US election live: polls open as America votes for next president

Melanie Simmonds, 51, summed up the feelings of many voters in the queue when asked what turned her off Donald Trump: “How much time you got? Hah! I don’t have that much time.”

She came straight to the polling station shortly after 7am, after finishing a shift as a security guard.

“I’m always excited to vote,” she said. “If we want changes everybody has to vote. We can’t do the wrong thing, we can’t have the wrong person in office. Kamala, she’s going to do stuff, she’s going to help us. I know it.

European support for Harris and nervousness over Trump is not universal. Viktor Orban, Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, has been a frequent flyer across the Atlantic, not to Biden’s White House but to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion.

Writing on X, the Hungarian leader trumpeted that “just two days after the American elections” he would be hosting a European summit on Thursday of more than 40 leaders in Budapest, the largest diplomatic event in his country’s history.

“Fasten your seatbelts,” he posted last night.

Orban, and many anti-establishment nationalist and Eurosceptic parties who are ascendant in elections across Europe, are Trump admirers. “I will celebrate Trump’s victory with bottles of champagne,” he said last month.

There are fears that Orban and the nationalist camp will add their voices to Trump if he contests the election result, setting a new anti-democratic trend with big implications for European politics.

Fiona Hamilton reporting from Atlanta, Georgia

“This election”, declares Steven Wallace, 74, “is the choice between a jackass and a laughing hyena. You’re from England? I wish we could have a King or Queen so we don’t have to do this every four years.”

Wallace’s election fatigue springs from the saturated news cycle and the divisive debates. Nonetheless he still holds a strong desire to vote. He was third in line at 7am this morning at Park Tavern, one of central Atlanta’s busiest polling stations, accompanying his grandson, Aidan Tally, 20, who was voting for the first time.

Tally, who began queuing before the sun was up, voted independent because “the others are like adult toddlers”.

Wallace, a retired real estate agent, is an outlier in this Democratic stronghold because, contrary to those canvassed in the queue around him, he was voting for Donald Trump.

“He’s important for our foreign policy. No one is afraid of him.”

It’s now past 8am on the east coast, and a further ten states are opening their polling stations — among them Wisconsin, the fifth of seven swing states to start voting.

Kenosha County used to be a reliably Democratic stronghold, but that has changed. Hillary Clinton clung on by just 255 votes in 2016. Donald Trump flipped it four years later, winning by 2,779.

That is partly due to the local loss of industry: a Chrysler car factory closed in 2010, which ended more than 100 years of automaking in the county. Later, in 2020, Kenosha was rocked by riots after the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old black man.

This civil unrest and lingering economic disaffection led many to “embrace” Trump’s promises to “restore law and order”, according to Jonathan Kasparek, a politics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

It is not just the election being contested today: are votes being cast today on a wide range of issues, from abortion access to gun control, marijuana legislation and property taxes.

And then there’s Congress: the entire House of Representatives is up for re-election, and a third of Senate seats.

The Senate hangs in the balance, with Democrats at present holding a 51-49 advantage. One of the closest-watched races is in deep-blue Maryland, where for years Senate races have often been landslides for Democratic incumbents against little-known Republicans.

That’s not the case with the race this year. Larry Hogan, a popular Republican who won two terms as governor, is their most competitive candidate in years in the race to replace a retiring Democratic senator, Ben Cardin.

He is still facing an uphill battle against his Democrat rival, Angela Alsobrooks, the county executive of Prince George’s County, who could make history as the state’s first black senator.

In the House of Representatives, fewer than 50 of the 435 seats up for grabs are considered competitive races. Republicans hold a slim majority with 220 seats to the Democrats’ 212, with three vacancies. Whichever party controls the Senate and the House will wield enormous influence over the president’s agenda.

Four years ago Donald Trump disputed the election results, claiming fraud in key states like Georgia and Pennsylvania.

This culminated in violent scenes in the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, the day the results were certified by Congress.

