Latest US Election: Polls Open for Millions; Trump ad makes photo faux pas; Rihanna jokes about taking passports to vote | american news

By Shingi Mararike, News Correspondent

Today, America goes to the polls in what could be one of the tightest elections in modern history.

Beyond a race that could be decided by the slimmest of margins, this campaign is a tale of two candidates offering starkly different visions of America.

Kamala Harris is a former prosecutor known for her fierce cross-examination skills, while Donald Trump has spent time on the other side of the courtroom this year as the defendant facing a series of legal problems.

Harris has tried to bank on the joy of taking the stage at campaign events to the soundtrack of Beyonce’s Freedom, while Trump has tried to assume the role of the outsider, defined by the image of him clutching his bloody ear and telling supporters to “fight, fight, fight”.

These differences have also informed the platforms the pair have chosen to occupy.

Among Harris’ late campaign highlights was an appearance on America’s most popular late night sketch show, Saturday Night Live, while Trump was interviewed for three hours by popular podcaster Joe Rogan.

After spending some time with voters in the swing state of Arizona, I’ve gotten a little sense of how these competing visions have translated to the American public.

One young Republican voter I spoke with, Dane Jensen, directly called out Trump’s continued campaign after the Butler, Pennsylvania assassination as a show of strength that was admirable, while telling me that people like the former president and his supporter Elon Musk — the world’s richest man – represent the ideals he strives for.

For others like Renee Rojas, Trump’s smashing approach to politics was a turn off. She cited how Trump talks about women as part of why she has decided to turn her back on the Republicans for the first time in her life.

However, the divide between Trump and Harris is more than a surface level, it folds into the issues that could see this election won and lost.

There is perhaps no better example of this than this weekend’s shock poll suggesting Harris could win in the reliably red state of Iowa.

The hypothetical outcome is potentially driven by strong support among women who trust Harris more on abortion than Trump, the man who added three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, paving the way for Roe v Wade to be overturned.

Harris has made reproductive rights the focal point of her campaign. On the other hand, the perception of Trump among some quarters as a savvy businessman and no-nonsense outsider has translated well in the polls on issues such as border security and the economy.

Ultimately, the outcome of this election will be tied to a very specific number, the 270 electoral votes needed to secure victory.

But what this campaign has exposed, with two very different protagonists at its heart, is that it is perception as much as policy proposals that can prove decisive.