#ElectionDay : Live updates from Trump Vs Biden election

Election day has begun and Americans are counting down the final hours to vote in a competition starkly divided by its two candidates.

Voters will decide today whether to back President Donald Trump and his uniquely brash, bruising presidency, or his Democratic opponent Joe Biden.

The president is confident about his win – despite trailing in the polls – and is set to throw a party at the White House for hundreds of voters later tonight.

“We’re going to have another beautiful victory tomorrow,” he told a crowd of voters in early hours of Tuesday in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Mr Biden meanwhile urged Americans to end to restore “our democracy”, as he prepared to visit the rustbelt towns that led to the Democrat’s downfall in 2016.

The former vice president is keenly aware of the area’s importance and will make a pit-stop in the Pennsylvania town he was born, Scranton, before voting closes today.

Mr Biden will then travel to Wilmington, Delaware with Senator Kamala Harris on election night.

Follow the latest updates below.

President Donald Trump said he felt good about his chances for victory as the US election opened Tuesday, predicting that he would register big victories in key states such as Florida and Arizona.

“We feel very good,” a hoarse-voiced Mr Trump told Fox News in a phone interview. “I think we’ll have victory.”

The president said he expected victory in all the key states that will decide the election.

“We think we are winning Texas very big. We think we are winning Florida very big. We think we are winning Arizona very big,” he said.

“I think we are going to do very well in North Carolina. I think we are going to do well in Pennsylvania. We think we are doing very well everywhere.

Here is everything you need to know and look out for as the final votes for President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden are cast:

• The US is confronting multiple crises and is choosing between two candidates with very different visions for the future.
• Mr Trump has downplayed the coronavirus outbreak and bucked public health guidelines by holding his signature campaign rallies featuring crowds of supporters – often unmasked – packed shoulder to shoulder.
• His reelection depends on driving up his margins in rural areas and smaller towns and cities.
• Mr Biden has said he would heed the advice of scientists. The Democrats stopped knocking on doors in the spring, going all-digital and phone.
•  He has pledged to work with state and local officials across the country to push mask mandates and has called on Congress to pass a sweeping response package.
• Each major party can install official poll watchers at precincts. It is the first time in decades Republicans could use the practice after the expiration of a court order limiting their activities.
• The bigger issue is likely to be unofficial “poll watchers”  – especially self-declared militias.
• Absentee voting amid coronavirus has changed the vote-counting timeline, and there are not uniform practices for counting across the states. This makes it difficult to predict when certain key battlegrounds might be called.

Democratic candidate Joe Biden has been spotted in public for the first time on Election Day as he visited the grave of Beau Biden.

Beau Biden, an Iraq veteran, died from brain cancer in 2015 aged 46. Mr Biden is regularly spotted visiting the grave at St Joseph Church in Wilmington, Delaware.

When Donald Trump became president in 2016, his victory was based on an “America First” platform. In the administration’s debut budget in 2017, that looked like catastrophic news for those who came in second: the rest of the world, particularly low- and middle-income countries.

While it is the world’s largest provider of foreign assistance in terms of dollars, America falls near the bottom of the OECD countries when spending is compared to its gross national income.

Yet for decades, the US has remained the biggest player on the global stage thanks to its sheer spending power – a role that has been dramatically undermined during the Trump presidency due to the constant spectre of cuts.

From using foreign aid as a bargaining chip to tightening the “global gag rule”, an executive order that effectively prevents any non-US charity from offering abortions or any such services, Trump’s rhetoric and unique style of politics has repeatedly tied the aid sector in noughts.

Now many in the international development community are left wondering whether they can survive another four years under Trump.

Jennifer Rigby, Sarah Newey and Anne Gulland have the story here.