US election: Donald Trump and Joe Biden claim early wins with presidential race too close to call
Watch ITV News' rolling coverage of the US election, as the first polls have now closed
Joe Biden and Donald Trump both claimed early wins as US states begin to call for the two candidates, with the race set to go down to the wire.
Tuesday's vote marks the culmination of months of campaigning for the two candidates, which has been blighted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Early projections have been announced in a number of states where polls have now closed, although many are deemed to close to call, including in key swing states of Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
So far:
Donald Trump is projected to win:
South Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Indiana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Louisiana, Kansas, Missouri, Idaho, Utah and Nebraska .
While Joe Biden is projected to win:
Virginia, Vermont, Delaware, South Carolina, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Connecticut, New York, New Mexico, Colorado, New Hampshire, California, Oregon, Washington, the District of Colombia and Illinois.
So far, with the early state results going as expected, Joe Biden has 118 electoral college votes while Donald Trump has 105. The eventual winner needs 270 electoral college votes to win.
While a number of states are still too close to call, millions more Americans in other states are still voting in person, adding to the record-breaking 102 million ballots already cast early before election day.
National polls suggest Joe Biden has a healthy lead against his Republican rival, but the race in the key battleground states which could decide the election looks set to be a closely fought contest.
Attention will turn to swing states such as Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and others as possible states which could decide this election.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump is hoping to avoid becoming the first sitting president to lose a re-election since George HW Bush in 1992.
Shortly after the first polls closed, Trump tweeted: "WE ARE LOOKING REALLY GOOD ALL OVER THE COUNTRY. THANK YOU!"
Earlier in the day, Trump precited there would be "tremendous success" for his administration and that he would return to Washington DC with a bigger majority than in 2016.
Speaking to reporters at the Republican National Committee offices in Virginia, Mr Trump claimed victory would bring unity America which, he said, had been derailed by what he described as "the China virus".
The Covid-19 pandemic has claimed 231,000 lives in the US, but Mr Trump insisted his party had done "an incredible job" in managing the virus.
"We closed up the greatest economy in the history of the world for any country, not just for our country, and we are now opening it up," he said in a speech, surrounded by his campaign team.
"We saved more than two million lives and did an incredible job with therapeutics, and with, I think maybe cures, because frankly, some of this stuff is so good."
ITV News presenter Tom Bradby sets the scene for a momentous night ahead
He said he had not written a concession or victory speech, but admitted "losing is never easy, not for me" before describing his campaign rallies as events "no one has ever seen before in the history of the world".
Mr Biden began election day at a church in Delaware, with his wife Jill and two grandchildren where the family visited their late son Beau Biden's grave in the church cemetery.
The former vice president then flew to childhood home and church in his native Scranton in Pennsylvania. His running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, was visiting Detroit, in the battleground state of Michigan.
After a campaign marked by rancor and fear, voters on both sides will likely be eager to move on but unrest around the result might delay the country doing that.
Already Washington's shops and businesses are boarded-up and residents are deeply nervous. Meanwhile, new security fencing rings the White House.
Multiple law enforcement agencies are on standby for riots and disturbances as the results roll in.
Polls will close at different times across the US at the end of election day, usually on the hour. Florida will be among on of the first states to close its polls at midnight on Wednesday, while Alaska will be the final state to close polling booths on election day.
As soon as this happens, a state can be "called" by the US news networks for one candidate or the other once they are confident who is going to win there.
A rush of projections are likely when polls close in more than a dozen safe states.
Given that a few states, including Texas, had already exceeded their total 2016 vote count, experts have been predicting it could be the highest turnout for a century.
Many people used their postal vote instead, despite President Trump's unfounded claims around the system's legitimacy.
The record-setting early vote - and legal wranglings over how it will be counted - have drawn unsupported allegations of fraud from the president, who has refused to guarantee he will accept the result.
A contentious or closely-fought contest could see the result of the election postponed, with a fight in the Supreme Court a distinct possibility.
Analysis from ITV News Washington Correspondent Robert Moore
We may - or may not - know the result by Wednesday morning. But the division won't be healed overnight.
If he loses, the president will have one final decision to make.
Does he accept defeat and walk off the stage with a degree of dignity, reluctantly embracing the political norms that he despises?
Or does he go down with all guns blazing, saying he has been cheated, and alleging that the election has been stolen by Democrats?