The Democratic candidate voted in Chappaqua, New York and the Republican candidate in Manhattan – but it’s too early to say who is leading the race

After a gruelling 18 months on the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump cast their votes on Tuesday morning as millions of Americans headed to polling stations across the country.

Long lines of voters snaked across America as Clinton appeared quietly confident of becoming the first female president – but Trump clung to hopes of a historic upset.

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Their ballots follow those of the more than 46 million people who voted early this year, but it remained too early to say whether the scales were tipped toward the former secretary of state or her Republican rival, who on Monday filed a lawsuit alleging unfair voting practices in Nevada.

Clinton was greeted by flashing cameras at a school in Chappaqua, New York, where she voted with her husband, former president Bill Clinton. After filling out the ballot, Clinton was overwhelmed by hugs and handshakes outside the polling station.

Guardian US political reporter Sabrina Siddiqui captures Clinton casting her ballot in Chappaqua, New York earlier on Tuesday.

“It is the most humbling feeling, because I know how much responsibility goes with this,” Clinton told reporters outside Douglas G Grafflin elementary school, after casting her vote.

Hours later, Trump arrived at his designated polling site, PS 59 elementary school in Manhattan, where more than 80 voters were lined up in the dark before voting opened at 6am.

Asked whether he would concede if the networks called the election for Clinton on Tuesday night, Trump said: “We’ll see what happens.” In recent weeks, Trump has repeatedly said that he may not concede if he loses to his Democratic rival, warning in unprecedented remarks that the election could somehow be “rigged”.

On Tuesday afternoon, he told Fox News that if he lost, he would have to see “under what circumstances” that happened before he could concede. “I have to look at what’s happening,” he said. No independent report of voting irregularities had been confirmed by mid-afternoon.

The comments came just after Trump filed a lawsuit against Clark County, Nevada, claiming four polling stations had allowed people to vote past the early voting deadline.

Clark County representatives said people who were in line before the polling stations’ closing time were allowed to vote after the deadline, in keeping with state law. Judge Gloria Sturman denied the Trump campaign’s request to preserve early voting records in Clark County. The campaign can appeal.

Democrats, meanwhile, fear that voter suppression activity may have depressed turnout in states like North Carolina, where they say changes to polling rules have disproportionately deterred African American voters in particular. 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 scrutinize the US election for the for the first time.

‘Tough decision’

People cheered and booed as Trump entered his voting station just before 11am, with his wife, Melania, and daughter, Ivanka. “New York hates you!” yelled one person, while another cheered the candidate on with “Go Trump.”



Asked by reporters who he was voting for, Trump replied simply: “Tough decision.”

Before Trump arrived, two topless women protested inside the voting site, shouting: “Out of our polls, Trump, out of our polls, Trump!”

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.

The women, who were wearing jeans but no shirts, were escorted out of the station quickly.

Clinton 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 battlegrounds.

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 “Madame President” broke out as the Clintons emerged after voting in the company of an eager herd of locals 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. Clinton was set to watch the returns from The Peninsula, a luxury hotel that, incidentally, sits a block from Trump Tower on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. The mood within the campaign was cautiously optimistic, with few signs of a team bracing for the unexpected.

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 reads 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 smaller turnout than for Obama.

Some residents of Manhattan’s Upper West Side cast their vote in Trump Place, a residential development built by the Republican nominee in the 1990s. The polling station’s name seemed to have no bearing on voting intentions for many of them. “He’s a misogynist, and he’s phobic of everyone who isn’t like him,” said Juliet Herman, a 52-year-old strategist.

Slava Hazin, 50, was one of the few outside Trump Place who said they were voting for Trump. “ABC,” he said. “Anyone but Clinton.”

Hazin said he “can’t stand Trump”, but as a Republican, he was voting for him anyway. “It was the worst lineup we’ve ever had,” he said of the original Republican candidates. “I mean, I’ve voted for some Republican duds but this really takes the cake.”

Before polls opened on Tuesday morning, more than 46 million people nationwide had already voted – compared with the 32.3 million people who voted early in 2012. The huge turnout broke early voting records in many states, with some predicting it would prove positive news for the Democratic party.

