Samantha Granville
Reporting from Phoenix, AZ

According to data published by the Arizona secretary of state, more than a third of registered voters in the state are independent voters.

Independent voters are a wild card. It’s hard to track who they voted for in the past, where they are, issues that matter to them and so on.

Candidates are constantly trying to shift their positions to reach these voters.

But when people talk about independent voters, we think about people who haven’t figured out yet how they are going to vote, but in reality it’s most Republican leaning independents or Democrat leaning independents with a tiny, tiny, tiny slice of persuadable voters.

According to exit polls in 2016, independents were 40% of the electorate. They broke by three points for former President Trump, and he went on to win the state that year.

In 2020 independents were 39% of the electorate, and Biden won them over Trump by nine, so definitely a key group.

So the key to an Arizona victory is locking in the independent vote.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from Pennsylvania

I've just a few minutes ago arrived in Allentown, Pennsylvania - a majority Latino town where both candidates have campaigned this election cycle.

It's also the site of a Harris rally just a few hours from now.

The area's connections with Latin America are hard to escape. I'm currently on seventh street - which most locals know by the Spanish name "Calle Siete". Dominican, Puerto Rican, Colombian and Mexican flags are everywhere, and most signs on businesses are bilingual - or purely in Spanish.

My first effort to talk to voters here was met with a bit of scorn.

"I'm really tired of this all. TV is nothing but commercials for these people," a quick-talking and animated Dominican, who asked only to be identified as Diego told me. "The rest of the time nobody comes to interview us. Just elections."

Ione Wells
Reporting from Michigan

Image source, Reuters

Donald Trump's final rally, happening tonight in Grand Rapids, Michigan, will be situated within Kent County.

This area, once a Republican stronghold, flipped to Joe Biden in 2020, largely because of its increasingly diverse, college-educated and urban population leaning towards the Democrats’ policies.

Trump is struggling in areas like this, which have moved away from the Republicans due to some of his rhetoric and socially conservative values.

On the flipside, he's made gains in places like Michigan among - for example - some unionised white, working class voters who used to vote Democrat but now resonate with his economic policies and pledges on immigration.

One Trump supporter told me that the Republicans in Michigan used to be the party of the wealthy "country clubs", but that has been "reimagined".

No group should be viewed as homogenous, but these shifting demographic trends make the race so close to call, meaning neither candidate can solely rely on their core "base" here.

Image source, Reuters

More than 78 million people have already voted ahead of election day tomorrow. This means that more than half of the 150 million Americans who are expected to cast their ballot have already done so.

Our North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher has spotted some trends from the data some states have released:

• Republicans appear to be losing their wariness of early voting: They represent 36.1% of early votes cast nationwide (up from 30.5% in 2020), while Democrats account for 38.9% (44.8% in 2020)
• Women are turning out in large numbers: In the six states that report gender data, women are casting 54.2% of the early ballots so far, which is higher than in 2020 exit polls

• Looking at key states, there are mixed signals: Over 50% of eligible voters have now voted in Georgia, with early turnout slightly whiter and older than the early voting in 2020, potentially benefiting Donald Trump. But in Pennsylvania, more registered Democrats have voted than Republicans – although by a smaller margin than in 2020, when Joe Biden won the state

Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Tesla, X and SpaceX and the world's richest man, has failed to turn up to a court hearing in Pennsylvania over the legality of his $1m daily giveaway - for the second time.

Since 19 October, registered voters in seven battleground states have been able to go into a draw to win the money if they sign a petition supporting free speech and gun rights.

The state's district attorney argues that the giveaway is an "illegal lottery".

Musk did not attend the first hearing last Thursday, and today, his lawyer Chris Gober told reporters outside the court that his client will not be "bullied".

In court, Gober said that the winners were not chosen at random, instead only people who would be good spokespeople for Musk's pro-Trump group, according to Reuters news agency.

Image source, Getty Images

In just a few minutes, North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher will be sending out his US Election Unspun newsletter, which helps make sense of the race for the White House.

Anthony will also be providing special coverage this week, delivering wall-to-wall analysis that explains these results in simple terms.

Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Rain can discourage people from going out to vote, and when the polling is neck and neck, everything matters.

In this video, BBC's Darren Bett gives us the voting day forecast, with a spotlight on whether it will be rain, sunshine or something in between for the seven key battleground states.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from Pennsylvania

Over the coming days, you're likely to hear and read a lot about the power of the "Latino" vote, and the impact they'll be having on the outcome of the election.

It's important to note, however, that the Latino block is by no means monolithic, coming from disparate countries of origin and with different concerns.

In fact, one of the chief complaints made against both parties has been that, historically, national-level candidates approach them with an all-encompassing brush.

Some communities - notably Cuban-Americans in South Florida, or Venezuelan-Americans - have traditionally leaned towards the Republicans. Trump's rhetoric of creeping "socialism" finds a receptive audience in these communities, large parts of which were forced to flee repressive regimes in their homelands.

