Harris or Trump: America decides in knife-edge election

WASHINGTON: American voters deliver their verdict on Tuesday after an extraordinarily turbulent election that will either make Kamala Harris the first woman president in US history or deliver Donald Trump a comeback that sends shockwaves around the world.

As the first polling stations opened on Election Day, Democratic vice president Harris, 60, and Republican former president Trump, 78, are dead-even in the tightest and most volatile White House race of modern times.

The bitter rivals spent their final day of the campaign frenetically working to get their supporters out to the polls and trying to win over any last undecided voters in the swing states expected to decide the outcome.

But despite a series of head-spinning twists in the campaign -- from Harris´s dramatic entrance when President Joe Biden dropped out in July, to Trump riding out two assassination attempts and a criminal conviction -- nothing has broken the deadlock in the opinion polls.

Polling stations opened at 6:00 am (1100 GMT) on the US east coast and tens of millions of voters are expected to cast their ballots, on top of the more than 82 million people who have already voted early in the preceding weeks.

A final outcome may not be known for several days if the results are as close as the polls suggest, adding to the tension in a deeply divided nation. The world is anxiously watching, as the outcome will have major implications for conflicts in the Middle East, for Russia´s war in Ukraine, and for tackling climate change -- which Trump calls a hoax. Harris and Trump are effectively tied in the seven main swing states -- Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.

On the eve of the vote, Harris went all-in on the must-win state of Pennsylvania, rallying on the Philadelphia steps made famous in the “Rocky” movie and declaring: “momentum is on our side.”

However “this could be one of the closest races in history -- every single vote matters,” cautioned Harris, who was joined by celebrities including Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey. Trump -- who would become the first convicted felon and oldest person to win the presidency -- cast himself as the only solution to an apocalyptic vision of the country in terminal decline and overrun by “savage” migrants.

“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 his closing rally in Grand Rapids in the key swing state of Michigan, after touring North Carolina and Pennsylvania.