US voters head to polls as turbulent election season nears climax

he dizzying presidential contest between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris hurtled toward an uncertain finish on Tuesday as millions of Americans headed to the polls to choose between two sharply different visions for the country.
A race churned by unprecedented events – two assassination attempts against Trump, President Joe Biden’s surprise withdrawal and Harris’ rapid rise – remained neck and neck as Election Day dawned, even after billions of dollars in spending and months of frenetic campaigning.

The first ballots cast on Tuesday mirrored the nationwide divide. Overnight, the six registered voters in the tiny hamlet of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, split their votes between Harris and Trump in voting just past midnight.
Across the East Coast and Midwest, Americans began arriving at polls Tuesday morning to cast their votes.
In Raleigh, North Carolina, Johnny Graves had set up a DJ booth outside the polling station at Lincoln A.M.E. Church, pepping up morning voters with the Miley Cyrus track “Party in the U.S.A.”

Taylor Grabow, a 27-year-old nurse, said she voted for Harris after previously voting for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020, favoring Harris’s opposition to criminalizing abortions.
“I woke up in such a good mood and feeling excited,” she said.
In Asheville, North Carolina, Ginny Buddenberg, a 38-year-old stay-at-home mom brought her two twin daughters with her to vote in Haw Creek. She voted for Trump.

“There’s just a lot of politics in the classroom, and I feel like there’s too much of a push about politics and introducing different kinds of sexual education at a younger and younger age,” she said. “Let’s go to school and learn how to read.”
Trump’s campaign has suggested he may declare victory on election night even while millions of ballots have yet to be counted, as he did four years ago. The former president has repeatedly said any defeat could only stem from widespread fraud, echoing his false claims from 2020. The winner may not be known for days if the margins in battleground states are as slim as expected.
No matter who wins, history will be made.
Harris, 60, the first female vice president, would become the first woman, Black woman and South Asian American to win the presidency. Trump, 78, the only president to be impeached twice and the first former president to be criminally convicted, would also become the first president to win non-consecutive terms in more than a century.
Opinion polls show the candidates running neck and neck in each of the seven states likely to determine the winner: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Reuters/Ipsos polling shows Harris leading among women by 12 percentage points and Trump winning among men by seven percentage points.
The contest reflects a deeply polarized nation whose divisions have only grown starker during a fiercely competitive race. Trump has employed increasingly dark and apocalyptic rhetoric on the campaign trail. Harris has urged Americans to come together, warning that a second Trump term would threaten the underpinnings of American democracy. ( Reuters)

Photos: Reuters