“We probably won’t find out the result tonight”

(TNND) — Americans go to the polls on Tuesday to elect a new president.

Polls leading up to Election Day have shown a veritable neck-and-neck race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.

All times listed below are Eastern times.

VERMONT GOP GOVERNOR VOTES FOR HARRIS

Vermont's Republican governor, who is running for re-election, said Tuesday he voted for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

Gov. Phil Scott also defied his party affiliation in 2020 and voted for President Joe Biden over then-President Donald Trump.

Scott said Trump was too divisive to get his vote and it wasn't easy as a sitting Republican governor to vote against his party's nominee.

HARRIS, TRUMP NOTCH FIRST STATE WINS AS POLL CLOSE, 7:00 p.m

Trump and Harris each received their first Electoral College votes with the conclusion of elections in some eastern states.

Trump won Kentucky and Indiana, accounting for 19 of the 270 votes needed to win the White House.

Harris' victory in Vermont gives her three votes.

Polls in the eastern United States close at 7 p.m

In some states in the eastern United States, polls closed at 7 p.m., including in the crucial swing state of Georgia.

In-person voting in Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia ended at 7 p.m., except for voters still in line when polls closed.

Results will be released once officials tabulate the votes.

The first polls close in parts of Kentucky and Indiana at 6 p.m

The first polls to close on election night will be in eastern Indiana and Kentucky and will close at 6 p.m. However, voters who were still in line at the time of the closure can still vote. Polling places in parts of both states that observe Central Time will remain open for another hour.

VOTERS UNHAPPY, 5 p.m

Initial poll results published by CNN on Tuesday evening show that almost three quarters of voters are dissatisfied with the situation in the USA

CNN shared the data around 5 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, an hour before the first polls closed. The network said it asked Americans how they “assess the way things are going in the country.”

A total of 72% of respondents reported feeling negative, with 43% answering “unhappy” and 29% answering “angry.” Meanwhile, 19% told CNN they were “satisfied” and 7% responded “excited.”

ELECTION CONCERNS

According to the Denver Post, officials in Denver are investigating possible voter fraud after discovering suspicious ballots.

And Milwaukee election officials announced Tuesday afternoon that they will have to redo about 31,000 ballots because of a “sealing error” in the tabulation machines, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other local news outlets.

OBAMA PREACHES PATIENCE, 4 p.m

Former President Barack Obama is warning voters not to jump to conclusions as it takes days to determine the winner of the 2024 presidential election.

The former president reminded social media users Tuesday afternoon that “counting every ballot in 2020 took several days.” He added that it's “very likely we won't know the result tonight either.”

GOOGLE

Google said in a statement Tuesday afternoon that it had fixed an issue that caused the “Where to Vote” feature to appear for users who wanted to vote for Harris, but not for users looking for information about how you can vote for Trump.

Social media users said Google would show the “Where to vote” map feature when a user searched “Where to vote for Harris?” Meanwhile, the map feature would not appear when “where to vote for Trump” was typed into the Google search bar.

Google claimed the problem was due to a county in Texas, Harris County, sharing a name with the vice president. There is no “Trump County” in the United States.

The statement also explained that “very few people” search for polling places by searching Google for “where to vote for Trump” and “where to vote for Harris,” suggesting that the problem is a negligible one had an influence on the election.

TRUMP REACTS TO OPRAH COMMENT

Trump said he was less than thrilled when he heard Oprah Winfrey tell voters that it was “entirely possible that we will never have the opportunity to cast a vote again” if they don't vote for Harris.

Winfrey made the comments Monday night at a rally for Harris in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state.

“She should be ashamed of herself,” Trump said of Winfrey after voting in Florida on Tuesday.

TRUMP CAMPAIGN WILL HAVE A “GOOD NIGHT.”

The Trump campaign has showcased the results of an NBC poll released Sunday that suggest women and voters in urban areas are voting early in smaller numbers.

Trump campaign spokeswoman Elizabeth Pipko called the poll “monumental” and said it means Trump will have a “good night” this Election Day.

HARRIS VOTES BY MAIL

The presidential candidates have cast their votes in this razor-thin election.