With polls suggesting the election is too close to call, many Americans are worried the country could see political violence once again.

A YouGov poll of voters in key states shows that most Americans, regardless of which candidate they support, are expecting violence.

Donald Trump is expected to vote this morning at a smart sports centre a few miles north of his Mar-a-Lago club on Palm Beach.

Trump has voted twice before at the Morton and Barbara Mandel Recreation Center, while Melania Trump has voted there three times. She was spotted leaving New York with their son Barron yesterday, and may be intending to vote with her husband this morning.

The polling station opened at 7am and voters began queuing up outside at 6:30am, forming a line that snaked along a palm-lined walkway and beneath a clock tower beside clay tennis courts. It was headed by a woman who was reading the Wall Street Journal, seated at the door of what is normally a dance and workout studio.

An update from Indiana: the issue with the voting machines in Hamilton County, north of Indianapolis, has now been fixed.

It seems that an updated piece of code needed to be sent, and it has been done. Normal voting has resumed.

“All someone had to do was push a button to fix it,” tweeted the local Fox 59 news reporter Daniel Miller. “Poll workers were not aware of the issue during training, because they didn’t think it would be a problem.

“The issue has been fixed at all locations and everything is running smoothly right now.”

Tom Newton Dunn reporting from Raleigh, North Carolina

Polling has opened in central Raleigh, North Carolina, and Savannah Ranson is one of the very first to vote in any of the seven swing states.

The 23-year-old steakhouse cook was the first in line outside Edenton Street United Methodist Church — which today is Wake County’s Precinct 7 polling place.

She has been here since 5.25am. “I just really wanted to get in line and vote on election day,” she said.

“Today means a lot to me. I get to exercise my vote and my voice is heard. I’m hoping there will be the first female president of the United States.”

Needless to say, she voted for Harris. She wasn’t alone. Dawn is only just breaking here, and 20 people were already queuing behind her.

The clocks have just struck 7am on the east coast, and 12 more states are opening their polls.
Voters in the nation’s capital can also begin casting their ballots.

All polling stations on the east coast are now open, from Florida to Maine, and several midwest states are now open: among them Michigan, a swing state. Michigan — where Donald Trump closed his campaign last night — has the second-most electoral college votes up for grabs, at 15, after Pennsylvania’s 19.

Americans living in four of the seven swing states can now begin voting: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina.

There have been reports of issues with polling machines after a poll worker in Hamilton County, Indiana, said that they were having technical problems.

Polls opened 30 minutes ago as scheduled, at 6am, but queues of people are forming as the staff try to resolve the glitch.

A local Fox News reporter said that 80 people were standing outside the John W. Hensel Government Center in Carmel, a suburb of Indianapolis.

Hamilton County is just north of Indianapolis, and has the fourth largest population of any Indiana county. Indiana is one of the most solidly Republican states in the county.

Since 1940 it has only voted Democratic twice: in 1964, when Lyndon Johnson won a landslide over Barry Goldwater, and in 2008, when Indiana voters chose Barack Obama over John McCain.

It’s just turned 6:30am on the east coast, and polls have opened in three more states: Ohio, West Virginia, and North Carolina. That takes the total to 12.

North Carolina is the first swing state to open its polls today. It has voted Republican in all but one presidential election from 1980 onwards — it backed Barack Obama in 2008 — but recently things have been close. It carries 16 electoral college votes.

Polls close in North Carolina at 7:30pm Eastern Time, and we expect the results will come through relatively swiftly: it’s one of the ones to give pundits an early sense of the way the vote is heading.

British gamblers have placed £187 million in bets on the US election, Betfair have reported, with pundits in the UK believing that Donald Trump will win.

The London-based bookies said that they had seen £125 million bet on Trump, and £46 million on Kamala Harris. Trump is at 8/13, Betfair said, with Harris at 8/5.

