the official line we all decided we need to tell i was screwed we don't want to rely on the authority and it's. based on al-jazeera 'd. the. long lines across america voters turn out in big numbers following an unprecedented election campaign and with a big rallies behind them donald trump and joe biden make one final appeal to supporters. hello i'm barbara starr you're watching our ally from london also coming up voting early a defining trend in this u.s. election but in some key states could have delayed the final result. austria a country on high alert dozens of arrested in police raids after monday's attack in

vietnam. hello thank you for joining us voting is underway across the united states in the most controversial and highly anticipated poll in recent years 100000000 people have cast their ballots early setting the stage for a record turnout that have been long lines at polling stations as voters try and stay safe amid the coronavirus pandemic and donald trump and joe biden have been battling for every last vote with biden out of pennsylvania trump in virginia speaking in the last hour president trump told reporters he was confident of victory. you know i'm not thinking about a concession speech or acceptance speech it. hopefully will be only for doing one of those 2 and you know. winning is easy losing is never easy now for me it's not.

but i think we have when we when you see rallies the likes of which in the history of this country probably of the history of the world nobody's ever seen before. there's a tremendous love going on in this country and there's really a tremendous unity there's a tremendous unity nobody's ever seen that we take an airport and the airports not big enough to hold the crowds nobody's ever seen a thing like that and our opposition as you know would have a few people sitting in circles and that's ok that's not abnormal that's not abnormal actually i mean that's the way it is. well let's go live to alan fischer in washington d.c. following all developments for us of course allan president trump is not a man to give way to self-doubt i guess he's not going to do it at this late stage but do you think he's justified to sound so optimistic. there was a difference in tone there barbara it's all or did he just didn't seem like the bullish donald trump we've seen in the 17 events over the last 3 days saying that

he hadn't worked on an acceptance or concession speech a bit to script writers have but he wasn't challenging any result in going to the course the way he was talking about just yesterday he was also saying that it's difficult to lose i mean that's that's not donald trump s donald trump is all about when you said well it's difficult to lose especially for me you would expect him not to even entertain the idea of that so the whole tone of that is is interesting it's different perhaps an insight into what donald trump is seeing with his internal polls i guess will only find out in a in a few hours and perhaps maybe even a few days but it was certainly a different approach from donald trump when he was over there in arlington rallying republican members republican party workers who have put him on the road for the last several months and take him to events all around the country it's just it was

just weird for donald trump to to be that way particularly given how hard he's fought in the last few days we know that several weeks ago he was in hospital with covered he was released he decided to immediately go back on the campaign trail to big events even though there's a report from stanford university that said these events have become super spreader events of covered in a fight say that $700.00 deaths could be tied to these rallies that have been held by donald trump he went to 6 rallies on monday hoping to shore up support in key battleground state. that's why he was in pennsylvania north carolina and in michigan is well he knows that as much as he would like to expand the electoral map he's really got to shore up the voters that he had the last time around or else he's going to start losing this election i think the one of the key indicators is going to be pretty early on when we should get some sort of result from ohio that

will close in about 555 and a half hours time we should get the result maybe in about 7 hours from there if donald trump has lost ohio he's in big trouble because no republican president has ever won the white house without winning ohio and we know the donald trump doesn't want to be a one term president or a legal reasons for that there are political reasons for that but as you were saying we also know what donald trump's like and the real egotistical reasons for that as well alan fischer from washington d.c. for the moment allan thank you and let's go to our visitors jamal and show you who joins us live now from wilmington in delaware which is of course joe biden's home state to tell us a little bit about the mood there and what people in joe biden's home state have been telling you today. but it's a cliche but it's cautious optimism probably is the best way to describe it barbara

in the sense that these are people who very much feel the wind is in their tide essentially that there is a real chance that their candidate joe biden will win these elections they're pointing to not just the polls but those high virtue voter turnouts more than 100000000 people choosing to vote early they believe many of those are people who will be voting for who have rather voted for joe biden obviously this is his hometown it's expected he'll win it's very easily the states of. delaware however that hasn't stopped him from continuing canvassing right up until now actually he's been in several places particularly the last in philadelphia which obviously is one of those about so ground states that many people have been speaking about that a lot of people are waiting to find out how the tide will which way rather the tide will sway with regards to things in pennsylvania now. one of the key messages

that has been coming out of the democrats come has been that this is an election for to safeguard america's democracy they believe that over the past 4 years the administration of donald trump has eroded freedom has eroded democracy here and has essentially threats and some of the basic tenants that many americans hold 'd so dear lee his attack on the media eyes division between different sections of american society the issue of civil liberties coming back up we've heard that from voters who we've been speaking to already both young voters who are floating for the 1st time as well as even older ones as well not lost on these people as well as the issue of the economy as much as donald trump would like to talk about the huge gains you may have made in the 1st few years of his presidency the impact of call for it the lack of leadership that these people feel he demonstrated and how it's affected them is leading a lot of people to want to choose for it different opinion but i did