Even the Mexican-American vote - by far the largest in the US - is very diverse. Mexican-American voters in, let's say, Chicago or California, have different concerns from ones in Arizona or Texas.

Several swing states - particularly Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and even Georgia - have large Latino populations in which even modest Republican gains could ultimately help propel Trump to a win.

BBC Monitoring

As Donald Trump has spent the last hour campaigning on his plans for the country's southern border, it's perhaps not surprising that no other region in the world will be following the election more closely than Latin America.

While the region may have slipped down Washington’s priorities list in recent decades, the US looms large in the view of governments and nations south of the border, from Mexico to Argentina. That is true whether the relationship is hostile or friendly.

And US policies are an issue in Latin America, with real and lasting impacts.

Mexico - which with Canada is intertwined in a strategic free trade deal with the US - is most likely to feel the impacts of policy changes resulting from the US election.

Mexicans are bracing themselves for potentially tougher and more nationalistic US immigration, security and trade policies, certainly if Donald Trump wins, but also possibly from Kamala Harris too.

This is also true with every other nation in Latin America and the Caribbean – which fall within the sphere of US influence – so the US election is likely to be followed as closely as if it was taking place on home soil.

Donald Trump is beginning his rally in Raleigh, North Carolina by returning to his go-to talking point this election - illegal immigration.

He expresses with remorse the millions of US-Mexico border crossings that have happened under President Biden's administration and says that "many of these people are murderers". BBC Verify has already fact-checked these misleading claims, here.

Trump then blames Mexico for the immigration and says: "If they don't stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country, I'm going to immediately impose a 25% tariff on everything they send in to the United States of America."

He continues: "You're the first ones I've told that to, congratulations North Carolina."

The economy is the number one issue for voters this election, and polls suggest voters favour Trump to handle it.

Raising tariffs has been Trump's main policy offer to improve the economy, a move which he says will protect American manufacturing but which economic experts warn would drastically raise prices in the US.

Ione Wells
Reporting from Michigan

This late in the day, neither candidate is whipping new policies out of the bag. Instead, Donald Trump - like Kamala Harris - is focusing on messages we've heard before to cast a final pitch to undecided voters and energise his core base to turn out.

For him, this means centring on immigration, national security, and asking voters if they "feel better off than they did four years ago" in his rallies today.

He's also repeatedly used final rallies to accuse his opponents, without evidence, of cheating and fraud.

Critics say he is laying the ground to challenge the result if he does not win.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from Pennsylvania

Image source, Getty Images

While Pennsylvania's Latino population is smaller than that of some other swing states - such as Nevada or Arizona - it could ultimately be the voting bloc that can swing the election to the Democrats or Republicans in the vital state.

According to the 2020 US Census, there are more than a million Latinos in Pennsylvania - a figure that state authorities say rose to over 1.1m by 2022.

Of the total, more than 580,000 are eligible voters, a large portion of whom are Puerto Rican.

It's a demographic that both parties are actively trying to court. While Democrats have traditionally been favoured by Latinos in the state, the Republicans have been consistently improving their performance among the electorate every election.

On Sunday, for example, Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes was in a heavily Latino part of North Philadelphia, where she told Puerto Ricans that the recent "garbage" joke at a Trump rally in New York was emblematic of the former president.

At Trump's rally in Allentown last week, where more than half of people identify as Latino, Puerto Rico shadow senator Zoraida Buxó tried to make the case that the Republican campaign aligns with Puerto Rican values of "family, faith, economic freedom and deep, deep love of country".

As the countdown to the US election enters its final hours, our colleagues at Newscast have been exploring how the electoral college works and why it means that the person who wins the most votes overall won't necessarily win the presidency.

There are 538 votes in total and a candidate needs to gain a majority - 270 or more - to win the presidency.

Each state has a number of electoral votes, roughly in line with its population size. California has the most with 54, while a handful of sparsely populated states like Wyoming, Alaska and North Dakota (and Washington DC) have the minimum of three.

To learn more about the system and how it works, listen to the latest episode of Newscast.

With just a day to go until the US election, let's take a look back at some standout moments from the past few months.

Image source, Reuters

27 June: During a TV debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, Biden's poor performance marked a turning point that eventually led to him withdrawing from the race.

Image source, Reuters

13 July: Trump was shot at during a rally in Pennsylvania. His ear was grazed in the incident, and a photo of him with a bloodied ear, raising his fist as he was escorted away by secret service agents, appeared on T-shirts the next day.

Image source, Getty Images

15 July: In a surprising move, Trump chose JD Vance as his vice-presidential pick. The Hillbilly Elegy author was once a fierce Trump critic, but he has since become a firm supporter of the former president's ideas after joining the ticket.

Image source, Reuters

22 July: Joe Biden endorsed Kamala Harris to take up the mantle of the presidential campaign. Harris said she was honoured and would do everything in her power "to defeat Donald Trump".