Hispanic surge

In Florida, a key swing state, nearly 50% of the state had already voted by the time polls opened on Tuesday morning. It was one of many states to see a surge in Hispanic voters, with 36% more of the population voting early in the election than had voted altogether in the 2012 election.

And in Ohio, thousands of people swamped county election board offices on Monday to take advantage of the campaign’s final early-voting hours, which were restricted this year by the Republican-controlled state legislature and Republican governor, John Kasich.

Party affiliations of early voters in Ohio have not been made public, but a decline in the percentage who are African American compared with 2012 gave supporters of Donald Trump cause for optimism that the Republican nominee would be able to clinch the state.

Hundreds of people – black, white, young and old – snaked around a parking lot in Akron to cast votes in Summit County, which has voted Democrats for president ever since Ronald Reagan’s re-election in 1984.

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In Youngstown, the center of Mahoning County, a former Democratic stronghold where Trump has this year enjoyed a surge in support among blue-collar workers, hundreds more people waited patiently in unseasonably warm sunshine to cast the final votes before election day.

Kevin Stillwell Jr was one of the county’s last early voters, waiting almost two hours in line to cast his ballot shortly before 4pm on Monday.

“It’s nothing,” Stillwell, a 20-year-old student at Youngstown State University, said of the wait he had endured. “It’s all worth it to have my say on who will be our president.”

Stillwell, who was raised in Canton, about 60 miles to the south-west, voted for Hillary Clinton, but without much enthusiasm. “They both suck, in my opinion,” he said. “But in this situation, the question is: which is the least worst?”

Trump’s claims in recent weeks of a “rigged election” had left people nationwide concerned that his supporters would attempt to intimidate voters at polling stations.

On Monday, two witnesses for the Democratic party testified in a Pennsylvania court that Trump’s claims had left them afraid that people armed with assault rifles would be coming to Philadelphia to watch the polls on voting day.

But in the north of the Pennsylvania city on Tuesday morning, at a handful of the voting divisions that recorded zero votes for Mitt Romney in 2012, there was not a single vigilante poll watcher standing outside the voting places – not even outside the ones that had given Barack Obama 100% of the vote.

Outside Meade elementary school in Philadelphia’s 47th ward, where one voting division had cast all 173 votes for Obama, there was a booth offering free smoothies, but no one who appeared to be monitoring the polls for Trump. Three members of the Clinton campaign’s voter protection team were present.

Gwen Frazier, 62, stopped to celebrate voting along with her son, Malik. Both had voted for Clinton. Trump’s comments about Muslims and Mexicans had left her convinced that he did not like African Americans either, she said. “What is he going to say to the foreigners overseas? How is he going to represent us?”

Malcolm Kenyatta, a 26-year-old North Philadelphia native who introduced Clinton at a rally here in April, said he had almost cried when he cast his vote.

“It’s a beautiful day to go vote for Hillary,” he said, greeting his neighbors as they came up to the polling place.

Outside a polling place in a public housing building in the 37th ward that had also recorded 100% of the votes for Obama in 2012, 42-year-old Anthony Newsome said that he did not trust Clinton and was not excited about her, but that he had voted for her. “She’s a lesser of two evils,” he said.

Trump seemed to have no policies and no plans, he said. “Honestly, I don’t think that he can read.”

The first election-day ballots were cast in rural New Hampshire, where Clinton beat Donald Trump handily with a 4-2 win in the township of Dixville Notch. Libertarian Gary Johnson was one vote short of tying with Trump, as was Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican candidate, who had been written in.



Sarah Maslin Nir (@SarahMaslinNir) The scene at Susan B. Anthony's grave. And it's a scene. pic.twitter.com/mgQNwmsB9f

But in the three New Hampshire towns with midnight voting, Trump won overall with a 32-25 vote.

Meanwhile, in Rochester, New York, an election tradition took on even greater poignancy. Every year on election day, people visit the grave of Susan B Anthony, a driving force behind women’s suffrage, and place “I Voted” stickers on her tombstone. But this year, Mount Hope cemetery has planned for overflow crowds and extended its visiting hours in honor of the first female major party presidential nominee. Already, dozens of people have spent Tuesday morning queueing.

When the gates close there at 9pm ET, voters in the western US will still be casting their votes.

The last polls close at 1am ET, when the final ballots are collected in Alaska, where Trump is favored to win the state and its three electoral votes.