a different direction rather but whichever opinion voters have it is very tightly contested race in that people aren't quite sure whether a result will come out later tonight we understand joe biden is on his way back here to delaware obviously there has been a stage set up at the their headquarters here we'll wait to find out exactly how the results are looking and whether they will match the polls or not yeah you're right about that and as you say it could be a while before we get any kind of a final result in this election for the moment joining us from wilmington in delaware jamal thank you. now one of the key stories of this year is how many people have voted before election day itself and this could change how the results come in now so far more than 99000000 people live voted in person or by mail that's a huge chunk of the total 136000000 who voted in any way back in 2016. in some states of those votes will already have been counted although those results

will not be known until polls close in another batch of states they will currently be counting them as election day polls are cast and they'll swear they are stored and counted along with the ballots cast right up until polls close in a small number of states that counting of early votes can vary even within the state itself and finally new york not even counted them until tomorrow adding to the time it will take the find out the full picture rob reynolds explains. there's been a tremendous surge in mail in and absentee ballots cast in this election we're going to see tens of millions of more americans vote by mail than have than any other former presidential or any election really this despite president donald trump's repeated false claims that mail in voting is rife with fraud no there's there's no evidence of widespread fraud the process catch is that the process is divine and to catch these sorts of issues percentage is about 0006 percent

of all ballots cast 9 states plus the district of columbia send ballots automatically to all active registered voters in the rest voters may request absentee ballots despite fears that trump appointed postal officials were engineering a mail service slow down observers say delivery time has not so far been an issue we've actually been hearing good stories about very quick delivery when will all these ballots be counted well it depends on the state all across the spectrum of the united states you have a variation in the rules of which the voters need to abide by the way in which ballots are counted be being the laws and policies and procedures or the type of the quitman that they're using most states begin processing and preparing mail in ballots for tabulation well before november. 3rd that means they'll get results

quickly it's just a handful of states that don't allow that processing to occur until election day or after but that handful includes the crucial swing states of wisconsin and pennsylvania ballot counting there could delay knowing who won if we're down to the wire and it's all contingent upon a couple of states we may not know the projected outcome and tell long after election day a couple of days maybe a week and as millions line up for early voting armies of lawyers from both sides are poised to dispute the results in the courts there have been more than $300.00 lawsuits around election administration so far this year just days ago the supreme court ruled against republicans allowing pennsylvania and north carolina to continue counting ballots after election day look i'm i'm a former elections official litigation can reach havoc in the election process specially in the middle of the conduct of the election there are many variables but

the bottom line is have patience unless one of the candidates wins in a landslide americans and people around the world may have to wait a while before they learn who has been elected president of the united states robert oulds al jazeera los angeles. it's worth remembering that the us has a unique way of electing its president called the electoral college system it's complicated and contentious if you're talking about who actually gets the most votes now each state is given a share of electors and that share depends on the size of the state's population so populous states like california texas new york and florida have more electoral college votes the entire nationwide electoral college is made up of 500 and $38.00 members candidates need just over half of those votes to win so the minimum number is $270.00 that's the magic number needed to win during an election when people

vote for their preferred candidate they're actually voting for these electors who in turn give their votes to that candidate and a few narrow victories in the swing states can make all the difference because most states have a winner take all system if you get the most votes at the ballot box you get all the electoral college votes for that state maine and nebraska are the exception to this these states actually split their electoral college votes so in america it is still possible to lose the popular vote and still win the election it's happened 5 times twice in just the last 5 elections including of course 2016 when hillary clinton got nearly $2900000.00 more votes than donald trump but trump flipped some crucial states with high electoral vote counts and got past that critical 270 it's going to manage to do so today what we're now joined by bill schneider

a public policy professor at george mason university he's live via skype from washington d.c. thank you so much for joining us here on al-jazeera so before we get into the details of this election and i guess your prediction just explain to us it seems like such an awfully complicated system this electoral college system explain to an international audience what the upsides of this are. well you have to carry a state in order to get electoral votes so it means the states matter and it also gives an advantage sure publicans because many of the states are smaller and they have they're mostly republican the americans don't like specially democrats don't like the electoral college system it's given the election to the republican in 2000 george w. bush and again in 2016 donald trump they think the electoral college system is unfair to them because a person like say george bush could win florida by 500 votes it's

