As polls closed in Vermont, New Hampshire, Virginia, West Virginia Georgia, South Carolina, Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida, the Republican and Democratic nominees started vying to paint the states their parties' respective colors, with the most heated of races taking place in the battleground states of Georgia and Virginia.

As votes started pouring in, Republican nominee Donald Trump swept across several states, winning Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, Oklahoma, Florida, Arkansas, and Mississippi, while garnering a notable lead in Texas, Georgia, Virginia, Missouri, Ohio, and North Dakota.

Kentucky and Indiana, both traditionally Republican states, were the first to close their polling stations on Election Day, marking the beginning of a long night of vote counting across the country.

Early results from these states are consistent with pre-election expectations in areas that strongly lean Republican.

Harris, meanwhile, has won Delaware, Vermont, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts while maintaining a sizeable lead in Kansas, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New Jersey, and New Hampshire.

In total, according to The Associated Press, Trump currently has 101 electoral votes while Harris has 71 as more votes are counted.

Soaring fears of unrest 

Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump appear to be locked in a razor-thin race, with national opinion polls showing little change in recent weeks.

The situation is similar in seven critical swing states—Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina. Recent polling has failed to reveal a clear pattern or advantage for either candidate in these electoral battlegrounds, although most experts agree that the winner of Pennsylvania is likely to gain a significant edge.

“If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole ball of wax,” Trump, 78, declared at a rally in Reading during a frantic final day of campaigning in the state. Later, in Pittsburgh, he framed the election as a choice between “a golden age of America” if he returned to the White House or “four more years of misery, failure, and disaster” under Harris, as he articulated it. 

Harris, 60, spent all of Monday in Pennsylvania, wrapping up her campaign in Philadelphia alongside singer Lady Gaga and TV personality Oprah Winfrey, who warned about the threat Trump poses to democracy. “We don’t get to sit this one out,” Winfrey stated. “If we don’t show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again.”

Swing states hold the key to election victory in electoral college showdown

The swing states will ultimately decide the election, as the US political system determines outcomes not by the national popular vote but through an electoral college that allocates electors based roughly on each state's population size. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win, and battleground states are those where polls suggest outcomes could go either way

More than 78 million early ballots have been cast, but the final results may not be known quickly. With such tight polling, full results from crucial swing states are unlikely to be available on Tuesday night and may not even come in on Wednesday, leaving the US and the world anxiously awaiting the identity of the next president.