Clinton or Trump?: America votes in the wild race
After a long and exceptionally negative campaign, Americans by the millions voted yesterday for their next president as opinion polls showed Democrat Hillary Clinton with a narrow lead over Republican Donald Trump.
In a battle that focused on the character of the candidates, Clinton, 69, a former US first lady, senator and secretary of state, and Trump, 70, a New York businessman, made final, fervent appeals to voters late on Monday to turn out at the polls.
Clinton led Trump, by 44 percent to 39 percent, in the last Reuters/Ipsos national tracking poll before Election Day.
A Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation poll gave Clinton a 90 percent chance of defeating Trump and said she was on track to win 303 Electoral College votes, with 270 needed for election.
Polls begin to close at 7:00pm Eastern Time (0000 GMT on Wednesday), with the first meaningful results due about an hour later.
US television networks called the winner of the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections at 11:00pm (0400 GMT) or shortly after, reports Reuters.
The marathon US election campaign, which kicked off in early 2015, has been unusually negative, with each candidate accusing the other of lacking the character and judgment to be president. Majorities of voters in opinion polls have viewed both candidates unfavourably.
Mary Wheeler, 94, held her nose when asked which candidate she was supporting as she stood in line to vote at the Coliseum ballroom in St Petersburg, Florida, an important presidential battleground state.
"I always vote Republican, so I guess I'll do that," Wheeler said. "He can make a fool of himself but I think he may be able to straighten things out a little bit," she said of Trump.
In Cleveland, Timothy Sommerfelt, 30, said he voted for Clinton at the Joseph M Gallagher School polling site.
"I don't think Donald Trump would do a good job," Sommerfelt said, adding that his vote "is a vote against Donald, obviously."
FIRST WOMAN PRESIDENT?
Clinton, who is aiming to become the first woman US president, cast her ballot at an elementary school near her home in Chappaqua, New York early yesterday morning.
"It is the most humbling feeling. I know how much responsibility goes with this. So many people are counting on the outcome of this election, what it means for our country. And I'll do the very best I can if I'm fortunate enough to win today," Clinton said.
Clinton has claimed her first victory in the US presidential election -- on the tiny island of Guam in the west Pacific Ocean, writes independent.co.uk.
Votes in the US territory, which has a population of around 160,000, do not count towards the final result, but have historically been a reliable indicator of which way the vote will swing.
Clinton took 71.6 per cent of the territory's votes, with her Republican rival Donald Trump lagging behind on 24.2 per cent.
Guam has predicted the result of the presidential election correctly in its straw poll for the last 32 years, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The only year it did not manage to predict the president was in 1996, when a typhoon disrupted voting on election day.
'WE'LL SEE WHAT HAPPENS'
Trump, a former reality TV star, received a mixture of cheers and jeers as he arrived to vote at a school in Manhattan. He said voting so far looked good for him. "It's very good generally speaking. It's a great feeling."
Asked if he would concede if the TV networks declared Clinton the winner, he answered, "Well, we'll see what happens." Trump, who has argued that the political system is rigged against him, previously has said he might not accept the election results if he loses.
More than 40 million voters cast ballots before Election Day in early voting in many states.
Trump, launching his first bid for elected office after decades as a public figure, has positioned himself as an agent of change, vowing to crack down on illegal immigration and end trade deals he says are harming US workers.
He was expected to draw support heavily from white voters without college degrees.
Clinton was likely to draw support from college-educated voters and Hispanic and black voters.
She has vowed to largely continue the policies of Obama and to overcome income inequality among Americans, with a divide between the rich and poor.
Major bookmakers and online exchanges were confident she would win. Online political stock market PredictIt put her chances yesterday of capturing the White House at 80 percent, down 2 percentage points from Monday.
Trump advisers say the level of his support is not apparent in opinion polls and that they believe the real estate developer is in position for an upset victory along the lines of the "Brexit" vote in June to pull Britain from the European Union.
TRUMP CAMPAIGN SUES IN NEVADA
Trump sued the registrar of voters in Clark County, Nevada, over a polling place in Las Vegas that had been allowed to remain open late last week to accommodate people who were lined up to vote.
Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton are in a close contest for Nevada's six electoral votes in yesterday's election after a long and contentious campaign. Nevada is one of several states that permits early voting and Las Vegas is viewed as a base of support for Clinton.
Nevada state law says voters who are in line at 8:00pm, when the polls close, must be allowed to cast their ballots.
Trump's lawsuit, filed in a Nevada state court on Monday, said election officials violated state law because they allowed people to join the line after 8:00pm at a polling location at a Latino market.
Trump, who said last month that he might not accept the outcome of the national election if he thinks it is unfair, asked in the lawsuit that the ballots from the Latino market be kept separate from other votes, pending any legal challenges to the state's results.
"We have to keep the system honest," Trump said on Fox News.
MUST-WIN STATES
An early indicator of who might prevail could come in North Carolina and Florida, two must-win states for Trump that were the subject of frantic last-minute efforts by both candidates.
Races in both those states were shifting from favouring Clinton to being too close to call, according to opinion polls.
Democrats also are seeking to break the Republican lock on control of the US Congress.
A strong turnout of voters for Clinton could jeopardize Republican control of the Senate, as voters choose 34 senators of the 100-member chamber on Tuesday. Democrats needed a net gain of five seats to win control. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives were being contested. The House was expected to remain in Republican hands.
Trump revelled in the drama of the negative presidential campaign and seized the spotlight time and again with provocative comments about Muslims and women, attacks against the Republican establishment and bellicose promises to build a wall along the US southern border with Mexico to stem illegal immigration.
But the spotlight was not always kind to Trump. The release in October of a 2005 video in which he boasted about groping women damaged his campaign and left him on the defensive for critical weeks
Clinton, with a long reputation for secrecy, sustained damaging blows from her handling of classified information as the country's top diplomat.
FBI Director James Comey shook up the race and slowed Clinton's momentum with an Oct 28 announcement the agency was reviewing newly discovered emails perhaps related to her email practices. But on Sunday, Comey ruled out criminal wrongdoing by Clinton.