TORONTO (REUTERS) - Maybe some Americans were serious when they threatened they would move to Canada if Republican presidential candidate became successful in his often polarising campaign for the White House.

Canada's main immigration website appeared to suffer repeated outages on Tuesday night as Mr Trump took the lead in several major states and his prospects for winning the US presidency turned markedly higher.

Some users in the United States, Canada and Asia saw an internal serve error message when trying to access the http://www.cic.gc.ca/ website.

Officials for the ministry could not immediately be reached for comment, but the website's problems were noted by many on Twitter.

Prominent Americans who have said, jokingly or otherwise, they would move if Mr Trump won include Bryan Cranston, Lena Durham, Amy Schumer, Barbra Streisand and Cher

The idea has been taken up by some Canadian communities. In February, the island of Cape Breton on Canada's Atlantic coast marketed itself as a tranquil refuge for Americans seeking to escape should Mr Trump capture the White House.