Losses in key battleground states such as Florida and Ohio for Clinton have Trump’s team believing an upset is in the offing

Donald Trump was poised to pull off a stunning upset in the US election early Wednesday morning as Democrats lost a crucial rust belt state that dashed dreams of Hillary Clinton becoming the first female president.

Democratic campaign chairman John Podesta appeared before distraught supporters in New York to announce that Hillary Clinton would not be appearing to give a concession speech. “Everybody should head home,” he told them “Get some sleep. We’ll have more to say tomorrow.”

It was a moment of stunning anticlimax after a chastening night for the Clinton campaign and came as Trump stood only one state result away from the Oval Office.

With Ohio and North Carolina falling to Trump and a shock early win in Florida, the Republican needed either Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, three states hit hard by the collapse of US manufacturing jobs.

At 1.35am, the Associated Press projected Trump had won Pennsylvania. He was also ahead in both Michigan and Wisconsin and just behind Clinton in a knife-edge race in New Hampshire.

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But assuming Republicans are able to hold on to early leads in the usually reliably red western states of Arizona and Alaska, then Pennsylvania would be all he needs to put him over the top.

A win for Pennsylvania senator Pat Toomey at 1.18am also confirmed – if Republicans hold Louisiana, Alaska as expected – that a President Trump will have the support of both a Republican controlled US Senate and House of Representatives.

Investors reeled from the prospect of a victory that would reverberate around the world and futures markets pointed to a fall of nearly 600 points in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The crowd at Trump’s watch party in the midtown Hilton grew increasingly excited as the evening went on. Loud cheers erupted every time returns from Florida and Ohio were shown on the television screen. The mood grew increasingly optimistic as attendees huddled anxiously around their televisions clasping their drinks and their cellphones in equally tight grips.

Aides to Clinton, holed up at the Peninsula hotel in Manhattan where she was watching returns with her family, went silent as the race tipped in Trump’s favour.

Clinton quickly sounded a sombre note. “This team has so much to be proud of. Whatever happens tonight, thank you for everything,” she wrote in a tweet aimed at supporters as the first early losses came in.

At a “victory party” for supporters, under the veil of a glass ceiling that was meant to be an epic symbol of a historic night when gender barriers were swept aside, there was even bleaker mood.

Thousands of people who filled the Jacob Javits Convention Center in midtown Manhattan – and the thousands more lining the blocks outside – had eyes glued to the TV. A woman clasped her hands over her mouth in disbelief as the newscasters announced Trump had won North Carolina.

The mood dropped markedly as results began to roll in: Ohio, Florida, North Carolina. Outside the Javits Center at the so-called “block party”, a couple embraced. The woman wiped a tear from her face and the man stroked her hair.

Another man, who identified himself only by his first name, Theo, called the results so far “scary and troubling”. “You don’t think there could be so much hate in this country – there is,” he said, an American flag drooping at his side.

Just a few hours before polls started closing, Trump’s team was still insisting he could yet shatter expectations with an election night upset that would reveal deep anti-establishment anger among US voters.

In another hopeful sign for Republicans, Ohio senator Rob Portman, John McCain in Arizona and Marco Rubio in Florida all comfortably held off Democratic challengers.

Exit polling by CNN suggested 88% of voters had made up their minds more than than week ago, before last minute FBI inquiries into Clinton’s emails temporarily raised fears of a late Trump surge.

Earlier in the evening, Clinton’s team expressed optimism about its prospects as the returns first began to trickle in.

“We felt confident this morning and into the afternoon,” an aide told reporters at the hotel. “Nothing has changed that.”

Anxiety was nonetheless palpable as the results swung in Trump’s direction, with aides going dark on reporters seeking further updates.

Elsewhere, comfortable victories for Clinton were called in Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, Rhode Island, Washington DC, Delaware and West Virginia.

Trump was also projected to have won similarly safe Republican territory in Indiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina, followed by Kansas, Wyoming, Texas, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Louisiana.

Aides to Clinton had been quietly confident about Florida going into the close of polls, pointing to record turnout in the populous counties of Broward and Miami Dade.

The two counties have proven to be Democratic strongholds in recent cycles, and Clinton’s campaign moved quickly to drive up early voting among the key demographics of what it referred to as “the Hillary coalition”. According to a Clinton campaign memo, early voting surged in recent days among Hispanics, African Americans and millennials. More than 1 million Hispanic voters cast their ballots early, the campaign said, roughly double the number from 2012.

In a sign of how polarising Trump has been even among Republicans, the party’s last president, George W Bush, revealed that he and his wife, Laura, had left the national portion of their ballots blank when they voted in Texas two weeks ago.

As results started to come in, two candidates with very different views of America were watching television just two minutes’ walk from each other: the Clintons at the Peninsula hotel in midtown Manhattan and the Republican team in Trump Tower.

In a sign of potential for turmoil either way, the Republican candidate again told Fox News he was “going to have to see under what circumstances” he would accept the result of the election amid what he said were complaints of vote tampering.



The Trump campaign filed and lost a lawsuit in Nevada alleging early voting was illegally extended by local officials, but voting rights experts who are monitoring the election across the country are continuing to report a slew of minor problems, from long lines to faulty technology and sporadic reports of intimidation.

North Carolina, one of the most sensitive swing states that both Clinton and Trump have poured resources into winning, was particularly troubled by voting machines breaking down and electronic polling books seizing up. A lawsuit was filed with a superior court in North Carolina calling for an emergency order to force the state board of election to keep the Durham County polling places open until 9pm.