British gamblers have made Trump the favourite to win five of the seven swing states: Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina.

Betfair has seen a surge in cash wagered on Trump in the last week: £65.7 million for Trump, versus £12.7 million for Harris.

US gamblers have also put their money on Trump in recent weeks, although Harris gained a slight edge on PredictIt overnight. Trump maintained a lead on Polymarket.

Samuel Lovett reporting in Kenosha County, Wisconsin

Shawn Reilly has spent most of his life voting Republican. For the past decade, he’s also served as the mayor of Waukesha, a traditionally red city outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Today, however, he will be casting his ballot for Kamala Harris — not out of love for the Democrats, but a deep resentment of Donald Trump.

Aggrieved by the former president’s “chaotic” politics, his involvement in the January 6 riots and his “revengeful mindset”, Reilly told the Times that the prospect of Trump serving a second term was “absolutely horrid”.

“I can’t vote for him,” he added. “Being able to self-govern your own country is very important. That means you don’t support dictators, you don’t support authoritarian governments. If Trump is our president again, I fear what will happen.”

Donald Trump plans to cast his vote at a polling station in Palm Beach, Florida, today, a source familiar with his schedule told the Associated Press.

He is expected to watch the results come in at his Mar-a-Lago estate. His campaign is expected to host an election watch party at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach in the evening.

Kamala Harris is expected to spend election night at Howard University in Washington DC. Howard, one of America’s historically black colleges, is her alma mater, and the vice-president has spoken about the impact it had on her identity and her desire to pursue a career as a lawyer.

Election Day is not a federal holiday in the United States and there is no federal law forcing bosses to give their staff paid time off to vote, to the chagrin of many.

It is, however, a holiday for nine states: Delaware, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Virginia.

Banks are open, as is the stock market and federal reserve. The post office is working as usual.
Schools are closed, however, as many are being used as polling stations.

The American vote is being anxiously watched in Europe. “There is plenty of Trump fear and paranoia around,” one European diplomat said.

Sir Keir Starmer will be among 43 leaders in the Hungarian capital for a summit of the European Political Community, talks that will be overshadowed by events in America.

European Union leaders will discuss the emerging results, dominated by fears of a republican victory, over dinner on Thursday night in Budapest. There is added anxiety over Viktor Orban, their host, who is Trump’s most (if not only) enthusiastic supporter and who may well rock the boat if the Republican calls into question a narrow win for Kamala Harris.

The prospect of a victory for Donald Trump alarms the EU because of fears that he will undermine Ukraine and damage European economies with the fallout of rivalry with China.

It’s 6am on the east coast, and eight more states have now opened the polls, taking the total to nine — Vermont was first off the mark at 5am.

Their neighbouring states of New Hampshire and New York have now opened, in addition to Maine, Connecticut, New Jersey and Virginia.

Some more central states have also unlocked the polls: those in Indiana and Kentucky can now begin casting their votes.

For the past few months, Trump and Harris have criss-crossed the seven battleground states holding dozens of campaign rallies and events as they try to win over the few remaining undecided voters there.

The US electoral college system dictates that the winner of each state takes all of its electoral votes, meaning the final result will almost certainly come down to the swing states.

In 2020, Biden flipped five of them: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Biden also held Nevada while Trump won North Carolina. Shifting demographics and a realignment of support for both parties makes it hard to predict which candidate these all-important seven races will elect in this year.

On Halloween, both Trump and Harris descended on Arizona to court voters and warn of the dangers of their opponent.

Speaking just 5.7 miles apart, one local TV anchor quipped: “They could have probably done a debate if they’d wanted to.”

At a large open-air rally in Phoenix, ceiling fans kept the crowds cool while Harris said of Trump: “He simply does not respect the freedom of women or the intelligence of women to know what’s in their own best interest and make decisions accordingly.”

