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International Desk //

There is only one week left for the US presidential election. The two contenders in the hotly contested race, current Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, have both been busy campaigning.

Both have been lashing out at each other at various public meetings ahead of the November 5 polls. Local time on Tuesday, Kamala Harris is in Washington and Donald Trump is campaigning in key Pennsylvania, known as the ‘Battle Ground’.

Meanwhile, about 4.5 million voters have cast early votes in the presidential election so far in various states. News from Reuters, Deutsche Welle, AFP, Al Jazeera.

Vice President Kamala Harris vowed to break down “walls of fear and division” at a campaign rally in Michigan on Monday, just over a week before the election. In 2022, the majority of youth votes were cast here. With that in mind, Democrats are trying to energize the youth. Along with that, Trump is trying to exploit the racist comments he has made at various times.

He is reported to have addressed a gathering of 20,000 people in Washington on Tuesday local time.

And former President Donald Trump attacked critics including former First Lady Michelle Obama in a rally in Atlanta, Georgia on Monday. There, he called Michelle Obama ‘nasty’ and also called Kamala Harris a ‘fascist’. On Tuesday, Trump also spoke at a campaign rally on the Ellipse, just outside the White House.

In this election, there is a glimpse of a fierce fight between the two candidates. Their victory or defeat may depend mainly on 7 states. These include Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada. With less than a week left for the polls, the two candidates have not been able to narrow the gap between them in these states.

According to the US Constitution, each state has its own vote in presidential elections. In presidential elections, each state has a fixed number of electors (electors) based on population under a complex electoral college system.

For 48 of the 50 states, the rule is that whoever wins the popular vote gets all the electoral votes in that state; No matter how narrow the margin of the popular vote there is.

A presidential candidate needs 270 out of 538 electoral votes to win. And in this case, swing states play a big role.

According to FiveThirtyEight’s daily poll tracker, Kamala Harris is leading by a narrow margin in Michigan. And Trump is slightly ahead of Orange in Pennsylvania and Nevada, and by significant margins in North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia. In Wisconsin, the two are almost evenly matched. In all seven states, the two candidates are within two points of each other. So what will be the final result only time will tell.

About 45 million or 450 million Americans have so far cast early ballots ahead of next week’s election, according to data released Monday, a monitoring agency said. The University of Florida’s Election Lab counted about 44 million 87 thousand ballots.

Voters cast their early votes by mail or in person. Those who went to the polls early and those who mailed in their ballots are roughly equal in number.

Many voters will not be able to go to the polls as Tuesday, November 5, is a working day in the middle of the week. Because of this, voters in almost every state in the United States have the opportunity to vote early.