US presidential election: five scenarios 1) The Clinton Crush: In which Donald Trump loses every state with even a hint of Democratic flavor and drops a few big Republican ones too – the fantasy scenario for every American offended by Trump’s candidacy 2) The Trump Bank Shot: Trump has performed strongly all night, winning Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Iowa. In this squeaker scenario, Trump owes his electoral life to white voters. 3) The Clinton Cliffhanger: Democrats’ blood pressure climbs to 220/140 before Florida finally reports a conclusive win for Clinton at 3am 4) The Al Gore: The result comes down to a razor-thin margin, resulting in a refusal and, ultimately, the mother of all legal battles. 5) The Make America Great Again: Britain Brexited. The Cubs won the World Series. And guess what? These things happen in threes. Brace yourselves for whatever may be.

In Texas, the Republican-controlled legislature’s efforts to introduce one of the strictest forms of photo ID requirements in the country led to widespread confusion, according to Myrna Perez of the Brennan Center for Justice.

As well as voter monitoring by the Department of Justice’s civil rights division, Barack Obama invited overseas observers from the Organization of American States to scrutinise the US election for the first time.

The Democratic candidate began her day with at least a small step toward history, casting a ballot for herself at a polling site in her adopted hometown of Chappaqua. She arrived at the station, inside an elementary school, with husband Bill Clinton just under four hours after landing in Westchester from a final day of campaigning with four rallies across three battleground states.

Dozens of supporters had braved a chilly fall morning to greet the candidate they hoped would be the first woman to serve in the nation’s highest office. Chants of “I believe that she will win” and “Madam President” broke out as the Clintons emerged before them after voting in the company of an eager herd of local residents who appeared to forget their own ballots in the company of the former – and perhaps future – first couple.



Clinton told reporters voting for herself was “the most humbling feeling”.

“I know how much responsibility goes with this and so many people are counting on the outcome of this election, what it means for our country,” she said, “and I will do the very best I can if I’m fortunate enough to win today.”

Clinton also confessed to thinking of her late mother, Dorothy Rodham, who she has described as one of her greatest inspirations.

It was then a quiet afternoon for the Democratic nominee. She taped a series of radio interviews and prepared for the night that will seal her fate from her home with a small group of confidantes.

The mood within the campaign was cautiously optimistic, with few signs of a team bracing for the unexpected. The night before, Clinton, her husband and the staff aboard one of the final flights of her campaign recorded a lighthearted video as part of the so-called “Mannequin Challenge”, a new viral craze.

The camera spanned the group, frozen in different poses, at the front cabin. When the frame reached Clinton, statuesque in the company of rock icon Jon Bon Jovi, they broke into laughter as the words “Don’t stand still. Vote today” flashed before the screen. It was a relatively insignificant final push, promoted mostly on social media, but in its joviality a testament to a campaign confident that victory

was in sight.

New, but untested, projections of real time voting patterns also appeared to support the Democratic party’s belief that its voters were flocking to the polls, helping rally US stock markets for a second day running.

But the Trump campaign read the turnout signals in a different way, pointing out that the numbers of registered Republicans turning out to vote in battleground states were up on the level seen by Mitt Romney in 2012, while Democrats were seeing less turnout than for Obama.

The mood in Trump Tower remained defiant all day, even though the candidate himself told Fox: “If I don’t win, I will consider it a tremendous waste of time, energy, and money.”

In a lunchtime call, Trump communications director Jason Miller told reporters: “All the early indicators from states like Florida, North Carolina, Michigan and New Hampshire where we are tracking specific precincts mean we are feeling very good about turnout and our spirits are buoyed by what we are seeing today.”

Miller said Trump had received a standing ovation from staff in the election “war room” at campaign headquarters when he visited after voting on Tuesday morning. “We feel we have done everything leading up to election day that we possible can,” added Miller.

Trump cast a ballot in midtown New York at 11am local time. He described his vote to reporters as “a tough decision” after complimenting a poll worker’s hair. “I like your hair. I like that hair color.” Trump, though, didn’t respond to questions about whether he’d concede in the case that Clinton won, saying: “We’ll see what happens.”

The event was Trump’s only public appearance of the day. He made multiple appearances on Fox News. In an afternoon interview with Fox, he warned of voter fraud, claiming “there are reports that when people vote for Republicans the entire ticket switches over to Democrats. You’ve seen that. It’s happening at various places today, it has been reported. In other words, the machines, you put down a Republican and it registers as a Democrat.”

Trump, though, expressed cautious optimism about his prospects on Tuesday night, saying: “I feel really good. I feel good about tonight. We’ll have to see what happens but we’re getting very good numbers coming out and we’ll see. Who knows, but I think we are going to do very well.”

If turnout does match or exceed that for Obama’s two historic victories, it will cap a remarkable election campaign that has defied nearly all political expectations over two years of often bitter competition.

Americans flocked from the international space station to the early voting hamlet of Dixville Notch in New Hampshire to cast their first ballots.

Outside of a polling station in Trump Place, a Manhattan residential building built by the Republican nominee, Slava Hazin, 50, declared his support for the building’s namesake. “ABC,” he said. “Anyone but Clinton.”



Hazin said he “can’t stand Trump”, but as a Republican, he was voting for him anyway.

Meanwhile in Philadelphia, 26-year-old Malcolm Kenyatta said he had almost cried when he cast his vote for Clinton. “It’s a beautiful day to go vote for Hillary,” he said.

Additional reporting by Lauren Gambino, Amanda Holpuch and Ed Pilkington in New York