Washington, Nov 5 (IANS) The earliest indication of which way the 2024 White House race is trending will come from Georgia and North Carolina, the two battleground states, because they could get their votes the fastest.

Polling ends in Georgia at 7 p.m. (5.30 am IST on Wednesday) and in North Carolina at 7.30 p.m. (6 a.m. IST).

Most voters cast their ballot early in these states and they will be counted before Election Day votes. Both states are expected to finish the count by midnight, but early trends will be available far sooner, possibly around 7 a.m. on Wednesday in India.

If Kamala Harris is ahead or looks set to win either Georgia or North Carolina - President Joe Biden won Georgia in 2020, she will open up multiple pathways to the White House. If Donald Trump wins both states, the race will come down to the three 'Blue Wall' states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which have been must-win states for Democrats since Trump breached the wall and won all three states to beat Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Both these states have 16 electoral college votes.

Harris and Trump need at least 271 of the 538 electoral college votes to win the presidency. Over 82 million American voters already cast their ballot before Tuesday, called Election Day, either through in-person voting at early voting stations or through postal ballot. This was more than 51 per cent of the total of 158 million votes that were cast in 2020, at the height of a raging Covid-19 pandemic.

Harris and Trump ended their campaign with rallies in Pennsylvania and Michigan, respectively, also both battleground states. There are in all seven battleground states that will determine the 2024 White House race. Unlike others, they are neither solidly Democratic nor Republican and they can swing between the two and are, therefore, also called the Swing States. They are Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. Biden had all of them but North Carolina in 2020 to beat Trump.