09 November,2016 09:29 AM IST | | Agencies
Clinton, Trump trade barbs in final pitch as the United States goes to polls
Rockefeller Center and Rockefeller Plaza is lit up in red and blue to mark electoral progress of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Pic/AFP
Washington: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump traded barbs in their final pitch to voters as the curtain came down on the ugliest campaign in US history and voting began yesterday in the knife-edge polls that will elect America's first woman president or put a political outsider in office.
Fighting for every vote at stake, Democratic nominee Clinton and her Republican rival Trump made their last-minute forceful argument before the American people with their own vision for the world's largest economy.
Clinton (69) was joined by husband Bill as she addressed a rally in Raleigh in the key battleground state of North Carolina, which was entertained by Lady Gaga. Trump (70) made a last-minute scheduled stop in Michigan to address thousands of his supporters hoping that he might be able to swing this state from the Democrats.
The two rallies ended around 1 am (local time), just six hours before opening of the polling booths in the East Coast.
Clinton and Trump crisscrossed several stops in key battleground states on the final day of campaigning, which the US media has termed as the "ugliest" and the most divisive till date.
"This election is basically between division and unity in our country. It's between strong and steady leadership or a loose cannon who could put everything at risk. It is between an economy that works for everyone or one that is even more stacked for those at the top," Clinton told a cheering crowd in Raleigh, North Carolina.
"None of us want to wake up on Wednesday morning and wish we had done more."
Latest poll indicated that while the election seems to have tightened in the last few days, Clinton maintains a slight lead over Trump. Almost all major polls are predicting a victory for Clinton, but Trump appeared confident of winning some of the key battleground states, and thus wrest the White House from the Democrats after a gap of eight years.
"Do you want America to be ruled by the corrupt political class? Or do you want to be ruled by you, the people," Trump said in Michigan.
"We're going to be one country. We're not going to be a divided nation anymore... We will also cancel billions and billions of dollars in global warming payments to the United Nations where those payments disappear. And we're going to use all that money to invest in the infrastructure and we could even say the environmental infrastructure of our country."
