After billions spent and hundreds of events, a divided nation decides

After billions in advertising and a small ocean of jet fuel to transport the candidates across the nation for hundreds of campaign events, the final polls showed Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump locked in a close race across seven battleground states.

The parties are also battling for congressional control, with forecasters projecting Republicans have good odds of taking the U.S. Senate majority. In the House, the GOP’s current narrow control could be at risk, with the chamber expected to be decided by a few dozen seats.

Trump, who hasn’t accepted his loss in 2020 and trafficked in baseless claims of a rigged election, has suggested he will easily defeat Harris while sowing doubt about voting integrity this year. Harris’s team has said they expect Trump to prematurely declare victory, as he did in 2020.

Political observers say a winner may not be apparent on Election Day, if the race is as tight as polls project. That could lead to a prolonged count and potential legal fights, with both parties having assembledlegal teams to deal with voting-related issues.

Final stretch

Harris’s team has projected cautious optimism in the final hours of the race, with campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon telling reporters the campaign was encouraged by voter organizing efforts in the battleground states and the “grassroots enthusiasm we are seeing everywhere."

On the campaign trail on the eve of Election Day, Harris told a crowd in Allentown, Pa.: “We have got to finish strong." She added: “And make no mistake, we will win."

Trump’s campaign has signaled confidence, pointing to polling that it says suggests their candidate is better positioned ahead of Election Day than before his 2016 or 2020 bids. The GOP has joined Democrats in embracing early voting, allowing the party to better focus on getting their remaining voters to the polls on Tuesday.

But Trump has muddied his closing message with a series of unforced errors that put his vulnerabilities on display. He has used violent imagery directed at the media and former Rep. Liz Cheney, an anti-Trump Republican, playing right into some of his biggest weaknesses. The Wall Street Journal’s late October national poll found more voters said Harris, rather than Trump, had the right temperament for the office.

In North Carolina on Monday, Trump reprised a number of grievances: He called Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, “crazy as a bedbug" and reminded them of her shredding of his final State of the Union speech in 2020. “Remember she ripped up the paper behind me? She could’ve gone to jail for that," Trump said.

The biggest prize

Pennsylvania, with 19 electoral votes, is the biggest battleground prize. It is perhaps especially important for Harris, whose most likely route to the White House is to win Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Those three states have all voted Democratic since 1992, with the exception of 2016 when Trump won them.

If elected, Harris would be the nation’s first female president, as well as the first Black woman and first person of Indian descent. Should Trump win, he would be the first president since Grover Cleveland in 1892 to be elected to nonconsecutive terms.

A massive gender gap could determine the outcome, with women heavily favoring Harris and men more strongly backing Trump. That dynamic was evident in recent days as the vice president emphasized abortion rights, while the former president doubled down on macho rhetoric that included he would protect women whether they “like it or not."

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, women have powered a series of Democratic victories in some nonpresidential elections. Harris has campaigned aggressively on abortion rights, which polls show is highly motivating for women.

Millions of ballots already cast

As of Monday, more than 78 million people had cast an early in-person or mail-in ballot. That includes 17.9 million votes in the seven battlegrounds, data from the University of Florida’s Election Lab shows.

Americans went to the polls in a sour mood, despite low unemployment. In the final Wall Street Journal survey before the election, almost two-thirds of voters said the nation is headed in the wrong direction. While the rate of inflation has been coming down, its pain provided a long hangover that boosted Trump and hurt Harris.Harris sought to strike an optimistic tone in the closing days, avoiding mention of Trump, and talking about charting a “new way forward." Trump leaned into complaints about his 2020 loss and again embraced violent rhetoric, musing that he wouldn’t mind someone shooting at him “through the fake news."

The Harris campaign emphasized the scale of their get-out-the-vote effort, a larger and more professional operation than Trump’s, which is largely being handled by outside groups.

Battle for change

Harris and Trump have battled to be seen as a change agent, though neither has a clean claim to that mantle. Harris used Trump’s status as a one-term former president to label his candidacy as backward-looking. He used her current role—as the No. 2 in the unpopular Biden administration—to cast her as unlikely to diverge from his record.

Since Harris took over the nomination in July, following President Biden’s exit from the race, she has pitched herself as a generational change agent, contrasting herself at 60 years old with Trump’s age, at 78. She focused heavily on economic proposals aimed at lowering prices, as well as ferocious advocacy of abortion rights. She has also argued Trump poses a threat to U.S. democracy. Her campaign has faced headwinds with a public that is deeply frustrated by inflation and the direction of the country.

Throughout his comeback campaign, Trump has emphasized illegal immigration and has proposed an economic policy focused on boosting tariffs to extract leverage on other nations in trade and foreign policy. His campaign has been marked by coarse and derogatory language.

Trump has blamed immigrants for crime, promising a massive deportation campaign if elected. Harris has pledged tougher asylum restrictions than Biden, as she has sought to counter Trump’s argument that she is too liberal on the issue.

Democrats had the spending advantage in the race, as they did when Trump won in 2016. But he benefited from a major late investment in time and money by Elon Musk. The Tesla chief executive, who campaigned with Trump, has donated at least $118 million and is expected to get a role helping the new administration cut government costs if Trump is elected.

Write to Catherine Lucey at catherine_lucey@wsj.com and John McCormick at mccormick.john@wsj.com