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

President Joe Biden will watch the election results tonight from the White House.

Just a few months ago he thought he would potentially be accepting a win tonight, but a shocking performance in his first debate against Republican candidate former President led to unanimous calls for him to step down.

After days of speculation, he announced he would not run again, leading to Kamala Harris being lifted to the top of the ticket.

“We’ve made a lot of progress, and Kamala will build on that progress,” Mr Biden told media at a carpenter’s union hall in Scranton on Saturday.

“We’ve asked a lot of each other, unions and I – unions and me. And I ask you one more thing. I’m asking you – for your support for Kamala and for Tim Walz.

“I’m not just asking it for me. I mean, I’m going to be gone.”

Senator and vice presidential candidate JD Vance has cast his vote in person at St. Anthony of Padua Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

“I feel good, you never know until you know, but I feel good about this race,” Mr Vance said.

“I felt good about my own race a couple years ago when I voted in this exact same spot.

“Hopefully it goes as well for President Trump and me as it went for me a couple years ago in the state of Ohio.”

An overwhelming 8.3 million registered voters in Florida voted early in the 2024 presidential election.

Secretary of State Cord Byrd confirmed 560,000 Floridians have already voted this morning, Mr Byrd said at a media briefing on Tuesday morning local time.

Election supervisors across the state have not registered any issues.

Mr Byrd said the result for Florida, where Mr Trump lives, will be known before you “go to bed tonight.

Polls have now opened in eight states including Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, New Hampshire and Virginia.

Most polling locations opened at 6 am for voters to cast their ballots. Polls have also begun opening in Indiana and Kentucky, with some in the central time zone set to open at 7am.

In Maine, the majority of polls opened at 6am, but municipalities with fewer than 500 people can open as late as 10am.

Polling booths have opened on the East Coast of America, with early risers beginning to cast their ballots in the hotly-contested presidential election.

Polls have opened in Vermont, and over the next few hours, more states will follow as America decides who will be the country’s next president.

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

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are currently neck and neck in the polls and last night made their final pitches to potential voters in battleground states.

Trump and 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.