Andrew Learmonth reports from America: AS tension mounted last night in the final hours of the bitter battle to become President of the United States of America, only one thing was clear ... Donald Trump has done far better than expected.

His campaign had been written off earlier on election day, with exit polls and early voting indicating a victory for his rival Hillary Clinton.

As voting ended in the first states, the New York Times complex predictor tool had said Clinton had an

84 per cent chance of winning. Even Republican and sympathetic pollster Frankie Luntz had called the election for the Democrat.

Just three hours later, and it was clear both had underestimated his campaign. The New York Times said Trump had a 53 per cent chance of becoming the next US leader.

There were striking similarities to the Brexit vote. As in June, there were hidden voters, with the polls seeming to not accurately reflect the views of the white, blue-collar working-class electorate.

For Trump to win he needed to take Florida, without that his cause would have been lost lost. The prize was his just before 4am our time.

For much of the night it was on a knife edge, with white voters flocking to him, while Latinos and African Americans rushing to Clinton.

Trump managed to outperform his predecessors in the state’s many rural counties and in the Tampa and St Petersburg area.

For the thousands gathered in the Javit Centre in Manhattan for Clinton’s election night event, the night which had started boisterously, became nervous, sickening, somber. The theory was that Clinton had chosen the venue because of its glass ceiling, a metaphor for the one she had hoped to break.

Clinton shored up the Democrat vote in Virginia, and in Wisconsin and Michigan.

Less than a mile away from Clinton’s event, hand-picked Trump supporters had gathered in the Hilton’s ballroom. What had started off funereal, quickly became one of the loudest parties in town.

Trump had been optimistic when he casted his vote at 11am in Manhattan’s East Side.

“I’ve decided to vote for Trump,” Trump said.

“We’re going to win a lot of states,” he told Fox News. “Who knows what happens ultimately?”

He had warned against believing the pundits’ predictions: “I do think a lot of the polls are purposely wrong,” he said. “I don’t even think they interview people, I think they just put out phony numbers.”

A few hours earlier, and some 30 miles away in Chappaqua, the Clintons had cast their ballot at the Douglas G Grafflin Elementary School.

“It’s a humbling feeling,” Clinton told waiting reporters as neighbours flocked to shake hands and wish her luck.

“I know how much responsibility goes with this,” she added, “so many people are counting on the outcome of this election and what it means for our country.”

Clinton and her aides spent much of the afternoon in a Midtown Manhattan hotel, working on the two speeches she had prepared, while watching the results come in.

Both candidates have spent much of the last month criss-crossing the states in what has been a gruelling and, at times, unedifying campaign.

It was, though, a historic election, with Americans readying themselves to wake up to their first female president, or an the White House’s new tenant being an outsider who has never held government office or military rank in his life.

When Trump launched his campaign in June 2015, he was dismissed by the Republicans and the media, who gave the bigmouth billionaire acres of coverage, thinking he was at best a fringe, joke candidate, or that this nothing more than an attempt to get publicity for his hotel chain.

But the half-Scottish businessman decimated his rivals in the Republican primaries, winning massively, and in the process dividing the party.

During the campaign Trump has suggested Mexicans were criminals, rapists and drug dealers, and that he would build a wall to keep them from coming into the US. He suggested a female journalist had asked him difficult questions because she was having her period. He mocked a disabled journalist. He refused to release his tax returns, and effectively admitted to not paying any tax. He proposed a ban on all Muslims from entering the country.

But it was the release of a recording of a conversation where Trump bragged of using his celebrity status to, effectively, abuse and grope woman that nearly ended his campaign. His defence that this was “lockeroom banter” held little water as support fell away.

What saved him and put his campaign back in the running was a letter sent to Congress by FBI director James Comey suggesting an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s was about to be re-opened.

Trump was able to portray Clinton as a liar, and someone who had used her position to ignore laws.

She also slipped when she claimed half of Trump’s supporters could be put into a “basket of deplorables”

Then there was the video of her collapsing after a 9/11 memorial, stoking theories that she was too unwell to run for President.

Americans are also voting in elections to the the Senate and the House of Representatives. Most predictions suggest the Republicans have maintained their advantage.

Whatever the final result, it is increasingly clear is that once the dust settles, the scandals, allegations, fights, recriminations are unlikely to fade away after the inauguration of America’s 45th president on January 12.http://www.thenational.scot/news/The disunited state of America: Part 1 – New Jersey.24545http://www.thenational.scot/news/The disunited state of America: Part 2 – New York.24546http://www.thenational.scot/news/As the election campaigns end, Hillary Clinton supporters dread another ‘Brexit’.24563