First polls close as US election voters choose between Trump and Biden

The first set of polls have closed as voters in the US election decide between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden.

Each candidate declared the other fundamentally unfit to lead a nation grappling with coronavirus and foundational questions of economic fairness and racial justice.

The night began with predictable victories for each candidate, with Mr Trump taking Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma and Mr Biden winning Massachusetts, his home state of Delaware and Virginia, a former battleground that has become a Democratic stronghold. It is too early to call in the battleground states of Florida and Georgia.

Mr Biden entered polling day with multiple paths to victory, while Mr Trump, playing catch-up in a number of battleground states, had a narrower but still feasible road to clinch 270 electoral college votes.

Control of the Senate is also at stake. Democrats need to net three seats if Mr Biden captures the White House to gain control of all of Washington for the first time in a decade. The House is expected to remain under Democratic control.

With the worst public health crisis in a century still fiercely present, the pandemic – and Mr Trump’s handling of it – is the inescapable focus for 2020.

At the White House, more than 100 family members, friends, donors and staff were set to watch returns from the East Room. Mr Trump was watching votes come in upstairs in the residence with a few close aides. Most top campaign officials were monitoring returns from a “war room” set up in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

Mr Biden spent the day doing last-minute campaigning in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he was born, and in Philadelphia with a couple of local stops in Wilmington, Delaware, where he was spending election night.

Mr Trump told reporters: “Winning is easy. Losing is never easy, not for me it’s not.”

Mr Trump left open the possibility of addressing the nation on Tuesday night, even if a winner had not been determined. Mr Biden had scheduled a nighttime speech from his Delaware hometown but, hours before slated to deliver it, he said: “If there’s something to talk about tonight, I’ll talk about it. If not, I’ll wait ’til the votes are counted the next day.”

With coronavirus surging again, voters rank the pandemic and the economy as top concerns in the race between Mr Trump and Mr Biden, according to AP VoteCast, a national survey of the electorate.

Voters are especially likely to call the public health crisis the nation’s most important issue, with the economy following close behind. Fewer named healthcare, racism, law enforcement, immigration or climate change

The momentum from early voting carried into polling day, as an energised electorate produced long queues at polling sites throughout the country. Voters braved worries of coronavirus, threats of polling place intimidation and expectations of long queues caused by changes to voting systems, but appeared undeterred as turnout appeared it would easily surpass the 139 million ballots cast four years ago.

No major problems arose on Tuesday, outside the typical glitches of a presidential election. Some polling places opened late, robocalls provided false information to voters in Iowa and Michigan, and machines or software malfunctioned in some counties in the battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Texas.

The record-setting early vote – and legal rows over how it would be counted – drew unsupported allegations of fraud from Mr Trump, who had repeatedly refused to guarantee he would honour the election’s result. The hard-fought campaign left voters on both sides eager to move on, although the result might not be known for days.