AP PHOTOS: Election Day voting underway as Americans chose between Harris or Trump

Voters are heading to the polls to cast their ballots for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris in one of the nation’s most historic presidential races.

It’s raining across much of the nation’s midsection Tuesday morning and forecasters say storms are possible in large swaths of the country later in the day. That hasn't stopped lines of voters before dawn.

In Scranton, Pennsylvania, Liza Fortt, a 74-year-old Black woman, arrived at her polling location in a wheelchair and not feeling well. But she said she ventured out anyway to vote for Harris. She said she never thought she’d have such an opportunity — to cast a ballot for a Black woman in a presidential race.

“I’m proud, to see a woman, not only a woman, but a Black woman,” Fortt said.

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance voted in Cincinnati Tuesday morning.

“Look, I feel good. You never know until you know, but I feel good about this race,” Vance said after he and his wife cast their ballots.

People wait in line to vote at the Downtown Reno Library, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Reno, Nev. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vasquez)

An election worker processes mail-in ballots for the 2024 General Election at the Philadelphia Election Warehouse, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

Hirieth Cervantes, freshman music major in Columbia College Chicago, waits to vote outside Chicago City Loop Super Site polling place on Election Day in Chicago, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

An election worker processes mail-in ballots for the 2024 General Election at the Philadelphia Election Warehouse, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

The headstone of Susan B. Anthony is covered in "I voted" stickers at Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, N.Y., on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Lauren Petracca)

A voter works on her ballot at a polling place at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Simi Valley, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

People line up to vote outside Allegiant Stadium, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Election workers process mail-in ballots for the 2024 General Election at the Chester County, Pa., administrative offices, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in West Chester, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

An American flag flies in the wind as a voter leaves a polling site after casting a ballot on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Dearborn, Mich. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Kristin Scruggs votes at the 146-year-old Buck Creek school Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in rural Perry, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, center, votes with his sons at the St Anthony of Padua Maronite Catholic Church on election day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

People cast their ballots, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Three-year-old Zayn, sits on his father's shoulders as he inserts his ballot into a machine to vote at the First Presbyterian Church of Dearborn, on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Dearborn, Mich. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Voters fill out their ballots at a polling site at the First Presbyterian Church of Dearborn, on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Dearborn, Mich. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Beholder, a fictional monster in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, hangs over a voting site as voter cast their ballots on Election Day, at The Game Preserve store in Indianapolis, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

People arrive at a polling place, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Dearborn, Mich. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Voters stand in line outside a polling place at Madison Church, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Phoenix, Ariz. (AP Photo/Matt York)

Officials post notices before opening the doors to voters at American Legion Post 778 in Butler Township, Pa., on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Stickers sit on a table inside a polling place, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

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

Chicago school teacher Tabitha Berry, a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, fills out a ballot for the general election on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

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

Voters receive their ballots at a polling place, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Springfield, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

Liza Fortt, 74, center, accompanied by her son Timothy Walker, left, and husband Willie Fortt moves in line to cast her ballot for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris at a polling place at Scranton High School in Scranton, Pa., on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Voters stand in line outside a polling place at Madison Church, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Phoenix, Ariz. (AP Photo/Matt York)

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are rallying Tuesday as voters head to the polls on the last day of the presidential election and as more data piles up showing the economy remains solid.

The S&P 500 was up 1% in late trading and rising closer to its record set last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 345 points, or 0.8%, with a little less than an hour remaining in trading, while the Nasdaq composite was 1.2% higher.

The market got a lift from a report showing growth accelerated last month for retailers, transportation companies and other businesses in the U.S. services industries. That was despite economists’ expectations for a slowdown, and the Institute for Supply Management said it was the strongest growth in more than two years.

The strong data offered more hope that the U.S. economy will remain solid and avoid a long-feared recession following the worst inflation in generations.

