Hello there, Rónán Duffy here. I don’t know about you lot but there’s nothing like an election night, be in Ireland or anyway. And tonight is probably about as big as it comes.

So whether we’re about to see the Clinton dynasty get a second president in the White House, or America’s most famous property tycoon take on the country’s most valuable real estate – it should be fun.

We’re being told that that the first exit polls are only minute away. We’ll have it all here.

In the past hour we were told that former president George W. Bush did not vote for Donald Trump. That’s now been confirmed by a spokesperson.

Freddy Ford says the most recent Republican president voted “none of the above for president and Republican down-ballot.” Ouch.

There have been many, many unprecedented things about this election. Just one small one tonight is that both Trump and Clinton are only blocks apart from each other in downtown Manhattan.

The Donald is holed up in Trump Tower at the moment. Nobody’s getting in by the looks of it.

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We don’t have any numbers yet about how people voted, but CNN has carried out an exit poll and there are some interesting things to be found.

The last two months may have been hellish with three debates and endless coverage but it turns out that the last eight weeks didn’t make a difference to a lot of people. Nearly two-thirds of people say they made up their minds before September.

In terms of late breakers, about one in eight people made up their minds in the last week.

There’s some disturbing news emerging from California. Four people have been injured in a shooting and a nearby polling station has been put on lockdown.

Details are sketchy as yet but the polling station was closed as a precaution along with a local school.

We’ve all been waiting for some actual results and we’ve got the first actual vote counts.

They’re in two states where Donald Trump is expected to win and there’s no surprise to see that he is.

There are fewer than o% of the votes counted in both Indiana and Kentucky but early results show that the Republican is running at 70% and 67% respectively.

If you’re on a phone or a tablet and want to watch the results coming in, a few of the major US networks are streaming on Youtube for the night. NBC for one:

You might have missed Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway on MSNBC earlier. It’s fair to say that she wasn’t exactly sounding confident.

You might think that being Trump’s campaign manager might be hard enough, but she seemed to be saying that she didn’t have much help from the Republican top brass.

We’re still waiting for some of the most vital states to stop voting, but we already have our first breakout star of the night. They’re calling it #TrumpCake, for obvious reasons.

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THEY’RE ON THE BOARD!

More polls have now closed and we now have our first projections. No surprises as Trump wins Kentucky and Indiana and Clinton takes Vermont.

This is what that means, your embryonic election night map after three states have been called.

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A CNN reporter at the Trump HQ in New York has spoken to one of Trump’s advisors.

What did have to say? Not great for Trump:

It will take a miracle for us to win.

Florida, Florida, Florida.

The sunshine state gets even more time in the sun every four years because it’s so big and so swing-ey.

As expected it’s running very close again with about half the votes in.

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Even though it’s tight in Florida, the figures show that Clinton is doing a lot better than predicted in some important areas. It bodes well for the Democrat.

Sustenance is important for these long election nights. Here’s what they US newsrooms are eating.

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For the record, my colleague Paul Hosford had Domino’s Pizza and I had Camile Thai.

Our colleague Paul Dollery of The42.ie is New York for this weekend’s Conor McGregor fight in Madison Square Garden.

He’s soaking up the electoral atmosphere in Times Square.

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After 1am it will start to get a lot crazier.

Here she comes.

Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey and Massachusetts have all just been called for Hillary Clinton.

Even better news for her is how well she’s doing in Ohio. The state was a big target for Trump but indications are that Clinton is performing even better than Barack Obama did. The current president won the state twice.

If Trump doesn’t take it, it could be a fatal blow to his chances. On the plus side for him, he’s won Oklahoma.

Four years ago when Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama, much of the Republican soul-searching was about how the party needed to communicate better with Hispanic voters.

That was the plan, pre-Donald Trump.

The man seen as the man to do it was Marco Rubio, or ‘Little Marco’ as Trump came to refer to him as. Could he have made a difference?

The former candidate has just been reelected as a Senator for Florida.

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The US Embassy is having a party in the Guinness Storehouse tonight. All eyes on the prize.

Florida is changing by the minute. Fox News says there are 28 votes between them with 12% of the votes left to be counted.

TWENTY-EIGHT!

With 13 states called…

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AP / Press Association Images AP / Press Association Images / Press Association Images

Sweet home Alabama for Donald Trump, he’s just taken the Yellowhammer State. He’s also slowly building on a slight lead in Florida as the votes continue to be counted.

Karl Rove though, who knows a bit about tight elections in Florida, points out that Trump is losing in Hillsborough County, whose voters have opted for the eventual presidential winner in 19 out of the last 20 elections.

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Did the Access Hollywood tape have much of an effect on Trump? Yes, but perhaps not as much as you’d think.

The red, white and blue shining on the Empire State Building. Both candidates aren’t too far away.

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It’d be nice to be able to say that some issues are above politics, like controlling access to deadly weapons, but as we know the issue is intensely political in the US.

But are politicians maybe out of step with ordinary Americans?

A Reuters/IPSOS poll suggests that Americans are increasingly in favour of gun control.

In our earlier liveblog we brought you news from Rosemary Hennigan, originally from Dublin, who was monitoring polling in West Philadelphia.

There was some tension at a polling station when Trump and Clinton poll watchers argued over whether Clinton people were too close to the polling station.

