US President Donald Trump was projected to win Indiana's electoral votes, Edison Research said on Tuesday, the first state to be decided in the race against Joe Biden in an election held amid a pandemic gripping a deeply divided United States.
As polls began to close in seven states, Trump also was projected to win Kentucky by the Associated Press, and Biden was projected by Fox News to win Democratic-leaning Vermont and Virginia in widely expected results. Indiana had been expected to go to Trump.
Voters, many wearing masks and maintaining social-distancing to guard against the spread of the coronavirus, experienced long lines in a few locales and short waits in many other places. There were no signs of disruptions or violence at polling sites, as some officials had feared.
The winner - who may not be determined for days - will lead a nation strained by a pandemic that has killed more than 231,000 people and left millions more jobless, racial tensions and political polarization that has only worsened during a vitriolic campaign.
A third of US voters listed the economy as the issue that mattered most to them when deciding their choice for president while two out of 10 cited COVID-19, according to an Edison Research exit poll on Tuesday.
Virus going "very badly"
In the national exit poll, four out of 10 voters said they thought the effort to contain the virus was going "very badly." In the battleground states of Florida and North Carolina, battleground states that could decide the election, five of 10 voters said the national response to the pandemic was going "somewhat or very badly."
The poll found that nine out of 10 voters had already decided whom to vote for before October, and nine out of 10 voters said they were confident their state would accurately count votes.
Biden, the Democratic former vice president, has put Trump's handling of the pandemic at the center of his campaign and has held a consistent lead in national opinion polls over the Republican president.
Biden, 77, appeared to have multiple paths to victory in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines the winner; at least 270 electoral votes, determined in part by a state's population, are needed to win.
Opinion polls show Trump, 74, is close enough in several election battleground states that he could repeat the type of upset he pulled off in 2016, when he defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton despite losing the national popular vote by about 3 million ballots.
The vote results will start to trickle in after midnight Irish time but counting could go on for several days in many states.
Biden hopeful
"I'm hopeful," Biden told reporters in his home state of Delaware, after earlier appearing in the pivotal state of Pennsylvania to make an 11th-hour appeal to voters.
"What I'm hearing," Biden added, "is that there's overwhelming turnout, and overwhelming turnout particularly of young people, of women" and in some states of older Black voters - groups expected to favor him.
Winning is easy. Losing is never easy - not for me it's not
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"I think we're going to have a great night," Trump said in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, where he thanked campaign workers. "But it's politics and it's elections, and you never know."
"Winning is easy. Losing is never easy - not for me it's not," Trump added.
Ahead of Election Day, just over 100 million voters cast early ballots either by mail or in person, according to the U.S. Elections Project at the University of Florida, driven by concerns about crowded polling places during the pandemic as well as extraordinary enthusiasm.
The total has broken records and prompted some experts to predict the highest voting rates since 1908 and that the vote total could reach 160 million, topping the 138 million cast in 2016.
Trump, admitting his voice was "a bit choppy" after making speeches at numerous raucous rallies in the final days of the campaign, said he was not yet thinking about making a concession speech or acceptance speech. Seeking a second four-year term, Trump said he would not declare victory prematurely, adding "there's no reason to play games."
In Pennsylvania, Biden first stopped at his childhood home in Scranton, where he signed one of the living room walls, writing: "From this house to the White House with the grace of God. Joe Biden 11-3-2020."
He later visited Philadelphia and used a bullhorn to address supporters who chanted, "Joe, Joe, Joe."
"It ain't over till it's over," Biden said in front of a block of brick rowhouses.
In anticipation of possible protests, some buildings and stores were boarded up in cities including Washington, Los Angeles and New York. Federal authorities erected a new fence around the White House perimeter.
