The US presidential election will take place on November 5, but the winner of the razor-thin race between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump may not be known for days after the polls close.

As ballots are counted, one candidate may appear to be leading based on early returns, only for a rival to close the gap as more votes are tallied.

Nothing untoward had occurred. Democrats tend to live in more populous urban areas, where counting votes takes longer. Democrats also have embraced mail voting more readily than Republicans after Trump’s false claims that mail ballots are untrustworthy, and those ballots take longer to count than Election Day votes. Trump has both encouraged and criticised early and mail-in voting in 2024.

Democrats are outpacing Republicans in mail ballots once again this year, according to an early vote tracker maintained by the University of Florida’s Election Lab, though Republicans have narrowed the gap.

Read the full Reuters story here.