Election Day voting has begun in the high-stakes presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and disgraced former president Donald Trump that polls show to be incredibly close and likely to be decided by voters in a handful of battleground states.
Harris has a slight lead nationally in polling averages, but every swing state is within a normal-sized margin of error.
Control of the House and Senate are also on the line Tuesday as Americans make consequential decisions about the country’s future, which Trump promised to radically alter if he returned to power.
At midnight, the six residents of Dixville Notch, a tiny township in New Hampshire cast their ballots — with officials touting their status as the “first in the nation” to do so in person on Election Day.
The vote was a tie, reflecting the divisions across the country in what is expected to be one of the tightest and most historically consequential presidential campaigns in recent memory.
Over the course of the 2024 contest, Trump railed against undocumented immigrants, standing on a debate stage and falsely accusing Haitian migrants of eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs.
He mocked President Joe Biden for being old and mentally infirm, and he repeatedly mispronounced his opponent’s name and insulted her intelligence.
At times, he echoed rhetoric from Nazi Germany and, more recently, falsely declared himself “the father of IVF” and promised to protect women, “whether the women like it or not.”
Trump — who is running for president for the third time in as many presidential campaign cycles — would not just return him to the White House, but also erase the stench of defeat that has hung over him since his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden and avoid criminal trials on charges outlined in three pending indictments.
A week ago Sunday, at what Republicans hoped would be his triumphant Madison Square Garden rally, Trump’s speech was overshadowed by a comedian who described Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage.”
Trump was livid, saying the comment — and ensuing days of negative headlines — was an unforced error in the final days of the campaign.
Yet for much of the race, Trump offered a message of xenophobia and misogyny and racism, of cruelty and darkness and hate.
If he wins, it will be because enough of the nation embraced that message, too. And if he loses, it will be because enough of the nation voted against that vile message — and Trump himself.
At his final campaign event of 2024 and of three consecutive attempts at the White House — in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he appeared after midnight, in the dark, early hours of Election Day — Trump seemed unable to curb his worst impulses, lashing out at Democrats and other enemies and struggling to deliver a closing message centered on the economy, immigration and other issues that benefit him politically.