a state with about 20000000 people they could win florida by the attorneys margin in the get all the electoral votes there are a lot of proposals to change it but you would have to do that by changing the constitution and that's a difficult process so we know that of course he managed to get past the 270 electoral votes last time this is a very particular election not only has it been incredibly controversial but we see this enormous number of all of postal votes of people that have voted before polling day i had to ask for your prediction i guess you know we'll know soon enough but what do you make of the way the election has gone. well we don't have any results of course they'll be exit polls a little later tonight my guess is that biden will win certainly have at least a probably majority the only 2 candidates biden win a majority of the popular vote and i believe he'll win a majority of the electoral vote because many of the key swing states that went to trump last time seem to be going narrowly to joe biden this time but i do not

believe gun will concede the election that's not in his makeup he will never say i love i'm a loser that's the worst term israel cabbie larry i don't think we'll hear him concede that he will challenge the results he's got lawyers ready to argue that 1000000 ballots are all fraudulent should not be counted you will see him tonight on american time on television proclaiming that he won and bearing the democrats to be sore losers interestingly he was actually on t.v. about an hour ago live sounding i don't know perhaps of do you or the very least exhausted because of course it has been an exhausting at campaign of both candidates now the other peculiarity of the us system is that the president actually remains the president until january so into 2021 kind of advantage if there is going to be i guess disagreements about the result what kind of advantage does that give trub the fact that he is still effectively president for months to

come you know there are many things he that he can do as president the next week 2 months he remains in office and the congress that is currently in office there will be replaced by the congress that americans are voting on today they also remain in office until january for another almost 2 months so they can pass a lot of measures which may not pass in the new congress if there's a very good chance that the senate will be held by democrats after january but the next 2 months is going to be held by republicans and we know that they're able to do a lot of things in the senate with a rip. that won't happen when the democrats take over it's another peculiar of the american system it's a very notion that it's going to take weeks and weeks for people to travel across a big country to come to washington that's not true anymore but it was true 200 years ago so they gave all this lead time for the current office holders to remain in office the schneider we're going to have to leave it there bill schneider public

policy professor at george mason university joining us from washington d.c. thank you. still to come here on al-jazeera more of course on the u.s. election as voting continues we'll be live in 2 states which could be the stories of the night there texas and florida. in other news they have a stated by one storm and now bracing for another the philippines prepare for storm at siding. after a record breaking the mile start to the week things are about to get colder in europe we're still comes in the atlantic but it's got more of a northerly tendency that said temperatures are inevitably going to drop this is the cult front as it sits significant in spain produce some snow over the tops of

the high ground that you can see even from madrid madrid's temperature about 10 degrees that is cold the sun's come out to the north so only 11 in london would probably feel better because there's no chill in the wind significant weather in the east and that's as well for cyprus turkey and the band significant rain or even thunderstorms with hail slowly moving through thursday is the better the eastern med but it's the western med slowly warming up in madrid it's not doing so helps where there will be a chew in the air in central and western europe so western and eastern med you know that will be on the story side that'll affect the weather in morocco with rain probably on the up as much as i'm not sure it's cold enough yet for snow it might just be a bit wouldn't bank on it it's just showing up there for the sox mostly a dry picture now the showers had disappeared from west africa in the last 4 or 5 days every appeared to have going all way around the corner actually significant even if far north as banjo.

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back here's a reminder of the top stories on al-jazeera voting is underway across the united states and what is expected to be a record turnout in the elections more than 100000000 people have voted early and it's already the most controversial and highly anticipated poll in recent years especially due to the worsening coronavirus and pandemic. now while we are of course watching all 50 states to discover the election result it often comes down to just a handful of them these $21.00 states including wyoming and alabama are almost certain to support president trump while these 17 including california new york are set to vote for the democrat joe biden that leaves these so-called swing states which could go either way in which the campaigns of focused their efforts old but some are more important than others as the election is the cited by the electoral college 270 state votes given to either candidate more populous states have more

meaning that places like florida with 29 pennsylvania with 20 michigan with 16 in wisconsin with 10 are absolutely crucial so let's go to one of those states al jazeera and the gallagher is live for us in miami florida who are explaining whoever wins florida is guaranteed a road to the presidency and that's why the candidates both spent quite a lot of time in florida in the past week it's also a very interesting state an older population a big latino community what is it looking like in florida right now. well are essentially to give you some background you have to think of the state as a kind of microcosm for the entire nation all those people you just mentioned they represent the demographics of the whole country which is why all the candidates spend so much time down here in the history of florida and the history of presidential elections very intertwined there's been some monumental decisions made here in the past but with 29 electoral college votes it's

