WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump says he believes he has won the election and called the results "phenomenal", stating that he believes that he has already won the election, as the battle between him and Democratic candidate Joe Biden for the US presidency is much closer than many would have previously thought.

He said Wednesday the results were encouraging but that "frankly" he did win the election. Vice President Mike Pence said they would remain "vigilant" as the votes continue to be counted and that they would "protect the integrity of the vote."

Swing states Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are likely to determine the outcome, but will take longer to count ballots. Trump is so far projected to win several key swing states including Florida, Ohio and Iowa. The US president also won the state of Texas, where it was a close race.

Trump called the results "phenomenal", stating that he believes he has won the election, although nine states have yet to be called. Biden currently has a lead in the key state of Arizona while key states North Carolina and Georgia remain too close to call.

The momentous election could come down to Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Biden was the first candidate to speak to supporters early Wednesday morning, after a night of results didn't deliver a quick winner, saying that "we believe we're on track to win this election."

The former vice president said it was not up to him or Trump to decide the winner of the election and that the votes would be counted. "Keep the faith guys, we're going to win this," Biden said.

Trump appeared after 2 a.m. to speak to supporters gathered in the White House. He celebrated his victories in Florida and Ohio, and claimed to win multiple states that had to be projected.

The President, according to CNN, made several false claims, conflated counting votes with casting them and repeatedly called for the counting of legally cast votes to stop despite millions having not yet been tallied.

It was the kind of dangerous election night speech that political observers long feared Trump would make, in which he falsely claimed, "This is a major fraud on our nation."

Trump won a close race in Florida, which was one of the states Biden had hoped to peel away from the President's 2016 map and has a narrow edge in North Carolina, which remains too close to call.

Increasingly it appears that the result of the entire election could hinge on whether Biden can restore the Democratic "blue wall" in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, a scenario that could mean the result may not be known on Tuesday night, and could stretch into the coming days as large numbers of mail-in votes are counted.

Biden currently leads the Electoral College at this early stage in the night, but the key battlegrounds that will decide who serves as president for the next four years are still in play.

The night unfolded as the most unorthodox election night in modern memory. At times it appeared like one candidate or the other was heading for an early win in important states. But batches of mail-in and early votes meant the count often dramatically shifted one way or the other.

Millions of ballots were still outstanding in those critical three states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, many of them vote-by-mail ballots that were cast early and were expected to favor Democrats.

In an unprecedented move, which could indicate some mail-in votes are in danger of not reaching their destination in time to be counted, a federal judge in Washington ordered the US Postal Service to start sweeping all processing facilities by 3 p.m., including in parts of battleground states Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas, New Hampshire and Florida.

Democrats had previously criticized the US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump donor, for introducing reforms in the agency that they said could slow down the delivery of mail-in ballots.

Democrats are nervous about widespread slowdowns within the Postal Service system after budget cuts and staff shortages, which has led to intense scrutiny of DeJoy's motivations.

The economy is the top issue on the minds of voters Tuesday, according to the preliminary results of a nationwide CNN exit poll. Those results are incomplete because Americans were still voting, but in those early measures about a third said the economy is the most critical issue.

About 1 in 5 said racial inequality is the top issue and 1 in 6 said the coronavirus pandemic was most important to their vote. However, a majority said the nation should prioritize containing COVID-19 over rebuilding the economy.

Republicans have made a huge effort to invalidate ballots and limit voter turnout through legal challenges and questionable monitoring tactics that bordered on voter intimidation in some states.

Trump spent his final days trying to cast aspersions on vote counting, insisting that a winner should be declared on Tuesday night, even though America has long counted ballots well into the days and weeks after Election Day. — Agencies