Image source, Reuters

6 August: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was named as Harris's Democratic running mate. He's described as "folksy", and his choice of word "weird" to describe Trump and Vance resonated with many Democratic voters.

Image source, EPA

23 August: Independent candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr withdrew from the race and threw his support behind Donald Trump. "I have the certainty that this is what I’m meant to do," he said.

Image source, Reuters

10 September: Millions in the US watched Kamala Harris and Donald Trump face off in a 90-minute debate broadcast live on ABC News.

Many of the millions voting in the US will follow the election results on Tuesday on the New York Times, considered one of the most dependable sources for tracking votes in both presidential and state elections.

But the newspaper's technology union went on strike today after failing to agree on terms of a contract with management late last night, and members are currently protesting outside the New York Times building.

In a statement announcing the strike, the Times Tech Guild described itself as "the union that powers the technology behind election coverage at the New York Times", and noted its members run the site's famous "election needle" showing which way the results are headed and send its push alerts.

“We are disappointed that the Tech Guild leadership is attempting to jeopardize our journalistic mission at this critical time,” Hannah Yang, the company’s chief growth and customer officer, and Jason Sobel, chief technology officer, wrote in an email according to the New York Times.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from Pennsylvania

Hello from Pennsylvania - where residents are gearing up for what may be a long and contentious election day tomorrow.

Even before the polls close, we've already been hearing claims about voter fraud in the state from Donald Trump.

Yesterday, for example, he claimed that officials in Lancaster County were found with 2,600 fraudulent ballots written by the same person. The claim was amplified to a huge audience by Elon Musk, the owner of X and a key Trump ally.

Trump was referring to a review of about 2,500 ballots flagged by local officials, who have warned that they found "indicators of fraud, including incorrect and non-existent addresses, false personal identification information, as well as false names and incorrect social security information".

Officials believe those ballots were connected to a large canvassing effort to register voters several months ago. The investigation is ongoing.

The former president had also previously claimed that long lines in Buck's County were signs of "vote-rigging" on the part of Democrats.

Pennsylvania's unique voting laws make the state ripe for claims of electoral fraud. The state has no early voting in-person and does not process mail-in votes until election day, leaving officials with the labour-intensive and time consuming work of catching up from 5 November onwards.

Those laws - and the claims that are already emerging - could also mean that Pennsylvania is the scene of lawsuits in the wake of the election.

Image source, Getty Images

Pennsylvania is one of seven states that will decide the election. Kamala Harris is spending her last full day of campaigning there, and Donald Trump will also make two stops there later.

Pennsylvania’s prized 19 electoral votes make it one of the most visited states by both candidates - it's the swing state that carries the most electoral votes, making it hard to win the White House without it.

The state's mix of urban and rural populations make it a competitive state for both candidates, says Christopher Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion.

He says presidential candidates must be attentive to every demographic to court voters and need to campaign on platforms that address key issues - the economy, inflation, immigration, reproductive rights and health care.

“Ultimately, the smallest of shifts can be incredibly impactful in a state in which the last two presidential races were decided by less than one percentage point,” he explains.

• A quick guide to swing state Pennsylvania

Holly Honderich
US reporter

Image source, Nathan Morgan

Where they grew up, in conservative Christian households in the US South, friends Melissa Alexander and Mary Joyce’s party affiliations were taken as a given.

With time, those inherited political ties began to fray. When Trump became the Republican standard bearer, Alexander and Joyce became further estranged from their party.

Then last spring, a mass shooting at their children’s primary school in Nashville, Tennessee, undermined any remaining party loyalty. Mary’s daughter and Melissa’s son survived but three of their classmates and three staff members were killed.

“I became a single-issue voter on March 27th,” Melissa said. “Safer regulations around firearms.”

But their lobbying of the Republican-run Tennessee legislature for modest gun reform like background checks and safe storage laws came to nothing.

“It makes you think - man, how sacred is a weapon in the United States?” Joyce said.

• Read more from voters on the moment they made up their mind

Immigration and border security have been key talking points for both US presidential candidates. For locals in Fremont, Nebraska, these are crucial issues that will influence their vote.

In this video, hear a range of views on how the arrival of Central American migrants to the town more than a decade ago has impacted the local community, including comments from a Guatemalan immigrant, an English teacher, city council members, and a business owner who runs a construction company.

Brandon Drenon
Reporting from North Carolina

We've just heard that more than 78 million people have cast their ballots ahead of election day in the US tomorrow.

It's a staggering sum reached in part due to multiple states breaking early voting records.

I'm in North Carolina, one of the seven battleground states that could determine the election, and the leading battleground state for total number of early voting ballots cast.

Just over 4.4 million people voted early here in the Tar Heel State, toppling the record set in 2020 which saw 3.6 million ballots cast before election day.

Early voting is continuing in three other battleground states today, in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.