The latest update from Rosemary is that the Trump people filed a police complaint against the former police guys who showed up. There’s talk they assumed the Clinton people were black panthers

The Trump supporters had shown up at the polling station because they were hearing reports about some issues happening.

There was an altercation with the Trump and Clinton poll watchers over whether the Clinton people were too close to the polling place and intimidating poll watchers.

Pictures were reportedly taken by the Trump people of the Clinton people.

As Rosemary puts it “it’s been a fun day”.

The race is getting tighter and tighter as the night goes on and Trump performing strongly in swing states like Florida and Ohio.

The markets are reacting accordingly.

Right now, Donald Trump is in with a very good shot of winning this thing.

Nothing, I repeat nothing, is particularly clear right now. But make what you will of the tone of this tweet from Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The Trumps are glued to the TV. The rest of the world isn’t far behind.

About those markets.

Early confidence across trading floors of a Clinton win was wiped out as investors consider the prospect of a win for the real estate mogul.

Clinton is considered by many investors to be a safer bet than Trump, who is seen as a loose cannon with policies many fear could wreck the world’s top economy.

Here’s more details of what’s happening to the markets.

It is so, so tight right now. For the first time this year The New York Times is predicting that Donald Trump will win the presidency, but that is changing by the minute.

So much so that New York Times is reasonably consistently predicting Trump will win the electoral college vote with Clinton winning the popular vote.

That situation made George W. Bush president in 2000. Nothing is for certain right now though.

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Both candidates are in Manhattan. So is Dave, he’s sent us on these pictures and says it feels tense on the streets of New York.

It’s tense here too to be honest.

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This is huge.

No Republican has ever won the White House without Ohio and now it and its 18 electoral college votes belong to Donald Trump.

For Hillary Clinton, the path to 270 just narrowed again.

If you’re still up late, you’re not alone. Here’s what Dublin has been tweeting, says a lot…

What we know right now:

• AP has called the swing state of Ohio for Donald Trump.
• Florida remains too close to call.
• Donald Trump performing ahead of expectations in Michigan and Wisconsin.
• States that have been decided have gone as predicted.
• Current state of electoral college, as per CNN: Trump 167 – Clinton 109.

Canadian immigration is already feeling the strain.

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Huge. Biggest win of the night. Trump takes Florida.

These 55 electoral college votes were always in the bag for Clinton, but at this point it’s a much needed boost for Clinton supporters.

Both candidates have credible paths to the presidency. Forget about firewalls, every state is now important as NBC explains.

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Trump is edging closer to that magic number.

Some interesting figures about where the votes have come from, according to Associated Press exit polls

The polls are showing that this election has produced the one of the largest gender gaps since 1972.

The gender gap for Clinton, the difference between the number of men who voted for her and the number of women who voted for her, is 13 percentage points.

Clinton’s support among women was roughly even with the support that women gave Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.

The bigger factor in this year’s wide gender gap: less-educated white men. They favoured Trump far more heavily than Mitt Romney in 2012 John McCain in 2008.

What’s also been key is that it appears Trump held on to roughly the same share of Hispanic voters as Romney had claimed four years ago.

Likewise, he was drawing about the same levels of support from black voters as Romney won.

The Republican was drawing about a quarter of Hispanic voters and about less than 1 in 10 black voters.

Singin’ don’t worry about a thing, ’cause every little thing is gonna be alright.

Some very, very worried faces at Clinton HQ right now.

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Chants of ‘lock her up’ as Trump supporters begin to believe.

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This is how close Donald Trump is to becoming US President. A win in Wisconsin and it could be curtains for Hillary Clinton

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Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani is in no doubt which way this is going. The former New York Mayor says he believes Donald Trump will be a “truly great president”.

“It’s probably one of the greatest victories for the American people since Andrew Jackson,” Giuliani says.

Morning folks, Paul Hosford taking over from Ronan now.

And as I do, Iowa is declared for Trump, taking another state which was won by Barack Obama.

Not only is Trump ahead in the electoral college, he leads the popular vote by about 1.2 million votes.

Clinton will reel him in as California reports its votes, but even that may not be enough to give her a popular vote victory.

At the moment, even a popular vote victory could be only a moral win for Clinton.

Nevada, the Silver State, has voted to elected Hillary Clinton.

Had that state gone to Trump, the race would have been effectively over.

Right now, Trump leads in Pennsylvania by 2,000-odd votes.

With 20 electoral votes, Pennsylvania could put Trump into the White House.

While many are talking about leaving America, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has some advice for those who may be disillusioned with the result.

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Donald Trump promised to appoint a special prosecutor to pursue Clinton if elected. Will he make good on his word?

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For some Clinton supporters, the outcome of tonight has been too much to bear.

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While across New York, Trump voters seem pretty pleased.

Trump now leads by 42,000 in Pennsylvania.

Barring a Chicago Cubs-esque turnaround, Hillary Clinton’s race is run.

CNN commentator Van Jones is not impressed this morning.

Click here to see the video

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However, David Duke – former Imperial Wizard of KKK – is delighted.

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Fine Gael TD Noel Rock, who worked with Clinton, has now accepted that Trump will become the 45th President of the United States of America.

So now that we’re into the last few hours, we’ll be following everything over on a new liveblog here.