Harris told reporters over the weekend that she voted by mail in her home state of California.

Trump voted at a polling station in Florida on Tuesday.

Closer than a coin toss, 3 p.m

Respected statistician Nate Silver released the results of his “final and definitive” election forecast model on Tuesday.

Silver, the founder of the poll aggregation website FiveThirtyEight, ran 80,000 simulations of the Trump-Harris matchup.

Harris won in 40,012 of those simulations, giving Trump 39,988 simulated victories.

“This is my fifth presidential election – and my ninth general election overall, if you count the midterms – and there has never been anything like it,” Silver wrote in his newsletter. “From the model's perspective, however, the race is literally closer than a coin toss: empirically, heads win 50.5 percent of the time, more than Harris' 50.015 percent.”

Stay in line

Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, urged voters to stay in line despite long waits at polling stations.

THE TRUMP ERA

Trump has been at the center of American politics for about a decade, reshaping his party in his image and trying to recapture the White House as a rare three-time presidential candidate.

Whether Trump wins on Tuesday or not, has the Trump era changed the Republican Party for the foreseeable future?

“Yes, that is the fundamental question,” Casey Burgat, program director for legislative affairs at George Washington University, said Monday. “And he’s already redesigned it for me. We see it in the types of candidates who run, in the types of legislators who retire and decide not to run again, in the people who run for which primaries in which districts. He fundamentally redesigned it. He took over the Republican Party. And the big question was always what comes next.

Read the full story here.

Maryland governor in presidential race, 2:21 p.m

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said Tuesday that men who choose not to vote for Harris are disregarding the protections of their female family members.

The comment came during an Election Day appearance by Moore on MSNBC.

How does AP call race?

The Associated Press – which has been compiling voting results and picking winners from election offices across the country for more than 170 years – said it calls races when “there is no possibility that the trailing candidate can close the gap.”

TRUMP VOTES, 11:30 a.m. Eastern

Trump cast his vote in Florida on Tuesday and appeared optimistic when speaking to reporters.

“We came into the race today with a very big lead, and it looks like the Republicans showed up in big numbers,” Trump said. “So, we’ll see how it turns out.”

Florida is likely to go Trump's way, with the race falling to a handful of swing states, including neighboring Georgia.

Trump said he ran a great campaign.

“Perhaps the best of the three,” he said.

He acknowledged that a winner might not be known until Tuesday evening and said he had not prepared a speech.

Who will the voters choose?

A summary of hundreds of polls published by The Hill shows both candidates received 48% of the vote.

The election will be decided by voters in seven swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The final New York Times/Siena College swing state polls showed nearly all races within the margin of error, meaning any apparent lead should be taken with a grain of salt.

Another element in two swing states is the abortion issue.

Voters will decide on 11 abortion initiatives in 10 states, including the battleground states of Arizona and Nevada.

“It could get people to get up off the couch and out of the house to vote for abortion rights. And my guess is that those people would probably vote for Harris,” Anne Whitesell, an assistant professor of political science at Miami University in Ohio, previously told The National News Desk.

Immigration is a top issue for many voters, and this issue favors Trump.

The economy, the most important issue for voters, also generally favored Trump in surveys in the weeks and months before the election.

Voter divisions outside the party could also decide this election.

One such divide is the gender gap, where the Times/Siena College poll found Harris leading Trump among women, 54% to 42%, and Trump leading Harris among men, 55% to 41%.

There's a degree divide: polls show that nearly 60% of people with college degrees prefer Harris and 54% without degrees prefer Trump.

And Trump's ability to return to the White House may depend on his ability to win back the suburban voters he lost in 2020.

When Trump won in 2016, he had a two-point lead over suburban voters.

When he lost in 2020, he trailed by 11 points with suburban voters.

Polls leading up to this election show Trump once again trailing among suburban voters. Reuters/Ipsos polls show him trailing Vice President Kamla Harris by six percentage points among suburban voters.

“I think things are so complicated that mobilization (of voters on both sides) is only at 99% right now,” Seth McKee, a politics professor at Oklahoma State University, said previously.