The race to become America’s 47th president looks like it will be a photo finish between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris as Americans head to the polls Tuesday.
The two main candidates have been neck and neck through the last weeks of the campaign, but how they got to the finish line could not have been more different.
Harris, the current vice-president and a former U.S. senator and California attorney general, has pledged to create opportunities for the middle-class families, to support the push to restore abortion rights, and to heal the country after years of bitter political division.
Trump, a real estate baron who served in the White House from 2016 to 2020, is the instigator and inspiration of that political division.
In a second term, he has promised to boost the U.S. economy, deport migrants and end his country’s involvement in the Ukraine and Middle East conflicts as part of his ongoing plan to “Make America Great Again.”
After months of policy pitches—and pitched cross-country battles—it is now up to the voters to make their picks.
Some 78 million Americans had already cast a ballot as of Sunday, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab.
Now, the onus is on party volunteers and organizers to ensure that supporters get to a ballot box. They will be driven by fears that the next president could be elected by the slimmest of margins in just a few of the 50 states.
“It’s clear that we’re in for one of the closest races in a long time,” a Patriot Polling survey released on Nov. 3 concluded. “It could go either way, but it looks like Donald Trump holds a slight advantage.”
Patriot’s forecasting model, like others, suggests that Harris could earn more total votes across the country but still lose if Trump earns more Electoral College votes.
Presidential math
The Electoral College system assigns a number of votes to a state that is roughly determined by its population and its representation in Congress.
There are 538 Electoral College votes in total, meaning a candidate needs 270 to be declared the winner.
Certain states, like Oklahoma, Tennessee or Missouri are traditionally and solidly Republican. Others, like California, New York or Illinois, tend to side in large numbers with the Democratic Party.
But there are seven so-called swing states—Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin—where support for the two major political parties is evenly divided and too close to call.
Ahead of the vote, the website 270toWin predicted that Harris was safe or favoured to win 226 of the 538 Electoral college votes to Trump’s 219. The next president will be the one who can reach the necessary 270 votes from among the 93 available in the seven swing states.
The roads to victory
Trump’s route back to power for a second—and final—four-year term is littered with grievances.
Lining the electoral path are those voters who feel that they and the country are worse off now than they were four years ago when he was defeated by President Joe Biden in the last election.
He wants to create jobs by putting tariffs on imports and encouraging companies to operate in America, not just sell there. He wants to deport migrants who are seeking asylum in the U.S. He wants to roll back climate regulations and encourage domestic oil production.
Polls show his support is strongest among male voters.
Harris, who became the Democratic candidate after Biden dropped out of the race, has promised to focus on creating a better future rather than dwelling on past grudges.
She has the challenging task of differentiating herself from Biden, who is deeply unpopular after four years in the White House, without undermining her own governing record as his vice-president.
Harris’ support is strongest among female voters.
When to expect results
In 2020, when Biden defeated Trump, more than 158 million people voted in the presidential election.
That year, the vote was held on Nov. 3, but the tight race meant that the winner wasn’t declared until Nov. 7.
There is a similar expectation of delays in this election, although no one knows how long it will be before a winner is declared.
Part of the problem comes from the parties’ efforts to have voters cast early ballots. These generally take more time to process, scrutinize and count.
But while some states count these early ballots before election day, others have laws that prevent early-voting ballots from being tallied before polls close on Tuesday.
This is the case in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania—two swing states where the results are already expected to be tight.
“While it would be nice to know the election results by the time we go to bed at night, we probably won’t have a final result for a few states on election night. That’s not a sign something is wrong, it’s a sign our democracy is working,” wrote Trevor Potter, of Washington’s Campaign Legal Center, a non-partisan that fights for voting rights.
Potter warned against “bad actors and self-interested politicians” who try to claim early victory in order to cry foul when the final results are tabulated and show them losing.
“They are intentionally designed to sow distrust in our elections.”
There are other potential delays that could occur in close-call elections.
Most states have rules that either apply recounts automatically in the tightest of races or allow them to be requested by losing candidates who want to challenge the results.
In Pennsylvania, for example, the automatic recount occurs if the difference in votes between candidates is less than 0.5% of the total number of votes cast.
Beyond this, a losing candidate must provide affidavits alleging fraud or counting errors for a recount to be approved.
Both parties will have armies of electoral observers and lawyers on hand Tuesday, ready to call foul or seek an intervention in the event of what they consider to be voting or counting abnormalities.
Congressional side show
There’s a tremendously important sideshow occurring at the same time as the presidential main event: the congressional elections for the Senate and the House of Representatives.
A president’s term in the White House can be greatly helped or hindered by the composition of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
If Trump is president and Democrats control one or both chambers of Congress, he will have a tough time implementing his agenda, and will likely veto Democratic initiatives that makes it to the Oval Office for his presidential signature.
The opposite would be true if Harris wins, and the Republicans dominate the House or Senate.
There are 34 Senate seats up for grabs in Tuesday’s election in addition to all of the House’s 435 seats.
The majority of congressional election forecasts tip the Republicans to win a narrow majority of the Senate’s 100 seats. Projections for the House of Representatives, though, are deadlocked.
Abortion on the agenda
Ten states will have special ballot measures asking voters to decide on access to abortion services.
This comes after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 decision Roe v. Wade, which gave women the right to terminate pregnancies.
Most of those ballot initiatives expressly ask voters whether they want to make access to abortion services a constitutionally protected right for women in the state.
Voters in South Dakota, Missouri and Florida are being asked whether they want to overturn current laws restricting access to abortion in their states.
In Nebraska, voters are facing two competing ballot initiatives: one asking whether the state’s constitution should be amended to protect a woman’s fundamental right to access abortion services, the other to amend the constitution to ban second-and-third-term abortions.
