Here's what to watch on Election Day in the US

WASHINGTON (AP) — It's Election Day. Polls opened Tuesday across the nation and Americans cast ballots in the 2024 presidential election. In a deeply divided nation, the election is a true toss-up between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump.

We know there are seven battleground states that will decide the outcome, barring a major surprise. But major questions persist about the timing of the results, the makeup of the electorate, the influx of misinformation — even the possibility of political violence. At the same time, both sides are prepared for a protracted legal battle that could complicate things further.

Here's what to watch on Election Day 2024:

Given all the twists and turns in recent months, it's easy to overlook the historical significance of this election.

Harris would become the first female president in the United States' 248-year history. If elected, she would also be the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to hold the office. Harris and her campaign have largely played down gender and race, fearing that they might alienate some supporters. But the significance of a Harris win would not be lost on historians.

A Trump victory would represent a different kind of historical accomplishment. He would become the first person convicted of a felony elected to the U.S. presidency, having been convicted of 34 felony counts in a New York hush-money case little more than five months ago.

Trump, who is still facing felony charges in at least two separate criminal cases, argued that he is the victim of a politicized justice system. And tens of millions of voters apparently believe him — or they're willing to overlook his extraordinary legal baggage.

Election Day in the United States is now often considered election week as each state follows its own rules and practices for counting ballots — not to mention the legal challenges — that can delay the results. But the truth is, nobody knows how long it will take for the winner to be announced this time.

In 2020, The Associated Press declared President Joe Biden the winner on Saturday afternoon — four days after polls closed. But even then, The AP called North Carolina for Trump 10 days after Election Day and Georgia for Biden 16 days later after hand recounts.

Four years earlier, the 2016 election was decided just hours after most polls closed. The AP declared Trump the winner on election night at 2:29 a.m. (it was technically Wednesday morning on the East Coast).

This time, both campaigns believe the race is extremely close across the seven swing states that are expected to decide the election, barring a major surprise: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The size of the map and the tightness of the race make it hard to predict when a winner could be declared.

Look to two East Coast battleground states, North Carolina and Georgia, where the results could come in relatively quickly. That doesn't mean we'll get the final results in those states quickly if the returns are close, but they are the first swing states that might offer a sense of what kind of night we're in for.

To go deeper, look to urban and suburban areas in the industrial North and Southeast, where Democrats have made gains since 2020.

In North Carolina, Harris’ margins in Wake and Mecklenburg counties, home to the state capital of Raleigh and the state’s largest city, Charlotte, respectively, will reveal how much Trump will need to squeeze out of the less-populated rural areas he has dominated.

In Pennsylvania, Harris needs heavy turnout in deep blue Philadelphia, but she's also looking to boost the Democrats’ advantage in the arc of suburban counties to the north and west of the city. She has campaigned aggressively in Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties, where Biden improved on Clinton’s 2016 winning margins. The Philadelphia metro area, including the four collar counties, accounts for 43% of Pennsylvania’s vote.

Elsewhere in the Blue Wall, Trump needs to blunt Democratic growth in Michigan's key suburban counties outside of Detroit, especially Oakland County. He faces the same challenge in Wisconsin's Waukesha County outside of Milwaukee.

Trump spent the very early hours of Election Day in Michigan, where he wrapped up a late-night rally in Grand Rapids. The Republican candidate plans to spend the day in Florida, where he is expected to vote in person -- despite previously saying he would vote early. He's scheduled to hold a campaign watch party in Palm Beach Tuesday night.

Harris plans to attend an Election Night party at Howard University in Washington, a historically Black university where she graduated with a degree in economics and political science in 1986 and was an active member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

Aside from Howard, she has no public schedule announced for Election Day.

Harris said Sunday that she had “just filled out” her mail-in ballot and it was “on its way to California.”

It's unclear which voters will show up to cast ballots on Tuesday.

More than 82 million people voted early — either in person or through the mail. So many people already cast ballots that some officials say the polls in states like Georgia might be a “ghost town” on Election Day.

One major reason for the surge is that that Trump has generally encouraged his supporters to vote early this time, a reversal from 2020 when he called on Republicans to vote only in-person on Election Day. The early vote numbers confirm that millions of Republicans have heeded Trump's call in recent weeks.

The key question, however, is whether the surge of Republicans who voted early this time will ultimately cannibalize the number of Republicans who show up on Tuesday.

There are also shifts on the Democratic side. Four years ago, as the pandemic lingered, Democrats overwhelmingly cast their ballots early. But this time around, without the public health risk, it's likely that more Democrats will show up in person on Election Day.

That balance on both sides is critical as we try to understand the early returns. And it's on the campaigns to know which voters they still need to turn out on Tuesday. On that front, Democrats may have an advantage.

Trump's campaign and the Republican National Committee have outsourced much of their get-out-the-vote operation operation to outside groups, including one funded largely by billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk that’s facing new questions about its practices. Harris’ campaign, by contrast, is running a more traditional operation that features more than 2,500 paid staffers and 357 offices in battleground states alone.

Trump has been aggressively promoting baseless claims in recent days questioning the integrity of the election. He falsely insists that he can lose only if Democrats cheat, even as polls show that show the race is a true toss-up.

Trump could again claim victory on election night regardless of the results, just as he did in 2020.

Such rhetoric can have serious consequences as the nation saw when Trump loyalists stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in one of the darkest days in modern American history. And unfortunately, there is still a potential of further violence this election season.

