Voter turnout smashes records in US

A worker scans ballots at the Miami-Dade County Elections Department in Doral, Florida (Wilfredo Lee/AP)

Turnout in the US election has hit a 50-year high and eclipsed the record set in Barack Obama’s triumph in 2008, in what analysts are calling an extraordinary engagement in what amounted to a referendum on Donald Trump’s leadership.

With votes still being counted on Sunday, the tallied ballots accounted for 62% of the eligible voting-age population in the US. That is a 0.4 percentage point increase so far over the rate hit in 2008, when the nation elected its first black president.