One of the most tumultuous Presidential campaigns in American history enters its final phase on November 5th, as voters head to the polls to choose between Donald J. Trump, the forty-fifth President and a three-time Republican nominee, and Vice-President Kamala Harris, who ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket following President Joseph R. Biden’s withdrawal from the race. In the weeks before Election Day, polls showed a tightening national contest, along with a tossup in the key battleground states that will determine the outcome. The first polls will close at 8 P.M. E.T. on November 5th, and The New Yorker will publish results, as reported by the Associated Press, until the final vote is tallied.
In addition to the Presidential race, control of the House, the Senate, and eleven governors’ mansions are up for grabs. In the House, Republicans will seek to expand on their seven-seat majority, while Democrats hope to reverse their narrow loss of the chamber in 2022. In the Senate, thirty-four seats are being contested, twenty-three of them held by Democrats or by Independents who caucus with the Party. Republicans need a net gain of just two seats in order to gain control of the body.
The results could prove historic in a variety of ways. Harris, if she wins, will become the first woman elected President, as well as the first person of Asian ancestry. In her unusually short campaign, Harris has sought to rally support by offering an economic platform focussed on the middle class and on families, and by tapping into popular anger over the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, in 2022, which overturned the abortion protections of Roe v. Wade. She has faced challenges on several fronts, including widespread dissatisfaction over the inflation that followed the COVID-19 pandemic, which many voters have blamed on President Biden. In the final weeks of the race, Harris labored to shore up declining support from several traditional Democratic voting blocs, including African American men and Latinos, and young people and Arab Americans angered over U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza.
Trump, in his third race, hopes to become just the second politician to regain the White House after losing an initial bid for reëlection. Following a trial in New York over hush-money payments to an adult-film star, a jury found Trump guilty of thirty-four felony counts, making him the first former President to become a convicted felon. He survived two assassination attempts, including one in which a bullet grazed the his ear at a rally. In the closing days of his campaign, Trump has returned to the themes that have defined his career in politics, stoking xenophobia, lying about the outcome of the 2020 election, and refusing to say whether he would accept a loss in this one.
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