Final forecast from Nate Silver's 538 ups Clinton's chances of victory to 71%

The pollster had set alarm bells ringing by suggesting Trump's chances were as high as 35%

Hillary Clinton has been the favourite to win throughout the campaign, but the polls have tightened up to Election Day (Win McNamee/Getty)

Nate Silver, the renowned pollster who has seriously talked up the chances of Donald Trump winning today's election, has released his final forecast.

And it is good news for Hillary Clinton, with Silver's model now giving her a 71.4 per cent chance of victory compared to Mr Trump's 28.6 per cent.

Silver's FiveThirtyEight project had come in for some criticism in the last week after it gave Mr Trump a chunky 35 per cent chance of becoming president.

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With Ms Clinton only a 65 per cent favourite, that was seen as an outlier compared to other models.

HuffPost Pollster was giving Ms Clinton a 98 per cent chance of winning, while The New York Times’ model at The Upshot had her at 85 per cent.

Releasing his final forecast, Silver noted that there was a gap between the Electoral College and the national vote, with Ms Clinton 81 per cent likely to get the overall majority of votes in the latter.

Silver has justified giving Mr Trump such high chances in the past on the basis that, with the polls all pretty tight, many different scenarios remain possible.

But he tweeted as his final forecast came out that "show Clinton winning pretty much the same states as everyone else".

Significantly, Silver said the key swing states of Florida, Nevada, North Carolina and Maine (2) had "flipped narrowly to her in the past 48 hours".

"However, we continue to believe that other forecasts overstate [certainty]," he added.