Trump appeared on the Tucker Carlson Live Tour and chose an indoor venue on his seventh trip of the campaign to the Grand Canyon state. He called the Democrats “a bunch of cheats” and said immigration and border security were “the single biggest issue” for voters.

The first polls have opened in Vermont, where it is possible to vote as early as 5am local time (10am UK time).

Voting times vary by state and across several time zones. Most of the eastern states, including New York and Virginia will start voting from 6am Eastern Time, or 11am UK time.

Channel 4 has a colourful lineup of panellists, including the Succession star Brian Cox, the former porn star Stormy Daniels and the former prime minister Boris Johnson. Krishnan Guru-Murthy and Emily Maitlis will anchor the show.

The BBC’s North America editor Sarah Smith and the senior North America correspondent Gary O’Donoghue will be reporting from the two parties’ election headquarters.

ITV has Julie Etchingham leading the coverage from the US, with the newsreader Tom Bradby anchoring its show and Robert Moore and Anushka Asthana providing analysis.

Radio 4, Radio 5 and BBC World Service will simulcast a programme through the night from Washington DC, presented by Nuala McGovern and Ros Atkins.

On Times Radio, expert analysis is provided by Andrew Neil and John Pienaar. Calum Macdonald will host overnight coverage, with Aasmah Mir and Stig Abell taking over on Times Radio Breakfast from 6am.

• Read in full: Our experts on how to follow the US results as they come in

Immigration and abortion are literally on the ballot paper in Arizona. Both issues have been salient during this campaign, in a state bordering Mexico and that has a large Hispanic population, which is decreasingly Catholic.

Supporters of the two main parties have put forward proposals to amend the state constitution to motivate voters to turn up and vote in the presidential, House and Senate races.

Proposition 314 would boost local authorities’ responsibilities for immigration enforcement, while Proposition 139 would enshrine the fundamental right to abortion at a state level after the US Supreme Court struck down the landmark Roe v Wade ruling.

Russian influencers have tried to sow false claims of election fraud in Arizona, according to the FBI.

The agency said that a video wrongly depicted testimony about “fake overseas ballots” in favour of Kamala Harris.

Those allegations are “false” but were “manufactured and amplified” by “Russian influence actors”, an FBI statement released on Monday said.

Voters were warned that foreign interference was likely to continue on election day and beyond.

The FBI said “additional manufactured content” designed to undermine public confidence in election results and stoke division was likely to be released.

Iran has also carried out cyber activities designed to compromise Donald Trump’s campaign, the FBI added.

Gambling odds are not necessarily predictive but give an indication of the ebbs and flows of the race.

Presidential betting odds on Betfair Exchange show how Trump has gone from rank outsider after losing in 2020 to slight favourite now, according to the gambling markets.

Trump’s odds peaked this summer when he was dramatically shot at on stage and Biden appeared confused in a TV debate.

Since Biden dropped out, Harris has become a slight favourite, although Trump has retaken a small lead in recent weeks.

Judges have rejected attempts by the Republican-led states of Missouri and Texas to block the federal government from monitoring compliance with voting rights laws.

Both states are among 27 that the US Justice Department (DOJ) said it would dispatch staff to to monitor voting locations — as is normal during national elections.

The federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk denied issuing the restraining order that Texas requested but ordered the DOJ to confirm that “no observers” would be at polling locations in the state.

• Could the US election results be contested? Lawyers prepare for scrap

“The court cannot issue a temporary restraining order without further clarification on the distinction between ‘monitoring’ and ‘observing’ on the eve of a consequential election,” Kacsmaryk said.

Sarah Pitlyk, a district judge in Missouri, also denied that state’s temporary restraining order, saying that “the harms that the state of Missouri anticipates are speculative.”

Missouri’s lawsuit claimed that the DOJ had an 11th-hour plan to “displace state election authorities” by sending poll monitors to locations throughout St Louis.

