Millions set to vote after Harris and Trump end election race in Pennsylvania
The election is expected to be decided by razor-thin margins and the results may not be known for days.
Millions of Americans are heading to the polls after Kamala Harris and Donald Trump ended this year’s presidential race with a fierce battle for Pennsylvania on Monday.
Ms Harris ended her night in Philadelphia at the art museum steps made famous in the movie Rocky, where she said “the momentum is on our side”.
She also rallied with supporters in Allentown, Scranton and Pittsburgh, and she swung through Reading to visit a Puerto Rican restaurant and do a little canvassing herself, knocking on doors alongside campaign volunteers.
“It’s the day before the election and I just wanted to come by and say I hope to earn your vote,” Ms Harris told one woman, who said she had already cast a ballot for the Democratic nominee.
Mr Trump started the day in North Carolina and finished it in Michigan, but he spoke in Reading and Pittsburgh in between.
The former president blended false claims about voter fraud with warnings about migrants committing crimes and promises to revitalise the United States.
“With your vote tomorrow, we can fix every single problem our country faces and lead America, and indeed the whole world, to new heights of glory,” he said.
While Ms Harris focused on optimism about the future and never mentioned Mr Trump by name, the Republican nominee excoriated his opponent at every turn.
His running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, followed Mr Trump’s lead during his own rally in Atlanta, telling the crowd that “we are going to take out the trash in Washington DC, and the trash’s name is Kamala Harris”.
In his final rally, Mr Trump called former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat who led the House when it impeached him twice, a “crazy, horrible human being” and barely restrained himself from using a sexist slur.
“She’s a crooked person, she’s a bad person, evil,” Mr Trump said. “She’s an evil, sick, crazy – oh no. It starts with a b, but I won’t say it. I want to say it.”
The last day of campaigning was an appropriately frenetic ending to a presidential race that has defied expectations at every turn.
Trump was convicted during a felony trial involving hush money payments and survived two assassination attempts. He remains under indictment for trying to overturn the last presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden.
Ms Harris became Democrats’ replacement candidate this summer when Mr Biden was pushed off the ticket and forced to abandon his re-election bid after stumbling badly in his debate with Mr Trump.
One of the few constants in the campaign has been how close it has remained. The election is expected to be decided by razor-thin margins, and the results may not be known for days.
Pennsylvania has the most Electoral College votes of any battleground state, making it the top prize of the campaign. A victory there would clear a path to White House for either candidate.
“You are going to make the difference in this election,” Ms Harris said in Allentown.
About 30 miles away in Reading, Mr Trump told supporters that “if we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole ball of wax”.
In Pittsburgh, Trump delivered what his campaign aides described as his closing argument after his previous attempt — a mass rally at Madison Square Garden in New York – was derailed by crude and racist jokes.
He has also veered into invocations of violence and said he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after he was voted out.
“Over the past four years, Americans have suffered one catastrophic failure, betrayal and humiliation after another,” Mr Trump said. He added that “we do not have to settle for weakness, incompetence, decline, and decay”.
The crowd exploded in cheers when Mr Trump said the country should tell Ms Harris, “you’re fired” – his catchphrase from The Apprentice, the reality television show that made him a nationally recognised star.
Ms Harris arrived in Pittsburgh while Mr Trump’s rally was under way. By the time she finished her succinct remarks, he was still talking.
“We must finish strong,” Ms Harris said. “Make no mistake, we will win.”
Mr Trump held his final rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he also concluded his campaigns in 2016 and 2020. The rally began after midnight and ended after 2am.
About 77 million Americans have voted early. A victory by either side would be unprecedented.
Mr Trump winning would make him the first incoming president to have been indicted and convicted of a felony. He would gain the power to end other federal investigations pending against him.
He would also become only the second president in history to win non-consecutive White House terms, after Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century.
Ms Harris is vying to become the first woman, first black woman and first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office — four years after she broke the same barriers in national office by becoming Mr Biden’s second in command.
In a presidential election that appears to be incredibly close, it was fitting that the first votes cast on Election Day were evenly split, with three for Donald Trump and three for Kamala Harris.
The tiny New Hampshire resort town of Dixville Notch has a tradition dating back to 1960 of being the first in the nation to complete in-person voting.
The town’s six voters began casting their ballots on the stroke of midnight on Tuesday and the vote count was complete 15 minutes later.
The Democratic National Convention (DNC) says it is launching an election day persuasion campaign urging people to vote.
It includes more than 100 new billboards in battleground states, including 34 in Pennsylvania and 32 in Nevada, and 300 digital kiosks targeting college campuses in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
In Pennsylvania, voters will see the ads in more than 1,700 convenience stores.