a huge chunk towards that budget number of 270 now the headline from florida today is that 9000000 people in this state have already voted to go back to 26th the entire tally was to 9500000 and the polls have not close yet so that shows you the level of being gay judgment in this state and the polls over the past few weeks of shown by joe biden with a slight edge democrats tend to vote earlier but the margin of error is still very much there it's a 3.8 percent margin of error so it's extremely tight too tight to call at the moment but if we're watching states like florida georgia and north carolina who are all pretty well organized who should all get those preliminary results out just after the polls close at 7 pm we'll get a better picture of what's going on in the already talked about how important these swing states are no one more important than this one this has 29 electoral college votes on the california and texas has more and there's an old saying in this state

and across the nation as florida goes so goes the nation. the gallagher with the latest from miami in florida for the moment and the same cue. let's go to another key state texas this time we can speak to al-jazeera the show cast her she joins us live now. extremely tight race there in texas the state that's trending towards democrat and of course trump won it last time and repeatedly and not just trump but tell us again what the feeling is like in texas and whether it could swing. right and that is a great question for this year barbara because for the 1st time in more than 4 decades people are considering taxes to be competitive for democrats and we're seeing that reflected in the polls in which joe biden is trailing by 3 percent to president shop and you see it here on the ground outside this polling location in

houston where we have from supporters on this side of the street they're celebrating what the president had just said earlier today predicting what he calls a tremendous win in texas going to have on the other side of the street the democrats in this heavily democratic leaning precinct and we've seen the enthusiasm here like no recent year before in texas election history similar to florida as andy was saying the early voting turnout here in texas well that has in fact already surpassed the total turnout that we saw in 2016 now trump did win against hillary clinton by 9 points in that last election and most political analysts are looking at taxes and still saying that a biden win would be a long shot but just that hope for democrats is the not to have driven much of that record turnout and we're also seeing accusations of voter suppressing suppression of mark probert a wodehouse criminal republican guard just yesterday

a federal judge tossed out a lawsuit filed by the texas republicans that's not true in reality 827000 votes cast here in houston most of which likely to be supporting democrats the argument there had been because those votes were cast in a drive through to the paradigm magnificent invalid but prado judge who was a conservative himself talked out the case giving democrats here a win now the big question though is with this record turnout in texas who are these voters coming out to support we're certainly seeing this doozy of them here and large metropolises like houston we know that's going to be a vote by then but of course. there's still a vast areas of texas support the president is strong still considered to be his firewall. how does your pastor with the latest from houston in texas be for the moment thank you. and we will have live uninterrupted special

coverage of the u.s. elections from $22.00 g.m.t. as those live results start coming in our correspondents will be reporting from crucial states across the country plus we have expert analysis in washington d.c. you can watch that here on al-jazeera from 22 g.m.t. . kids take a look at the day's other news now austrian police have arrested at least 14 people in connection with monday's shooting in the capital vienna a memorial was held for the 4 people who have died another 22 were injured when a gunman opened fire in the city chancellor sebastian court says the scribed the shooting as a terror attack paul reese is in vienna and says the 20 year old attacker was released from prison late last year. the interior minister held a press conference not long ago giving the update with the 14 people detained in 18 raids on tuesday as people were urged to stay at home particularly so with

more gunmen thought to be thought to be on the loose still but the interior minister did a day that say that according to the evidence there was only one attacker who carried out these these attacks here in the in the busy restaurant district of vienna on monday night we know a 20 year old male of north macedonian background but with an austrian passport as well. found with an automatic rifle hunger on a machete and also with a fake suicide vest on he's released from prison in the early from a 22 month sentence having tried to go to syria to join the islamic state group last year and the interior minister said he had fooled the radicalization program allowing him to be released and killing the 4 people last night 22 more injured 3 of them critical here in austria. uganda's opposition leader bobby wine was briefly

arrested again on tuesday moments after his candidacy for pepper february's presidential election was approved a spokesman said he was arrested after police smashed the window was of his car and forcefully dragged him out one is hoping to unseat incumbent president bill but he received any who has been in power for more than 30 years. police in the ivory coast have used tear gas against opposition supporters after they gathered outside their party leaders house the clashes come after the government accused former president had recall and video of sedition for creating a parallel administration earlier on tuesday president allison what the overwhelmingly won the country's presidential elections in a landslide victory the opposition boycotted the polls saying what has been for a 3rd term was unconstitutional. the philippines is

bracing for another storm after at least 20 people were killed by a thai food on the weekend storm at sunny is gaining strength over the pacific ocean and is expected to make landfall later this week president 3 go to ted there says it will not be as powerful as typhoon gone but warned it would damage bridges and roads connie is the world's strongest typhoon so far this year and struck provinces south of the capital manila on sunday. i reminder now of the top stories on al-jazeera voting is underway across the united states in the most controversial and highly anticipated poll in recent years nearly 100000000 people have cast their ballots early setting the stage for a record turnout there have been long lines at polling stations as voters try and stay safe amid the coronavirus.