With the final rallies done, the campaigns now rely on their turn-out operations to get supporters to the polls. The Harris campaign has built the more extensive ground operation, with 2,500 paid staff in 353 offices nationwide. Boosted by volunteers, the campaign knocked on 600,000 doors and made three million phone calls in one week last month, according to The New York Times.

There won’t be the traditional news footage of Harris arriving at her local polling station to vote. She posted her ballot to her home state of California a few days ago.

Rather than spend tonight at her campaign HQ in Delaware, which she inherited from President Biden, she will await the results in Washington. She plans to be at an election watch party at her alma mater, Howard University, the historically black college from which she graduated in 1986 with a degree in political science and economics.

As America goes to the polls, the Ukrainian army that has depended so much on Washington’s largesse faces the toughest fight of the Russian invasion so far, losing territory in the east at the fastest rate since Kyiv itself was threatened (Catherine Philp writes). The deployment of thousands of North Korean troops has injected an explosive new component to the conflict, with Moscow increasingly confident of assistance from its foreign allies.

Mounting drone strikes on Ukraine’s cities raise the spectre of another bitterly hard winter, after talks to end tit-for-tat strikes on energy infrastructure were called off when Ukrainian forces crossed Russia’s border into Kursk. That incursion, launched in part to secure a bargaining chip in negotiations that Donald Trump has claimed would end the war in 24 hours, is itself faltering, with at least a third of the territory seized now back in Russian hands.

• Read in full: Ukraine watches nervously as race for White House reaches climax

Hugh Tomlinson reporting in Detroit, Michigan

Michigan’s 15 electoral college votes are central to the blue wall of rust belt states that make up Kamala Harris’s best chance of victory. Donald Trump won here in his shock defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016, but Joe Biden flipped Michigan on his way to ousting Trump and taking the White House four years later.

Harris has faced an uphill struggle in Michigan, however, as several distinct voting blocs shift away from Democrats. Many among the state’s huge Muslim and Arab-American population have said they will not vote in protest at Biden’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.

• Michigan results: live tracker

Young black men, once a core Democratic constituency, have also shifted towards Trump as the former president has leaned into the widening gender gap at this election. And Biden’s push to force America to move to electric vehicles is deeply unpopular among auto workers in Motor City.

Oprah Winfrey and Lady Gaga appeared at Kamala Harris’ final campaign event in Pennsylvania last night.

Other celebrities attending included the singer Ricky Martin and Fat Joe, a rapper of Puerto Rican descent, who made appeals to Latino voters.

The podcast host Joe Rogan has endorsed Donald Trump for president, writing on social media that his choice had been influenced by “the great and powerful Elon Musk”.

Publicising a link to a long interview with the billionaire Tesla founder, Rogan, 57, wrote on X that Musk “makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way”.

• If Trump wins, buckle up for Elon Musk’s shock therapy

“For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump,” he added.

The podcaster recently interviewed Trump himself, in an episode which received 45 million views on YouTube.

Megan Agnew reporting from Ronkonkoma, New York

The America First Warehouse bills itself as “America’s Most Patriotic Venue”, dripping in Trump memorabilia and enormous flags. In this place, the Maga heart-centre of the area, Trump is the true American hero.

More generally, the warehouse is where supporters congregate socially, in addition to being the engine room of their organised support. Tonight, it will be where his most loyal followers come together to watch the results roll in.

Though New York state is a safe Democratic seat, Long Island is the home of three swing districts which have the potential to flip the House of Representatives (the Democrats need to win four more seats nationwide to do so).

More recently, much of the blue-collar electorate has felt disenfranchised from the liberal politics of nearby New York City and in 2022, Republicans turned all four Long Island districts red.

Down the ballot, this is a pivotal battleground.

Nigel Farage has said that if Trump is beaten in a “clear and decisive” victory for Harris he should accept the result and “play golf at Turnberry”.

