After months of bitter campaigning by incumbent President and Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Joe Biden, the United States is going to presidential polls today (Tuesday).
On Monday, the last day of campaigning, Trump was hunting for support in four battleground states while Biden focused on Pennsylvania and Ohio ending the campaigning for the White House.
Trump trailed Biden in national opinion polls ahead of today’s voting, but the race is seen as close in enough swing states that Trump could still piece together the 270 votes needed to prevail in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines the winner, according to Reuters.
Trump, aiming to avoid becoming the first incumbent president to lose re-election since fellow Republican George HW Bush in 1992, was holding rallies in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan on Monday.
He won those states in 2016 against Democrat Hillary Clinton, but polls show Biden is threatening to recapture them for Democrats.
Trump wrapped up his campaign in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the same place he concluded his 2016 presidential run with a post-midnight rally on Election Day.
Biden, running mate Kamala Harris and their spouses were supposed to spend most of Monday in Pennsylvania, splitting up to hit all four corners of a state that has become vital to the former vice-president’s hopes.
Biden was supposed to rally union members and members of the African-American community in the Pittsburgh area before being joined for an evening drive-in rally in Pittsburgh by singer Lady Gaga.
Biden was also scheduled to make a detour to bordering Ohio, spending time on his final campaign day in a state that was once considered a lock for Trump, who won it in 2016, but where polls now show a close contest.
Biden has wrapped up the campaign on the offensive, travelling almost exclusively to states that Trump won in 2016 and criticising the president’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has dominated the late stages of the race.
Biden accuses Trump of giving up on fighting the pandemic, which has killed more than 230,000 Americans and cost millions of jobs. Polls show Americans trust Biden more than Trump to fight the virus.
During a frantic five-state swing on Sunday, Trump claimed he had momentum. He promised an economic revival and imminent delivery of a vaccine to fight the pandemic.
Trump again questioned the integrity of the US election, saying a vote count that stretched past Election Day would be a “terrible thing” and suggesting his lawyers might get involved.
Americans have already cast nearly 60 million mail-in ballots that could take days or weeks to be counted in some states - meaning a winner might not be declared in the hours after polls close on Tuesday night.
“I don’t think it’s fair that we have to wait for a long period of time after the election,” Reuters quoted Trump as telling reporters on Sunday. Some states, including Pennsylvania, do not start processing mail-in votes until Election Day, slowing the process.
Trump has repeatedly said without evidence that mail-in votes are prone to fraud, although election experts say that is rare in US election. Mail voting is a long-standing feature of American election, and about one in four ballots was cast that way in 2016.
Trump also vowed to again defy the polls as he sprinted through five swing states while his opponent Biden urged supporters to “take back our democracy” by voting in two days.
Meanwhile, new poll results released on Sunday show Biden led Trump by 10 percentage points nationally.
Biden’s support stands at 52 percent to Trump’s 42 percent among national registered voters, the NBC News and Wall Street Journal poll showed.
This final pre-election poll found that Biden was ahead of Trump by 6 points, 51 percent to 45 percent, in 12 combined battleground states -- Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
The poll, which was conducted from Oct 29 to 31, also showed that Biden had the advantage over Trump among Black voters (87 percent to 5 percent), young voters ages between 18 and 34 (60 percent to 32 percent), seniors (58 percent to 35 percent), women (57 percent to 37 percent), whites with college degrees (56 percent to 41 percent) and independents (51 percent to 36 percent).
Trump, however, maintained the edge among white voters (51 percent to 45 percent) and whites without degrees (58 percent to 37 percent).
The poll found that 57 percent of voters disprove Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, while 55 percent in the poll approve his administration’s dealing with the economy.
When results will be available?
After polls close in the US presidential election, it could take days or even weeks to find out if Joe Biden or Donald Trump has won.
Millions more Americans are expected to vote by post because of coronavirus, meaning a delay in counting all the votes is highly likely.
The result of the election is usually “called” on the night of Election Day, which this year is 3 November. Different states stop voting at different times. The first polls close on the East Coast at 19:00 local time (00:00 GMT). This is followed by a running total of votes as they are counted in each state.
A state is "called" by major US media outlets when they believe one candidate has an unbeatable lead.
