Tens of millions of Americans vote Tuesday to decide whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will enter the White House, an election under high tension and with historic stakes for the United States and the rest of the world.
In a message on social networks, the Democratic candidate, who could become the first woman to lead the world’s leading power, called for “opening the next chapter of the greatest story ever told”. “We vote because we love our country and we believe in the promises of America,” she wrote.
His Republican rival, who is making a spectacular political comeback after being convicted in court, published a video opening with a tattered American flag, with images of migrants surging across the border or armed delinquents, in contrast with workers, miners, police officers or activists from his meetings.
“We are asked to accept the situation as it is. And we wonder if America can make a comeback. We can,” assures the Republican. “When we are knocked down, we do not stay there, we get up and we fight.”
More than 82 million Americans have already cast their vote early. It is impossible to know whether it will take hours or days of counting to decide between the 60-year-old vice-president and the 78-year-old former leader, whose personalities and visions could not be more different.
Darlene Taylor cast her ballot at an elementary school in Erie, Pennsylvania, a key state that alone could swing the outcome of this extremely close election.
The 56-year-old woman, who lives on social benefits, wears a t-shirt displaying “Trump-Vance”, the tandem she wants to see lead this federation of 50 states and 335 million inhabitants.
“We don’t want four more years of high inflation, this price of gasoline and lies,” she explains.
Wearing a baseball cap, Marchelle Beason, 46, voted for Kamala Harris.
“I think it will reconcile the whole population, the whole world, because we are currently so divided,” she said. “She acts for peace, while everything her opponent says is systematically negative.”
At the meetings of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, two apparently irreconcilable Americas have flocked in recent weeks, each camp being convinced that the other will lead the country to disaster.
The former prosecutor and senator from California called her rival a “fascist”. The ex-business tycoon told her that she was “dumb as hell” and that she was going to “destroy” the country.
Neck to elbow
The verdict at the polls will be historic in any case.
The latest polls give the two adversaries almost tied in the seven crucial states, those which, in this indirect vote, will give the Democrat or the Republican the sufficient number of electors to reach the threshold of 270 out of 538, synonymous with victory.
To try to convince in just three months of campaigning, Kamala Harris focused on a message of protection of democracy and the right to abortion, aimed at women and moderate Republicans.
The Democrat, born to a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, is organizing her election night at her former university, the historically black Howard institution, in Washington.
Donald Trump, who left the White House in 2021 in a chaotic context, having survived two impeachment procedures, will be in Palm Beach, Florida, his state of residence where he voted on Tuesday.
In this campaign, the billionaire replayed the same score as in 2016 and 2020, presenting himself as an anti-system candidate close to the people, the only one capable of saving a country ravaged according to him by migrants and galloping inflation.
Drones, snipers
Tuesday concludes a stunning race, marked by the abrupt entry into the running of the vice-president in July, replacing aging President Joe Biden, and by two assassination attempts against the former Republican president, four times indicted criminally.
What happens next remains a big unknown.
Both camps have already initiated dozens of legal actions, while two out of three Americans fear an eruption of violence after the election.
Some polling stations have turned into fortresses, monitored by drones and with snipers on the roofs.
Tuesday morning, the federal police, the FBI, warned of false videos circulating and calling into question the integrity of voting operations.
In the federal capital Washington, metal barriers surround the White House, the Capitol and other sensitive sites. Downtown businesses have covered their windows with wooden boards.
The images of January 6, 2021, when Trumpists attacked the seat of the American Congress, remain in everyone’s minds.
Nothing says that the country will be shaken by similar violence.
Donald Trump, however, has already laid the foundations for a new challenge, accusing the Democrats of “cheating like hell”.
And the Democratic camp says it “expects” the Republican to declare himself the winner prematurely, as he did in 2020.
Gregory Walton, Sébastien Blanc and Camille Camdessus, with AFP