The Reform MP made the comments in an interview with the Telegraph at Trump’s home in Palm Beach, in which he also said Harris should pardon Trump in order to “dampen” potential tensions if she wins.

However, he said it was “hypothetical” as he still thinks Trump will win.

Donald Trump has just finished his final campaign rally in the town of Grand Rapids, Michigan, and was filmed dancing off the stage.

He finished speaking just after 2am local time on the day Americans go to the polls.

During his speech Trump accused his opponent Kamala Harris of “destroying” the US and called her a “terrible vice president”.

“Kamala, you’re horrible at your job. You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re a low IQ individual,” he said, echoing the increasingly personal attacks of recent weeks.

In a reference to his former role as host of The Apprentice television show in the US, he added: “Kamala, you’re fired! Get the hell out of here.”

Alistair Dawber reporting from Pennsylvania

The birthplace of the American Republic and the cradle of what politicians call its great experiment with democracy, Pennsylvania is as pivotal in this election as it was in 1776.

Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have spent huge amounts of time and money campaigning for Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral college votes.

Democrats will hope that Harris can muster huge numbers of votes in the state’s two big cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Trump is aiming to win big in the vast rural areas and in the large towns, where heavy industry has been replaced over the decades by large numbers of employed and disaffected voters.

For Harris, the stakes in Pennsylvania could not be higher. No Democratic candidate has won the White House without winning Pennsylvania since Harry Truman in 1948 — Harris can triumph without winning here, but it will be very difficult.

• Pennsylvania results: live tracker

Voting rules have changed in Pennsylvania, meaning all ballots, those cast in person or mailed in, must be at counting venues by 8pm on Tuesday night. It means that we should get a result in the early hours of Wednesday morning, but polls indicate it could be very tight, and that could mean legal challenges to the result by the loser — which could take days, or even weeks.

Will Pavia reporting from Palm Beach, Florida

Trump has lived at his Mar-a-Lago resort since leaving the White House and it is where he launched his campaign for the presidency in November 2022.

Palm Beach is an island where the less expensive houses cost about $10 million and where the local population of billionaires numbers about 50. Some of them have pitched in to help Trump as donors and fundraisers.

Trump is expected to vote at a sports centre on Tuesday before watching the results come in from Mar-a-Lago. Later in the evening he is expected to speak at an election viewing party the Trump Campaign is staging at a convention centre on the mainland in West Palm Beach.

Samuel Lovett reporting from Kenosha County, Wisconsin

A former Democratic stronghold, Wisconsin has become one of America’s most closely contested states. In four of the past six elections Wisconsin has been decided by a voting margin of less than one percentage point.

It finally flipped red in 2016, the first time in three decades, as voters from faded industrial and agricultural communities, who had previously turned out for the Democrats, bought into Donald Trump’s promises to “make America great again”.

Wisconsin remains largely split between its blue urban centres — namely Madison and Milwaukee — and red countryside, but it is also home to dozens of 50-50 towns where, four years ago, the count was split by as few as two votes.

• Wisconsin results: live tracker

I’ll be reporting from Kenosha County, which Trump narrowly carried in 2020, as well as Waukesha County, where the Democrats are confident of making significant inroads, aided by a former Republican mayor who is now urging constituents to vote blue.

Tom Newton Dunn reporting from North Carolina

North Carolina is one of the key seven swing states, and has the second-largest number of electoral college votes up for grabs among them (16). It’s a fascinating fight. Trump won North Carolina in 2016 and again in 2020 (but by only 74,000 votes). He’s desperate to hold it and has done four rallies here over the final three days of the campaign.

What’s turned the state into a tight battleground is the arrival of half a million people over the last four years — many to work in the growing tech hub around Raleigh. They largely lean Democrat.

North Carolina also elects a new governor. The Republican candidate Mark Robinson was engulfed in scandal recently when it emerged he called himself a “black Nazi” in posts on a pornography site.