Excitement about the artificial-intelligence boom also helped lift the stock market, as it has for much of the last year. Software company Palantir Technologies jumped 23.2% after delivering bigger profit and revenue than analysts expected for the latest quarter. It’s an industry known for thinking and talking big, and CEO Alexander Karp said, “We absolutely eviscerated this quarter, driven by unrelenting AI demand that won’t slow down.”

It helped offset a 6% drop for NXP Semiconductors. The Dutch company fell to one of the largest losses in the S&P 500 after warning that weakness it saw in the industrial and other markets during the latest quarter is spreading to Europe and the Americas.

The market's main event, though, is the election, even if the result may not be known for days or weeks as officials count all the votes. Such uncertainty could upset markets, along with an upcoming meeting by the Federal Reserve on interest rates later this week. The widespread expectation is for it to cut its main interest rate for a second straight time.

Despite all the uncertainty heading into the final day of voting, many professional investors suggest keeping the focus on the long term. The broad U.S. stock market has historically tended to rise regardless of which party wins the White House, even if each party's policies can help and hurt different industries' profits underneath the surface.

Since 1945, the S&P 500 has risen in 73% of the years where a Democrat was president and 70% of the years when a Republican was the nation’s chief executive, according to Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA.

The U.S. stock market has tended to rise more in magnitude when Democrats have been president, in part because a loss under George W. Bush’s term hurt the Republican’s average. Bush took over as the dot-com bubble was deflating and exited office when the 2008 global financial crisis and Great Recession were devastating markets.

Besides who will be president, other questions hanging over the market include whether the White House will be working with a unified Congress or one split by political parties, as well as whether the results will be contested.

The general hope among investors is often for split control of the U.S. government because that’s more likely to keep the status quo and avoid big changes that could drive the nation’s debt much, much higher.

As for a contested election, Wall Street has some precedent to look back to. In 2000, the S&P 500 dropped 5% in about five weeks after Election Day before Al Gore conceded to George W. Bush. That, though, also happened during the near-halving of the S&P 500 from March 2000 to October 2002 as the dot-com bubble deflated.

Four years ago, the S&P 500 rose the day after polls closed, even though a winner wasn’t clear yet. And it kept going higher even after former President Donald Trump refused to concede and challenged the results, creating plenty of uncertainty. A large part of that rally was due to excitement about the potential for a vaccine for COVID-19, which had just shut down the global economy.

The S&P 500 ended up rising 69.6% from Election Day 2020 through Monday, following President Joe Biden's win. It set its latest all-time high on Oct. 18, as the U.S. economy bounced back from the COVID-19 pandemic and managed to avoid a recession despite a jump in inflation.

In the four years before that, the S&P 500 rose 57.5% from Election Day 2016 through Election Day 2020, in part because of cuts to tax rates signed by Trump.

Investors have already made moves in anticipation of a win by either Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris. The value of the Mexican peso might fall if Trump's tariffs on Mexico come to fruition, for example, and it's already weakened against the U.S. dollar.

But Paul Christopher, head of global investment strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, suggests not getting caught up in such pre-election moves, or even those immediately after the polls close, “which we believe will face inevitable tempering, if not outright reversals, either before or after Inauguration Day.”

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury initially scrambled higher following Tuesday morning's strong report on U.S services businesses, but it pared the gain later in the afternoon. It was most recently at 4.28%, down from 4.29% late Monday.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe and Asia. The moves were mostly modest outside of jumps of 2.3% in Shanghai and 2.1% in Hong Kong.

AP Business Writers Matt Ott, Alex Veiga and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

People pass the New York Stock Exchange in New York's Financial District on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)

The Fearless Girl statue stands in front of the New York Stock Exchange in New York's Financial District on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)

Trader Jonathan Mueller works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

A screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024 shows a broadcast talking about Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

A currency trader stands near the screens showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at a foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

A currency trader walks by the screen showing the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at a foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

A currency trader walks by the screens showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at a foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)