US election live updates: Polls open on the East Coast as America chooses its next president

It’s officially US Election Day and voting is underway on the East Coast of America.

It’s just turned 5am in Vermont, meaning polling booths have opened and early risers can cast their ballot.

Over the next few hours, more states will follow as America chooses its next president.

We’ll soon see polls open in New York and Virginia.

Last night, the presidential candidates made their final late-night pitches to potential voters in battleground states.

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris closed out their campaigns in starkly different moods: The former president, appearing drained at arenas that were not filled, claimed that the country was on the brink of ruin, while the vice president promised a more united future as energized supporters chanted alongside her, “We’re not going back.”

In stop after stop, the presidential rivals essentially offered up two competing versions of reality in the final hours before Election Day. Trump repeatedly raised the spectre of unchecked immigration and the dangers of Democratic policies as he spoke to crowds in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, with another stop planned in Michigan.

With a comparatively more optimistic message, Harris crisscrossed Pennsylvania, which holds 19 electoral votes that could decide the race. Stopping in Scranton, Allentown and Pittsburgh before a nighttime rally in Philadelphia, Harris talked about bolstering the economy and restoring federal abortion rights. She asserted that Americans were “exhausted” and ready to move on from the politics of the past decade.

“America is ready for a fresh start,” she said to supporters on a college campus in Allentown, “where we see our fellow Americans not as an enemy but as a neighbour.”

With The New York Times

These two things are true about the presidential race: The polls show Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump effectively tied. And close polls do not necessarily mean there will be a close result.

This may feel counterintuitive, but the fact is that we are just a very normal polling error away from either candidate landing a decisive victory, especially in the Electoral College.

A lopsided result when there is an expectation of only razor-thin margins could further fan distrust in the polls and in the electoral process itself.

“You can have a close election in the popular vote and somebody could break 315 Electoral College votes, which will not look close,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion.

“Or you could get a popular vote that is 5 points” apart, he added, “which is, by today’s standards, a landslide — a word no one has used this year.”

Since 1998, election polls in presidential, House, Senate and governor’s races have diverged from the final vote tally by an average of 6 percentage points, according to an analysis from FiveThirtyEight. But in the 2022 midterm elections, that average error was 4.8 points, making it the most accurate polling cycle in the past quarter-century.

If polls were off this year, in either direction, by the same margin, the winning candidate would score a decisive victory.

Kaleigh Rogers, The New York Times

​Read the full analysis here. ​

As Americans ready themselves for the conclusion of what may be the most consequential, and strange, election in history, Donald Trump ends the campaign almost unbelievably popular.

With the election too close to call, a Wall Street Journal poll put Trump’s approval rating at 48 per cent, three percentage points ahead of Democratic nominee and great progressive hope Kamala Harris.

For a leader who welcomed the prospect of journalists covering one of his rallies being shot at, Trump’s enduring popularity is a sign of a fundamental shift in politics.

The power of elite opinion has been shattered.

​Read Aaron Patrick’s full analysis here.​

There are some great images flowing in of voters in Dixville Notch casting their ballots.

They might be a small county but every vote counts!

The Vice President didn’t add anything new in her speech at her final rally at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

However, as she approached the end of her speech, a sense of relief was observed.

It appeared Ms Harris was bubbling with excitement and joy as she finished the speech that marked the end of her 107-day campaign.

“Make no mistake, we will win,” Ms Harris said.

The crowd chanted “We will win” in response.

“America is ready for a fresh start,” Ms Harris said.

“The momentum is on our side,” Ms Harris said to a cheering Democrat crowd.

“We are optimistic and we are excited about what we can do.

“It is time for a new generation of leadership in America.

“I am ready to offer that leadership as the next President of the United States of America.

“This could be one of the closest races in history.

“Every vote matters.

The first in-person votes have been counted and announced in one county.

Dixville Notch is an unincorporated community in the Dixville township, located in New Hampshire, United States.

The county currently has a population of six.

In a 148-year tradition, the vote is cast at midnight and then immediately announced.

By 12.03am local time, the six votes had been cast, counted and verified.

“Three for Kamala Harris, three for Donald Trump,” the attorney general announced.

Currently, it’s a tie.

Oprah Winfrey has pleaded with Americans to vote, as if they don’t they might never have the chance to cast a ballot again.

“President John F Kennedy issues a challenge, asks not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” Winfrey said.

“Well, I am here to tell you what you can do for your country, what you can do for democracy.

“What you can do for the spirit of John Lewis and all the others who chose to walk across that bridge in Selma and fight for us all.

“What you can do for every young woman who has died because she could not receive the urgent medical attention she needed because of an abortion ban.

“What you can do for yourself and everyone and everything you cherish, is vote.

“You have got to vote.”

Winfrey said voters might feel exhausted, but every vote counts.

“We don’t get to sit this one out,” she said.

“If we don’t turn out tomorrow it’s entirely possible that we will never get the chance to cast a ballot again.”

Long-time Democrat supporter Oprah Winfrey has taken to the stage in Philadelphia to celebrate first-time voters.

The youth vote is a voting bloc that heavily supports Ms Harris over Mr Trump and plan to turn out in force on Tuesday.

One voter said she was voting for Ms Harris because of her policies and her respect for women’s reproductive rights.

Eddie, a Black professional soccer player with the Philadelphia Union said: “It was an honour as an African to exercise my vote, which my ancestors fought so hard for.”

A first-time voter said she would be waking up early to ensure she got her place.

A young woman planning to become an OBGYN explained she was voting for Harris so her patients’ rights would be respected and because she was a proud Puerto Rican.