• North Carolina results: live tracker

Fiona Hamilton reporting from Atlanta, Georgia

This is a closely watched swing state because it was so crucial in 2020, when Joe Biden narrowly beat Donald Trump by 12,000 votes. It was a surprise win given it had been a staunchly Republican state between 1996 and 2016.

Trump’s unfounded claims of electoral fraud led to the riot by his supporters at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and his attempts to overturn the results in Georgia are the subject of legal proceedings. Polls suggest the results will be extremely tight this time around.

Georgia is key to winning the presidency, as its 16 electoral votes could potentially push either candidate over the finish line.

• Georgia results: live tracker

Delivering his closing pitch at the final rally of his campaign, Trump vowed late on Tuesday to lead the United States to “new heights of glory”.

“With your vote tomorrow, we can fix every single problem our country faces and lead America — indeed, the world — to new heights of glory,” Trump told the crowd in the early hours of the morning in Grand Rapids, in the swing state of Michigan.

Keiran Southern reporting from the Las Vegas Strip, Nevada

Nevada has voted for the Democratic candidate in six of the past eight presidential elections, including the last four, but the party’s grip appears to be loosening.

The state’s economy has taken a battering and working class voters are feeling the pinch.

Unemployment and gas prices are high, far from encouraging signs for Kamala Harris.

• Nevada results: live tracker

Donald Trump promised to eliminate taxes on tips, a policy so attractive in a state reliant on travel and leisure that Harris copied it.

Polls suggest the race in Nevada is essentially dead even. The stakes could scarcely be higher.

The first in-person votes in the 2024 general election were cast in Dixville Notch as part of the tradition of midnight voting early Tuesday morning.

The New Hampshire township with a population of just six registered voters split the vote with three for Harris and three for Trump.

Aubrey Allegretti reporting from Phoenix, Arizona

This sun belt state was ground zero for election result denialists in 2020, who claimed the contest was “stolen” from Donald Trump.

There are significant concerns of a January 6-style revolt locally. As a result, the main centre for checking and counting ballots has been heavily fortified, with snipers posted on nearby roofs.

• What will happen if Trump loses? The threat of civil war examined

Arizona has traditionally been a Republican stronghold, but Joe Biden won it in 2020 by 10,000 votes out of a population of more than 7 million.

After fairly neck-and-neck polling between Harris and Trump, the former president has polled about 2 points ahead over the past fortnight. The prize for whomever wins it is 11 electoral college votes, in their pursuit of a total of 270 and the presidency.

• Arizona results: live tracker

The polls have been exceedingly tight since Harris replaced President Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket in July. As of last week, Harris had a one-point lead in the national popular vote, which projects the overall number of ballots cast across the country.

In the seven battleground states that are likely to determine the winner, Harris was ahead in Wisconsin and Michigan, according to an average of every statewide poll conducted in the past three weeks. Trump was slightly ahead in Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona. It would only take a small polling error in either direction to swing the race decisively.

The first polls close at 6pm ET (11pm GMT) in the pro-Trump states of Indiana and Kentucky. Seven more states close their polls at 7pm ET (midnight GMT), including the key battleground of Georgia, by which time a clearer picture of the race will begin to emerge. By 8pm (1am GMT), results from a swathe of eastern and central states are likely to have been called.

Pennsylvania, the state that many experts believe will decide the presidency, could be declared for Trump or Harris in the early hours of Wednesday morning ET should a clear winner materialise. If the race is tight, we could be waiting for days for a winner to be confirmed.

Welcome to The Times’s live coverage of today’s US presidential election. Our reporters will be filing updates and analysis from Washington, Mar-a-Lago in Florida and New York, along with all seven battleground states that are likely to determine the race.

After an eventful campaign during which Donald Trump survived two assassination attempts, the race remains in the balance. Since Kamala Harris replaced President Biden as her party’s nominee in July, she has largely restored the Democratic coalition and remained neck-and-neck with Trump in the polls.