They lined up in the dark and rain before the polls even opened in Saginaw, the key county in the crucial battleground state of Michigan.

Some just wanted to vote and get to work on time. But many people also understood that this American election was more important than most, no matter what the issues were.

And Saginaw voters also matter more than most. America's complex electoral system has created a battleground of seven US states that will decide the election – including Michigan. Saginaw is one of the most hotly contested areas in Michigan.

From polling places at Bethel AME Church on the heavily Democratic east side of the city of Saginaw, one of the county's poorest areas, to the wealthy Donald Trump-supporting town of Frankenmuth, many voters found themselves searching for the defense of their chosen lives at a time deep national division in the USA.

Among those who said they voted for Kamala Harris, the issue of women's rights came up again and again most frequently after the Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion two years ago. Cheyanne Laux, who voted at the church, said that was crucial to her choice.

“Trump has clearly demonstrated in the past that he clearly does not have women’s rights on his mind. For me, the abortion issue is the most important thing, and voting democratic is about maintaining that right,” she said.

Others who voted for the US vice president expressed fear of the damage Trump would do to democracy if he returned to the White House.

Trump supporters, for their part, saw what they saw as uncontrolled immigration as an existential threat to the United States and spoke of the former president as the man who could create jobs again in a region hit hard by the closure of auto factories in recent years .

Tom Harris voted for Hillary Clinton and then Joe Biden in the last two elections. This year he voted for Trump.

Harris works at one of the few remaining auto plants in Saginaw and is a longtime member of the United Auto Workers union.

“I was a die-hard Democrat all along because the union told me so. My brother-in-law had to say why he liked Trump. He says, 'I hate the man as a person, but he can run the country.' So I started looking at Trump a little differently,” he said.

Harris said Trump did better with the economy as president and avoided interfering in foreign conflicts. He compared the global situation then to today, saying Russia was too afraid of Trump to invade Ukraine while he was in power.

For voters like Shelley Coon in Frankenmuth, Trump was the man who protected their children from what they described as the Democratic Party pushing an ungodly agenda in the schools.

“The final decision for me was that I don't want our children to be taught what the Democratic Party is teaching in schools, all these 52 genders, non-binary stuff. No, that's just going too far. For me, that was my final decision. I know there were a number of issues, but that was really the bottom line,” she said.

“I don’t vote for the leader. You have to stick to the guidelines and we are moving too far away from religion, Christianity.”

Michigan saw a huge increase in voter turnout in the last presidential election as Democrats flocked to the polls to force Trump from the White House. Seventy-two percent of registered voters in the state cast ballots, the highest proportion in a Michigan election since John F. Kennedy won the presidency 60 years earlier.

Both are aware that voter turnout will be crucial again this year and are trying to take it to a new level. Trump told his supporters at a rally in Saginaw that they must vote to make his victory “too big to manipulate” as he continued to push his false claim that the presidency was stolen from him in 2020.

Meanwhile, Harris ended her campaign with a barrage of advertising in Michigan denouncing Trump as a continuing threat to women's rights, hoping to bring ambivalent voters to the polls or persuade women who previously voted Republican to switch sides.

Saginaw County will be a litmus test of how successful this strategy has been. Trump won the county in 2016 with 1.1% of the vote and won Michigan by just 10,704 votes, clinching the election. Four years later, Trump's vote increased in Saginaw, but he still lost to Biden by 303 votes because Democrats who stayed home in 2016 turned out in large numbers.

Chelsea la Coppola, who moved to Saginaw Township two years ago from another swing state, Arizona, said her vote was decided primarily by “women's rights, voting rights.” La Coppola said she expects the issue will influence many people she knows to vote.

“In addition to the democratic aspect, this is an important factor for them. “Everyone is worried about what will happen when Trump is back in office,” she said.

Saginaw City voter Tracy Goetgeluck said she has two daughters in their early 20s and abortion rights are “huge for her.”

“For my daughters and many of their friends, the main purpose of voting is that they feel like their own rights would be taken away if Trump were president again, and that really scares them.” Even my son votes because he is so close to his sisters because he doesn’t want that to be taken away from his sisters,” she said.

Katherine Harris also said that “the abortion issue is just huge for me,” albeit as a supporter of further restrictions and a Trump voter. She acknowledged that the issue could have a negative impact on the former president, particularly among female voters angry about the Supreme Court stripping them of their rights.

“I do think it could be damaging to a lot of younger women because in our society we don't hold ourselves accountable for our actions and so it's much easier to have an abortion than to live up to what we've done.” ” she said.

Erica Rapini was firmly pro-Trump, but her first-time elected daughter, 21-year-old Mikayla, kept her views to herself, saying only that deciding who to vote for “felt like I was going to have one.” Take a test.”

“It's hard to distinguish what's true and what's not in the media and stuff like that. So I really had to do some research,” she said.

Her mother was more certain of her views.

“My biggest issue is the crime coming across the southern border and the lack of response from the current administration,” she said.

Although Saginaw is about 1,500 miles (2,400 km) from the Mexican border, Trump's repeated and false claims that immigrants are driving a crime wave have resonated with many conservative voters, as have the barrage of rumors and fabricated claims spread on social media.

Katherine Harris swears undocumented migrants were brought by the busload to Bay City, about a half-hour away where her sister lives. This claim was so widespread that Bay City's mayor issued a statement last week denying it and saying they were legal migrant workers.

Like many Trump voters, Harris said she was not bothered by the tone of his vitriolic attacks and threats against his opponents.

“I tell everyone, I'm not here to be his friend, I'm here to help him provide for our family, like it should be. I don't agree with his Twitter, I don't agree with some of his comments. But he can run the country,” she said.

But what some Trump supporters dismiss as largely irrelevant voters like Goetgeluck find disqualifying and troubling.

“I didn’t want another round of Trump. He scares me very much. He doesn't seem to think about our people. He cares about himself. Before him, our country treated each other with respect. Things have gotten really bad since he started campaigning against Hillary Clinton, our elections are just bad. That's not what our country is about. That wasn’t the case before anyway,” she said.

Not many voters spoke enthusiastically about Kamala Harris, saying it was important to keep Trump out, and quite a few voters just wanted to get the election over with.

La Coppola said the atmosphere was so volatile that she avoided open expressions of support for the Democrat.

“You're afraid that crazy people will show up at your house, so you don't even want to put up a sign. You don't want to put a bumper sticker on your car. “You don’t want to do anything that might upset the other side,” she said.

This concern also extends to the fallout from the election, as Trump continues to try to undermine confidence in the legitimacy of the election if it goes against him.

Goetgeluck is worried about what will happen if Trump loses and is once again refusing to accept the result, as he did when he called on his supporters to storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

“I was standing in line and two people behind me who I knew were going to vote for Trump were talking about how there had already been fraudulent voting, double voting and all this stuff in Michigan, and I don't believe that. ” That's correct. There are rumors that start and it just snowballs from there,” she said.

Joe Pratt, who voted for Trump but said he would have preferred the former president's running mate JD Vance at the top of the ticket, is among those who believe the last election was rigged against Trump and that it was will be the case with this one.

“There are already people who are being arrested, who are being investigated. I can't remember where it was, but there was already a huge voter fraud bust. Pennsylvania maybe. It was pretty bad. So it already started there. There are cases where people's names do not match addresses. Addresses are incorrect. People’s names are wrong,” he said.

There is no evidence to support this claim. But Pratt is confident about what will happen if Trump loses.

“We all just get on with our lives. We have to survive the wave. I mean, what else can we do at this point?” he said.

Read more of the Guardian's coverage of the 2024 US election