US Presidential Election: Live updates STAY WITH us during the night as we provide regular live updates from the United States as the country votes for its next President. 12.47am: RECAP: South Carolina, Indiana, West Virginia and Kentucky projecting Romney win. Vermont projecting Obama win. 12.45am: South Carolina projecting a Romney win. 12.43am: Virginia exit polls are showing Obama winning in the big suburbs, 66-33 but losing in smaller ones 54-45. Romney is performing well in rural zones, 62-37. (via Neil King of the Wall Street Journal) 12.40am: David Maddox: "Jed Bush's claim that Romney has won Florida is circulating round US embassy party and causing a few jokes. "Well he would know," one Obama supporter said, referring to the "hanging chads" which are supposed to given George W Bush victory over Al Gore in Florida in 2000 when Jed Bush was governer." Incidentally, Obama is currently leading in Florida with 51 per cent of the vote to Romney's 48 per cent. 12.38am: NBC is projecting Romney to win South Carolina - generallyt regarded as a "safe" Republican state. 12.35am: North Carolina reporting a dead heat - 49/49. The state was reported to be leaning towards Romney, but pollsters report a high Democrat turnout in early voting. 12.32am: Obama reported to be ahead of Romney by 3 per cent in Ohio. Meanwhile, West Virginia projecting a Romney win, putting him on 24 electoral votes. 12.30am: Tim Cornwell: "Bostonians are wary of exit polls - in 2004, John Kerry was getting his victory party ready based on early polls." 12.25am: Obama won Virginia in 2008, recording 52.6 per cent over John McCain's 46.3 per cent. The exit poll suggesting an even 49/49 split would mean a 3 per cent swing to Romney, making the national vote a dead heat. 12.19am: David Maddox: "The news that the key swing state of Virginia is too close to call has cheered up the Republicans Abroad contingent at the US Embassy Party." However, David Gergen on CNN reckons that "the news is not good out of Virginia for Mitt Romney - he is 49-49 in a state he must win." 12.16am: Florida currently tied at 50/50, with Romney ahead by just over 700. 12.15am: Ohio is likely to be crucial in this election - the only candidate to win outright and not win Ohio since 1928 was Franklin D Roosevelt in 1944. 12.10am: All square at 49 per cent apiece in Virginia - one of the key battleground states. 12.03am: Vermont projected for Obama, Kentucky and Indiana for Romney. 11.58pm: Tim Cornwell, The Scotsman's former Arts Correspondent is in Boston. He reports: Latino share of the vote holding up to 10% compared to 9% 2008, exit polls say. Early days but could be good news for Obama. 18-29 year olds share of vote holding to 17%, compares to 18% for 2008. Again early days, but promising. "A pollster saying "if Obama wins in virginia, it would all be over." Virginia polls close 7pm EST (midnight UK time). Romney needs Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida to stay in the race. 11.40pm: David Maddox: "One Obama supporter has just told me: "Obama is going to knock it out of the park. The media has built it up as close but he will win easily."" David Maddox: "Early poll gives it to Obama 49:47 but Mike Magan, former National Security advisor to George W. Bush tells me: "Romney will win. This is an early poll and I think we have it where it counts. But he adds: "I might be eating crow tomorrow, but I do think we'll win."" 11.30pm: Exit polls from Kentucky and Indiana coming in now. Next exit polls expected from Georgia, South Carolina, Vermont, New Hampshire, Florida and Virginia around midnight. 11.16pm: To recap: President Obama is projected to comfortably win 18 states, giving him a minimum of 237 Electoral College votes - 33 short of the required 270 to win. Mitt Romney is leading in 24 states, which give him 191 Electoral College votes and thus leaves him 79 short of victory. With nine states undecided, and 110 Electoral College votes, Obama needs around a third to ensure victory whilst Romney needs nearly three quarters. A YouGov poll has predicted Obama to win 66 Electoral College votes from the nine battleground states, giving him victory by 303-235 Electoral College votes. 11.10pm: David Maddox: "Four years ago I was in Grant Park in Chicago with hundreds of thousands of Obama supporters who turned up to celebrate his historic victory. People forget that even though he was a clear winner in 2008 on election night there was a great deal of nervousness that Obama would lose partly based on his colour and a disbelief that America would elect a black president. When it was clear he would win there was an enormous sense of relief in Grant Park mixed with the joy. 10.55pm: The Scotsman's David Maddox, who is at the US Embassy in London, reports: "There is a buzz of excitement at the US Embassy party tonight but the Democrats Abroad are definitely looking more cheerful than their Republican counterparts. Nobody yet willing to call the result but on the face of it the Obama camp looks more confident. 10.30pm: Disputes over ballots, problems with electronic voting machines and an absence of paper trail could draw out counting in other key swing states. Various problems have already been well-documented - in Florida, around 27,000 absentee ballots in Palm Beach County are unable to be read by voting machines due to a printing error - leading to ballots being hand-copied so the machines can register the votes. As I reported earlier, there have been issues with machines registering Obama votes for Romney and vice versa, but perhaps the problem of most concern lies in the fact that sixteen states - including Pennslyvania and Virginia - allow votes to be cast on paperless touch-screen machines that are nigh on impossible to recount. 