US voters head to polls as turbulent election season nears climax

By Joseph Ax

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The dizzying presidential contest between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris hurtled toward an uncertain finish on Tuesday as millions of Americans headed to the polls to choose between two sharply different visions for the country.

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 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 Tuesday morning to cast their votes.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, Johnny Graves had set up a DJ booth outside the polling station at Lincoln A.M.E. Church, pepping up morning voters with the Miley Cyrus track “Party in the U.S.A.”

Taylor Grabow, a 27-year-old nurse, said she voted for Harris after previously voting for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020, favoring Harris’s opposition to criminalizing abortions.

“I woke up in such a good mood and feeling excited,” she said.

In Asheville, North Carolina, Ginny Buddenberg, a 38-year-old stay-at-home mom brought her two twin daughters with her to vote in Haw Creek. She voted for Trump.

“There’s just a lot of politics in the classroom, and I feel like there’s too much of a push about politics and introducing different kinds of sexual education at a younger and younger age,” she said. “Let’s go to school and learn how to read.”

Trump’s campaign has suggested he may declare victory on election night even while millions of ballots have yet to be counted, as he did four years ago. 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 polarized 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.

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

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

DARK RHETORIC

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.”

His unbridled approach seemed designed to fire up his supporters, rather than expand his appeal. 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 war 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, 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, just before the Republican National Convention. Barely a week later, Biden exited the race, bowing to pressure from Democratic leaders.

Harris’ entry into the race re-energized her party, and she raised more than $1 billion in less than three months while erasing Trump’s lead over Biden in public polls.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Additional reporting Jonathan Allen in New York, Helen Coster in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Stephanie Kelly in Asheville, North Carolina; Editing by Ross Colvin, Howard Goller and Alistair Bell)