[Source: Reuters]

Republican Donald Trump won Indiana and Kentucky in Tuesday’s presidential election while Democrat Kamala Harris captured Vermont, Edison Research projected, as polls closed in the first six U.S. states including the critical state of Georgia.

Georgia is among seven battleground states likely to decide the winner of the contest, with opinion polls showing the rivals neck and neck in all seven – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – going into Election Day.

Nearly three-quarters of voters say American democracy is under threat, according to preliminary national exit polls from Edison, reflecting the nation’s deep anxiety after a contentious campaign.

Democracy and the economy ranked by far as the most important issues for voters, with around a third of respondents citing each, followed by abortion and immigration. The poll showed 73% of voters believed democracy was in jeopardy against 25% who said it was secure.

The data underscored the depth of polarization in a nation where divisions have only grown starker during a fiercely competitive race. Trump employed increasingly apocalyptic rhetoric while stoking unfounded fears that the election system cannot be trusted. Harris warned that a second Trump term would threaten the underpinnings of American democracy.

The figures represent just a slice of the tens of millions of people who voted, both before and on Election Day, and the preliminary results are subject to change during the evening as more people are surveyed.

Hours before polls closed, Trump claimed on his Truth Social site without evidence that there was “a lot of talk about massive CHEATING” in Philadelphia, echoing his false claims in 2020 that fraud had occurred in large, Democratic-dominated cities. In a subsequent post, he also asserted there was fraud in Detroit.

A Philadelphia city commissioner, Seth Bluestein, replied on X, “There is absolutely no truth to this allegation. It is yet another example of disinformation. Voting in Philadelphia has been safe and secure.”

Trump, whose supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after he claimed the 2020 election was rigged, voted earlier near his home in Palm Beach, Florida.

His campaign has suggested he may declare victory on election night even while millions of ballots have yet to be counted, as he did four years ago. The winner may not be known for days if the margins in battleground states are as slim as expected.

Trump planned to watch the results at his Mar-a-Lago club before speaking to supporters at a nearby convention center, according to sources familiar with the planning. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a prominent Trump backer, said he would watch the results at Mar-a-Lago with Trump.

Trump attended a morning meeting about turnout but appeared bored by the data talk, according to one source briefed on the meeting. All Trump wanted to know, the source said, was: “Am I going to win?”

Harris, who had previously mailed her ballot to her home state of California, spent some of Tuesday in radio interviews encouraging listeners to vote. Later, she was due to address students at Howard University, a historically Black college in Washington where Harris was an undergraduate.

After a dizzying campaign, the two rivals were hurtling toward an uncertain finish as millions of American voters waited in lines to choose between two sharply different visions for the country.

A race churned by unprecedented events – two assassination attempts against Trump, President Joe Biden’s surprise withdrawal and Harris’ rapid rise – remained too close to call after billions of dollars in spending and months of frenetic campaigning.