Trump and Kamala
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Donald Trump has won North Carolina and Georgia and taken a lead over Kamala Harris in several other battleground states that will decide the winner of the US election, BBC’s US partner CBS projects.
In more good news for Trump, Republican candidates were edging closer to gaining majority control of the Senate.
Harris was expected to spend election night at Howard University in Washington DC, where she was an undergraduate, but it emerged after midnight that she would not attend.
Following the announcement by campaign co-chairman Cedric Richmond, the crowd all but disappeared from Harris HQ at the historically black college.
The party-like atmosphere of a few hours earlier at Howard had already turned sour as two swing states were called for Trump.
CBS exit poll data suggests Harris may have under-performed with women.
Some 54% of female voters cast their ballots for her, the numbers indicate. But Joe Biden won the support of 57% of women in 2020.
Whichever way it goes the result will be historic – giving America its first woman president or marking a seismic political comeback for Trump.
Whoever takes the White House may have their hands tied by Congress, which is also up for grabs in Tuesday’s vote.
How swing state voters in Georgia are feeling on election day
CBS projects Republicans are on course to win control of the Senate after wresting two seats in West Virginia and Ohio from the Democrats and beating off a stiff challenge in Texas.
Neither party seemed to have an overall edge in the House, which Republicans narrowly control.
The seven swing states expected to determine the outcome are Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Early results suggest the race remains very tight in Arizona, while the count has just begun in the other sun belt battleground of Nevada.
Around 86 million voters cast their ballots early amid one of the most turbulent campaigns in recent American history.
Vice-President Harris, 60, only became the Democratic Party candidate in July, after President Joe Biden withdrew from the race under pressure from within the party.
Trump, 78, was the target of two assassination plots – narrowly avoiding a sniper’s bullet in Pennsylvania.
The former president said he felt “very confident” as he voted earlier on Tuesday near his home in Palm Beach, Florida, with his wife, Melania.
“If I lose an election, if it’s a fair election, I’m going to be the first one to acknowledge it,” he said.
He posted earlier on his social media platform, Truth Social, saying “law enforcement coming” to Philadelphia because of “massive cheating”.
Philadelphia’s police department told BBC Verify they were unaware of any electoral fraud. The city’s top prosecutor said the allegation had “no factual basis whatsoever”.
Both sides have armies of lawyers on standby for legal challenges on and after election day.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and Trump mega-donor, is spending election night with the Republican nominee at his Mar-a Lago resort in Florida.
If Harris won, she would become the first woman, black woman and South-Asian American to win the presidency.
Trump would become the first president to win non-consecutive terms in more than 130 years. He is also the only president to be impeached twice and the first former president to be criminally convicted.
How the US presidential campaign unfolded in 180 seconds
Exit polling by CBS also suggests that around a third of voters said the state of democracy was their top concern, out of the five options given.
The economy ranked second, with three in 10 voters choosing it, according to the preliminary data.
Abortion and immigration followed on the list, while foreign policy was deemed the least important.
Law enforcement agencies nationwide are on high alert for potential violence.
About 30 bomb threats hoaxes targeted election-related locations nationwide on Tuesday, more than half of them in the state of Georgia alone, reports CBS.
