On November 5th, Americans will cast their votes in the historic presidential election, where voters are divided not only at the national level but also in seven key battleground states that are expected to decide the outcome between former Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
Polling stations will open at 5:00 AM (11:00 AM local time in Kosovo) in several Eastern states, and voting will continue across the country, including in Alaska and Hawaii, until late evening in Western states.
The result of this tight race is expected to take several days to be determined, particularly in states like Pennsylvania, where the mail-in voting count is slower.
Voter turnout is expected to be high, according to the Voter Registration Bureau.
On the evening of November 4th, federal election officials warned that with such a tight race, Russia and Iran are intensifying their influence campaigns aimed at sowing division among American voters to incite violence against election officials after a highly contentious campaign.
Trump is running for a third time after losing the 2020 election to current President Joe Biden, who dropped out of the presidential race in July due to poor performance in the debates with Trump and concerns about his age.
If Harris is elected, she would become the first female president of the United States and the first person of South Asian descent to hold the office.
Trump would become the second president in history to win the presidency in non-consecutive terms. The only president to have done so was Grover Cleveland at the end of the 19th century.
Harris, 60, has presented herself as a generational change from 81-year-old Biden and 78-year-old Trump.
She has expressed her support for abortion rights after the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended the constitutional right to abortion. She has also called Trump a threat to democracy and mentioned his role in the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol and his refusal to accept his 2020 election loss to Biden.
Trump has used his populist rhetoric to convey the message that during his second term, he would do more to improve the economy, curb the wave of migrants entering the U.S., and stated he would be tougher on adversaries like China.
The outcome of the U.S. election may affect Ukraine more than any other country.
In the final days of the campaign, both presidential candidates have worked hard to gain as much support as possible, with each portraying themselves as the deciding factor for America’s future.
Under the American system, it is not the popular vote that determines who will be president, but the Electoral College, which consists of 538 electors. Each state has a set number of electors, equal to the number of representatives it has in Congress.
With the exception of Nebraska and Maine, each state awards its Electoral College votes to the candidate with the most popular votes in that state.
If Harris and Trump fail to secure a majority of 270 votes in the Electoral College, the new House of Representatives, which will convene in January, will choose the president, and the new Senate will also choose the vice president.
More than 77 million voters have already cast their ballots, but the November 5th election will be a critical test of which candidate has done the better job of convincing their supporters to vote.
Harris has already voted by mail, while Trump plans to vote in Florida on Election Day, according to REL.
