USA 2024: 'Everyone is watching Pennsylvania closely' on Election Day

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00:00Well let's go live now to Philadelphia on the program in the key swing state of

00:05Pennsylvania Jessica LaMazzeria is our correspondent covering developments for

00:09us today from there. Jessica look good to speak to you I know you're in a suburb

00:14of Philadelphia today voting very much underway there give us a sense of the

00:19atmosphere. That's right I'm in Bucks County and actually Bucks County could

00:27decide who makes it to the White House. Let me explain why I'm in a suburb of

00:32Philadelphia in a place called Levittown where traditionally they have voted

00:38Democrat but we are seeing more and more Trump supporters here. If you drive

00:43around the streets here you see a lot of Trump Vance signs up and everyone who

00:48I've spoken to here at this polling station today has told me they are

00:51voting for Trump. Now on the whole in Pennsylvania people in rural areas are

00:57more likely to be Republican and the cities are more likely to be Democrat

01:00and Harris is really hoping to be able to hold on to all the Democratic voters

01:06in the city and in the suburbs and so the vote in places like this are

01:12absolutely crucial for her because the candidates are neck-and-neck. Now I've

01:17been speaking to people who are in line here you will notice that the line is

01:21not actually that long. Why is that? Well that's because early voting or at least

01:26mail-in voting has been extremely successful here across the country and

01:31in Pennsylvania. Many people told me that they already voted. Those here today

01:36said a lot of their friends, many of them Trump supporters, got their mail-in

01:41ballots in here early. There was an enormous push for Trump supporters to

01:45vote early. So what the supporters here are telling me is that the issues that

01:50are most important to them are things like the economy. They say that they also

01:55want the borders closed and that really it's bread-and-butter issues like how

02:02they're going to pay the bills that matter most to them. Some of the people

02:06voting here today told me that they are frightened about the direction that the

02:09United States is going in and that's why they say they're voting for Donald

02:13Trump. And as you've alluded to Jessica, Pennsylvania as a state, absolutely

02:20crucial in deciding who it is who makes it to the White House.

02:26Yep, they say the road to the White House goes through Pennsylvania and in

02:31the past elections it has indeed been Pennsylvania that has voted for the

02:36winner I think since 2008. So everyone is watching this state very closely. Also

02:42because it is amongst all the swing states the one with the most Electoral

02:47College votes it holds 19 and so it gives considerable weight to whoever

02:51wins it. Now we are all on tenterhooks it's going to be a real nail-biter here

02:56partly because it's so close here and it has such a big Electoral College prize

03:02but also because we really don't know which way it is going to go and it

03:05could take quite some time for the votes to be counted. The polls opened at 7 a.m.

03:10and they'll close at 8 p.m. although if you are in line you can still vote if

03:14you're in line by 8 p.m. but the mail-in ballots were not allowed to

03:19start being counted until 7 a.m. this morning and so that can rather slow

03:24down the process and that was what happened in the last election when you

03:27well remember that despite the election taking place on a Tuesday we didn't have

03:32the vote count from Pennsylvania in total until Saturday. All right it may be

03:37quite a long wait then for you and our team in Pennsylvania. Thank you very much

03:42indeed though for your reporting so far. Jessica Lamazzeria for us there.

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