US Elections: This year's presidential vote is like no other in living memory 

Tommy Tye celebrates his first birthday by accompanying his father, Russell Tye, to vote at Alanton Elementary School in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Picture: Kaitlin McKeown/The Virginian-Pilot via AP

With more than 231,000 US citizens dead from the coronavirus alone, election 2020 was like none other in living memory.

The election has seen the largest turnout in a US presidential race in a century with more than 100m people casting their votes early.

In what has been the most divisive and sometimes poisonous race in memory, American citizens have been torn on deciding between Republican incumbent Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden.

Set against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, Americans from New Hampshire to New Orleans, from Detroit to Dallas have been asked to choose a leader to steer a nation battered by a surging pandemic that has cost millions their jobs and reshaped daily life.

As we await a final result, the counting has finished a campaign that was upended by coronavirus and defined by tensions over who could best address it.

A demonstrator going by the name Azul Azul sits on a sidewalk outside the White House in Washington yesterday. Picture: AP

Each candidate declared the other fundamentally unfit to lead a nation grappling with Covid-19 and facing foundational questions about racial justice and economic fairness.

Mr Biden entered election day with multiple paths to victory while Mr Trump, playing catch-up in a number of battleground states, had a narrower but still feasible road to clinch 270 electoral college votes.

Control of the Senate is also at stake: Democrats need to net three seats if Mr Biden captures the White House to gain control of all of Washington for the first time in a decade. The House of Representatives is expected to remain under Democratic control.

Voters braved long queues and the threat of the virus to cast ballots as they chose between two starkly different visions of America for the next four years.

The record-setting early vote — and legal skirmishing over how it will be counted — drew unsupported allegations of fraud from Mr Trump, who refused to guarantee he would honour the election result.

Voters in Washington DC have echoed the claim that the 2020 US presidential election is the most consequential ever.

Maggie Deal, a 30-year-old attorney, said she voted for Joe Biden, saying: "The future of American democracy depends on it."

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