaigning.

Trump, who has frequently spread false claims that he won the 2020 presidential election against Biden and whose supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan.6, 2021, voted near his home in Palm Beach, Florida. “If I lose an election, if it’s a fair election, I’m gonna be the first one to acknowledge it,” Trump told reporters. He did not elaborate.

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 20s, and both feared efforts by Republican lawmakers to restrict women’s health care.

“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 kids to vote for Trump.

Miranda, a union plumber, immigrated to the U.S. 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.

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.

Reuters/Ipsos polling shows Harris leading among women by 12 percentage points and Trump winning among men by seven percentage points.

DARK RHETORIC

Even more than in 2016 and 2020, Trump has demonized 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 galvanized women since the U.S. 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 U.S. 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.

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.

Sign up here.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab