Decision 2024: Voters head to polls to elect next U.S. president
(The Center Square) – Polls are now open in several East Coast states as voters decide who the next president of United States will be.
Also at stake on ballots across the country is control of Congress: which party will win majorities in the U.S. House and Senate.
Polls opened at 6 a.m. eastern in Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, Eastern Kentucky and parts of Maine. Some Vermont polls opened as early as 5 a.m. Polls open at 6:30 a.m. eastern in North Carolina, Ohio and West Virginia.
Heading into Election Day, the race between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump is extremely close.
As The Center Square reported Monday, Trump and Harris are in a dead tie nationally, according to Real Clear Politics’ polling average.
Among the swing states that will decide the outcome, RCP has Trump leading Arizona by 2.5 points, Georgia by 1.9 points, Nevada by 1 point, North Carolina by 1.5 points, and Pennsylvania by 0.3 points.
In the same averaging of recent polls, Harris leads Michigan by 1.2 points and Wisconsin by 0.4 points.
RCP lists 108 electoral college votes as “toss up” votes, meaning the election could easily go either way. Either candidate must secure 270 to win the presidency.
It’s unclear whether voters will learn who wins the election by the end of the night. With the race so close, vote counting could go on for days in any of the key swing states. In 2020, President Joe Biden was declared the winner four days after Election Day. In 2016, Hillary Clinton conceded the race early Wednesday morning.
About 75 million Americans have already cast their ballot by voting early or through mail-in voting, nearly half of the number that voted in total in the last presidential election.
As The Center Square previously reported, 33 Senate seats are up for election Tuesday, with 19 of the seats currently occupied by Democrats, 10 by Republicans and another 4 by Independents that lean Democrat.
Those numbers mean Democrats are on the defensive in the U.S. Senate this election cycle.
