US election: The results so far in maps and charts

Published

9 months ago

November 6, 2024

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Donald Trump can be president again without winning any more battlegrounds.

Victories for Mr Trump in the key states of Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina – all three largest battlegrounds – leave him needing just four electoral college votes to be president-elect.

He can achieve this with a win in Alaska, usually safe Republican, and the one electoral vote in Maine that voted for him in the last two elections. The battleground states of Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan are also outstanding.

Kamala Harris is yet to win a single one of the eight battleground states.

The exit poll tells a story of America’s increasing division on party lines and the biggest issues facing the country, but slightly less so in terms of demographic indicators like race and age.

Black and Latino voters look to have backed the Republicans in higher numbers than at other recent elections, while white voters and older voters – particularly women – have moved closer to the Democrats.

The results in the remaining battlegrounds, plus a handful of other states are still outstanding.

Standings in states still to be declared

Results from counties that have finished voting skew heavily towards Mr Trump, however – the vote so far has swung towards him in 90% of counties that have counted more than 95% of their votes.

So far we know of 26 counties which have flipped between parties from their 2020 result. Twenty-three of these have favoured Mr Trump. Eight of these counties had voted Democrat at every election since at least 2000.

What does the exit poll tell us?

The election found the American public in an unforgiving mood.

The exit poll, carried out by Sky’s US partner NBC News, points towards a country that is dissatisfied with its current situation, although still very much divided on what the most important issues are.

Two-thirds of people consider the condition of the nation’s economy to be not so good or poor.

A remarkable three-quarters of people told the exit poll they felt dissatisfied or angry about the way things are going in the country.

And some 60% expressed disapproval of the Supreme Court, while a similar number of people disapproved of the way Joe Biden is handling his job as president.

Harris voters thought “democracy” was the most important issue behind their vote, while Trump supporters rated the economy and immigration higher. On both sides, only a few people made up their decision in the last month.

The exit poll also tells us that Mr Trump has lost support among some of his most reliable groups. Voters aged over 65 backed the Democrats this year, having favoured Mr Trump at the last two elections. He also lost support among white women and white non-college-educated people.

Harris’s polling lead was also down among some groups that had supported Biden most enthusiastically. There was a massive fall among Latino voters, but also among the youngest voters and women.

In a year in which abortion was also on the ballot in 10 states, these groups in particular were expected to be among Harris’s most solid groups of votes.

How are the abortion votes going?

As well as the election, voters in 10 states were also voting on whether there should be a right to abortion enshrined and protected in the local constitution.

Voters in New York, Maryland and Colorado have voted to establish that right.

Voters in Florida, however, narrowly failed to reach the 60% threshold required to pass the measure, although a majority of people did support the right. It was the only state that needed more than a simple majority to pass.

According to the exit poll, 92% of Democrat voters across the country believed that abortion should be legal, contrasted with 38% of Republicans.

As well as abortion, voters were also at odds with the former president on immigration – 56% of people believed that undocumented immigrants should be offered a chance to apply for legal status.

What about the Senate and the House?

The Democrats have lost control of the Senate. They had a 51/49 majority going into the elections and have lost two seats to Republicans so far, in Ohio and West Virginia.

Defending their majority would always have been difficult this year. The seats that were up were ones the party had won six years previously, at the “blue wave” midterm elections in 2018 – halfway through Trump’s first term.

The Republicans have also made one gain in the House, where they already had a majority. In the result of an electoral college tie, the House will pick the president.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

US

Trump and Putin agree on ‘many points’ in Ukraine talks – but give little detail away

Published

12 hours ago

August 16, 2025

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Trump and Putin agree on 'many points' in Ukraine talks - but give little detail away

Donald Trump has said there are “many points” he and Vladimir Putin agreed on after holding critical talks on the war in Ukraine – but no deal has been reached yet.

Following the much-anticipated meeting in Alaska, which lasted more than two-and-a-half hours, the two leaders gave a short media conference giving little detail about what had been discussed, and without taking questions.

Mr Trump described the meeting as “very productive” and said there were “many points that we agreed on… I would say a couple of big ones”.

Trump-Putin summit – latest updates

There are a few left, he added. “Some are not that significant. One is probably the most significant, but we have a very good chance of getting there…

“We haven’t quite got there, we’ve made some headway. There’s no deal until there’s a deal.”

Mr Putin described the negotiations as “thorough and constructive”, and said Russia was “seriously interested in putting an end” to the war in Ukraine. He also warned Europe not to “torpedo nascent progress”.

After much build-up to the summit, it was ultimately not clear whether the talks produced meaningful steps towards a ceasefire in what has been the deadliest conflict in Europe in 80 years.

Mr Trump said he intended to speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders, who were excluded from the discussions, to brief them.

The news conference came after a grand arrival earlier in the day at the Elmendorf-Richardson military base in Anchorage, where the US president stepped down from Air Force One and later greeted his Russian counterpart with a handshake and smiles on a red carpet.

Mr Putin even travelled alongside Mr Trump in the presidential limousine, nicknamed “The Beast”.

It was the kind of reception typically reserved for close US allies, belying the bloodshed and the suffering in the war.

Before the talks, the two presidents ignored frantically-shouted questions from journalists – and Mr Putin appeared to frown when asked by one reporter if he would stop “killing civilians” in Ukraine, putting his hand to his ear as though to indicate he could not hear.

Our US correspondent Martha Kelner, on the ground in Alaska, said he was shouting “let’s go” – apparently in reference to getting the reporters out of the room.

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.

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Ukrainians are appalled at Trump’s naive and cack-handed diplomacy

Published

2 days ago

August 15, 2025

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Ukrainians are appalled at Trump's naive and cack-handed diplomacy

For Ukrainians, the spectacle of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump meeting in Alaska will be repugnant.

The man behind an unprovoked invasion of their country is being honoured with a return to the world stage by the leader of a country that was meant to be their ally.

And they feel let down.

Follow latest updates from Ukraine war

President Trump had threatened severe sanctions on Russia within 50 days if Russia didn’t agree to a deal. He had seemed close to imposing them before letting Putin wriggle off the hook yet again.

But they are not surprised. At every stage, Trump has either sided with Russia or at least given them the benefit of the doubt.

It is clear that Putin has some kind of hold over this American president, in their minds and many others.

Ukraine wants three things out of these talks. A ceasefire, security guarantees and reparations. It is not clear at this stage that they will get any of them.

Ukrainians and their European allies are appalled at the naive and cack-handed diplomacy that has preceded this meeting.

Vladimir Putin is sending a team of foreign affairs heavyweights, adept at getting the better of opponents in negotiations.

There are, the Financial Times reported this week, no Russia specialists left at the Trump White House.

Instead, Trump is relying on Steve Witkoff, a real estate lawyer and foreign policy novice, who has demonstrated a haphazard mastery of his brief and breathtaking credulity with the Russians.

Former British spy chief Sir Alex Younger described him today as totally out of his depth. Trump, he says, is being played like a fiddle by Putin.

There is a fundamental misunderstanding of the conflict at the heart of the Trump administration’s handling of it. