80% of voters in the US have decided who they will vote for before September
Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump, who have been locked in a vicious battle for votes for months, remain separated by 1,2 percentage points in favor of Harris according to the latest polls on Monday. But that lead is within the margin of error.
Meanwhile, Europe and the rest of the world remain tense as the outcome of the vote could lead to protests and legal challenges similar to the aftermath of the vote four years ago.
Counting votes in Milwaukee (Wisconsin)
About 31.000 ballots will be counted in Wisconsin's capital because of faulty vote counting machines, the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal reported, citing city spokesman Jeff Fleming.
Fleming says the vote count is being conducted with great care.
Carolina Reinwald, a spokeswoman for the Milwaukee Board of Elections, says the doors of the tabulating machines were not properly closed, and there was a problem with the counting, so more than 30.000 ballots had to be counted.
Meanwhile, CNN released a poll showing that 80% of US voters had chosen a candidate before September.
This number is quite significant considering that Kamala Harris only entered the race in August, following the surprise withdrawal of President Joe Biden. Until then, many voters said they didn't know who she was or what she stood for.
Meanwhile, 7% of voters surveyed say they made up their minds in September, 6% in October, 3% in the last week and 3% in the last few days.
The first states to watch for results: Georgia and North Carolina
The 47th president of the United States will be decided by seven states that flip between Democrats and Republicans with each election cycle: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada.
The first signs of how things are going will come from North Carolina and Georgia, where officials have already begun counting mail-in ballots, speeding up the process significantly. This means that by midnight (6am CET) most of the results can be had. However, this does not necessarily mean that the US will immediately get a new president, or that it will show in detail which of the two candidates more citizens voted for: If the difference between them is very narrow, as happened in 2020, we may have to wait longer until the result is final.
But even if we don't have the full picture, the trends in the two states can give a solid indication of how things are going for Harris and Trump. In 2020, North Carolina voted Republican, while Georgia, in an unexpected twist, voted Democrat.