The Republican National Committee will have thousands of “election integrity” poll monitors in place on Tuesday searching for any signs of fraud, which critics fear could lead to harassment of voters or election workers. In some key voting places, officials have requested the presence of sheriff deputies in addition to bulletproof glass and panic buttons that connect poll managers to a local 911 dispatcher.

At the same time, Trump allies note that he has faced two assassination attempts in recent months that raise the possibility of further threats against him. And police in Washington and other cities are preparing for the possibility of serious Election Day unrest.

As always, it's worth noting that a broad coalition of top government and industry officials, many of them Republicans, found that the 2020 election was the “most secure” in American history.”

A poll worker holds a roll of "I Voted" stickers at a polling place, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Dearborn, Mich. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

People mark their ballots at the polling place at Tysons-Pimmit Regional Library in Falls Church, Va., Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Voters stand in line while waiting for a polling place to open, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Springfield, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

Voters cast their ballots at the Bronx County Supreme Court in New York on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Here's what to watch as Election Day approaches in the U.S.

This combination of file photos shows Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, left, speaking at a campaign rally in Charlotte, N.C., on Sept. 12, 2024, 2024, and Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaking a town hall campaign event in Warren, Mich., on Sept. 27, 2024. (AP Photo)

Here's what to watch as Election Day approaches in the U.S.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI says it recovered the black banner of the Islamic State group from the truck that an American man from Texas smashed into New Year's partygoers in New Orleans' French Quarter, killing 15 people.

The investigation is expected to look in part at any support or inspiration that driver Shamsud-Din Jabbar may have drawn from that violent Middle East-based group or from any of at least 19 affiliated groups around the world.

President Joe Biden said Wednesday evening that the FBI had told him that “mere hours before the attack, (Jabbar) posted videos on social media indicating that he was inspired” by IS.

Routed from its self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria and Iraq by a U.S. military-led coalition more than five years ago, IS has focused on seizing territory in the Middle East more than on staging massive al-Qaida-style attacks on the West.

But in its home territory, IS has welcomed any chance to behead Americans and other foreigners who come within its reach. The main group at peak strength claimed a handful of coordinated operations targeting the West, including a 2015 Paris plot that killed 130 people. It has had success, although abated in recent years, in inspiring people around the world who are drawn to its ideology to carry out ghastly attacks on innocent civilians.

Here's a look at IS, its current status, and some of the offshoot armed groups and so-called lone wolves that have killed under the group's flag.

The main group also goes by IS, ISIS, or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

It began as a breakaway group from al-Qaida.

Under leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, IS had seized stunning amounts of territory in Iraq and Syria by 2014. Within territory under its control, it killed, raped and otherwise abused members of other faiths and targeted fellow Sunni Muslims who strayed from its harsh interpretation of Islam.

By 2019, a U.S.-led military intervention had driven IS from the cities and towns of its self-claimed state. Al-Baghdadi killed himself, and two children near him, that same year, detonating an explosive vest as U.S. forces closed in on him.

Currently, the main IS is a scattered and much weakened organization working to regain fighting strength and territory in Syria and Iraq. Experts warn that the group is reconstituting itself there.

And that flag? Typically, it's a black banner with white Arabic letters expressing a central tenet of the Islamic faith. Countless Muslims around the world see the coercive violence of the group as a perversion of their religion.

Some experts argue that IS is powerful today partly as a brand, inspiring both militant groups and individuals in attacks that the group itself may have no real role in.

The group's credo and military successes have led armed extremist organizations in Africa, Asia and Europe to swear allegiance to it. It's a greatly decentralized alliance.

Many of the offshoot groups have carried out lethal attacks. Islamic State-Khorasan, an Afghanistan-based group, is one of the most lethal currently. Attacks linked to that affiliate include the March 2024 killings of about 130 people at a Moscow theater, the August 2021 bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members and about 170 Afghans as the U.S. was withdrawing from Afghanistan, and killings in Pakistan and elsewhere.

The New Orleans rampage reflects the deadliest IS-inspired attack on U.S. soil in several years.

Other attacks over the past decade include a 2014 shooting rampage by a husband-and-wife team who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, and a 2016 massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, by a gunman who fatally shot 49 people, pledged his allegiance on a 911 call to al-Baghdadi and raged against the “filthy ways of the West.”

Those attacks coincided with an influx of thousands of Westerners — some of them Americans — who traveled to Syria in hopes of joining the so-called caliphate.

In the aftermath of those killings, the threat from radicalized followers of the group had appeared to wane in the Defense Department strikes have taken out other IS members and the FBI has had significant success in disrupting plots before they come to fruition.

But over the past year, FBI officials have warned about a significantly elevated threat of international terrorism following Hamas’ rampage in Israel in October 2023 and the resulting Israeli strikes in Gaza.

The SITE intelligence group reported IS supporters celebrating in online chat groups Wednesday.

“If it’s a brother, he’s a legend. Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great,” it quoted one as saying.

President Joe Biden makes a statement on the latest developments in New Orleans from Camp David, Md., Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Emergency services attend the scene on Bourbon Street after a vehicle drove into a crowd on New Orleans' Canal and Bourbon Street, Wednesday Jan. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

This undated passport photo provided by the FBI on Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025, shows Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar. (FBI via AP)

A black flag with white lettering lies on the ground rolled up behind a pickup truck that a man drove into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing and injuring a number of people, early Wednesday morning, Jan. 1, 2025. The FBI said they recovered an Islamic State group flag, which is black with white lettering, from the vehicle. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)