Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton held a four percentage point lead over Republican Donald Trump in the ABC News/Washington Post poll released on Monday, one day before the US presidential election.
In a survey of 1,763 likely US voters, 47 per cent said they backed Clinton and 43 per cent said they supported Trump. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, according to the Washington Post.
A separate Bloomberg Politics-Selzer & Co poll released earlier on Monday showed Clinton with a 3 point lead.
A tiny New Hampshire village cast the nation’s first ballots at the stroke of midnight. Dixville Notch has had the honour of launching the voting, symbolically, since 1960.
Clay Smith was the first of the seven residents, including five men and two women, to vote as Tuesday’s long awaited Election Day began. An eighth person voted by absentee ballot.
The tally was announced in a matter of minutes, the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton beat out her Republican rival Donald Trump, four to two.
In a battle centered largely on the character of the candidates, Clinton, 69, a former secretary of state and first lady, and Trump, 70, a New York businessman, made their final, fervent appeals to supporters late on Monday to turn out to vote.
Their final week of campaigning was a grinding series of get-out-the-vote rallies across battleground states where the election is likely to be decided.
“We choose to believe in a hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted America,” Clinton said in Philadelphia before a crowd of 33,000 – the biggest of her campaign.
She was joined by Democratic President Barack Obama, his wife Michelle, and Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton.
Trump made one of his final appearances late on Monday in Manchester, New Hampshire, where polls showed a tight race.
“Tomorrow, the American working class will strike back,” Trump said. “It’s about time.”
He brought much of his family on stage for his last rally in the state where he scored his first victory in the Republican nomination fight.