10.15pm: The large number of provisional ballots makes it near impossible to determine the Electoral College winner on the night. A provisional ballot allows someone who thinks they are an eligible voter, to cast their vote. Provisional ballots are counted if the local board of elections determines that the person is eligible to vote in that state, and may be rejected if the individual is ineligible to vote. These votes are counted even if they won't change the outcome of the election. Ohio is likely to cause the most problems. The key battleground state could see up to 200,000 provisional ballots - a situation stemming from Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted's attempt to impose uniformity. Absentee ballot applications were sent to Ohio's 6.9 million registered voters, regardless of whether they had been requested. An estimated 1.3 million were sent absentee ballots after filling in the applications. But there have been reports of nearly 240,000 voters who received absentee ballots and didn't return them. If they try to vote in person, these voters, along with others with questionable eligibility or who attend the wrong polling station, will have to fill out provisional ballots to make sure they don't vote twice - under Ohio law, these ballots can't be counted until November 16th at the earliest. 10.00pm: There are three main issues that could affect the election in a big way. One issue is the effect of Superstorm Sandy The aftermath of the superstorm that battered the eastern seaboard has had crippling effects in New Jersey, where hundreds of polling stations could still be without power or flooded and thus unavailable to use. Vote totals in the north east region of the United States are expected to be down in general and whilst many of the affected areas - such as New Jersey and New York - are reliably Democratic, President Obama could see his total national vote count take a hit. It's entirely possible that he could lose the popular vote but be elected through the Electoral College system, which could give rise to challenges against his mandate, as seen with George W Bush in 2000. 9.45pm: In a moment, I'll take you through a few of the potential stumbling blocks that could affect the election (apart from dodgy voting machines). 9.15pm: One thing the pollsters and politicos have been busy with is trying to ascertain which way states will vote. Some are regarded as safe Democrat or Republican states, whilst others, such as Ohio, are regarded as swing states - results could go either way. Here's a brief rundown on how the 50 states are largely expected to vote tonight. "Safe" Obama states: Washington, Oregon, California, Illinois, Minnesota, Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Hawaii and the District of Columbia. "Safe" Romney states: Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, West Virginia, Alaska, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi. Swing states: Ohio, Florida, Nevada, Iowa, Wisconsin, Virginia, New Hampshire and Colorado. There are some states that, although not "safe" by any means, are leaning towards one candidate. Leaning to Obama: New Mexico, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Leaning to Romney: North Carolina and Arizona. 9.03pm: Incredible story from Detroit, Michigan where a man collapsed and died in a polling station - only to be revived and ask "Did I vote?" A trained nurse, Ty Houston, went to work on the man, who had no heartbeat or pulse. After Houston had performed CPR, the elderly gentleman was resuscitated, and surprised his wife and Houston by asking if he'd voted. In response to his wife's declaration that his health was more important, the man replied that there were two things important to him: "That I love you and that I finished what I came here to do ... vote." Which he had. 8.50pm: We're hearing reports of a break-in at the Democratic Party's base in Washington State. The building, in Seattle, is the state campaign headquarters for both President Obama and Washington gubernatorial (running for governor) candidate Jay Inslee. The area affected is said to house laptops and similar items, but it is not known if anything has been taken. 8.30pm: There have already been reports of troublesome voting machines, with one machine in Pennsylvania being taken out of service and "recalibrated" after a voter posted a video on YouTube of it changing a vote for President Obama into one for Governor Mitt Romney. Republican voters were also reporting Romney votes being turned into Obama votes. And in Ohio, there is suspicion over a software that was installed on electronic voting machines in 39 of the state's 88 counties. Although the software "patch" hsa been installed to apparently assist in counting votes, a voting machine security expert believes that the software could effectively allow votes to be tampered with. James March believes that installing this particular software is "exactly what you'd want to do if you wanted to plant a cheat onto the central tabulator. 8.25pm: Good evening everyone and welcome to scotsman.com's live updates from the US Presidential election. I'll be with you throughout the night providing regular updates, comment and analysis from both sides of the pond. Feel free to have your say in the comments below.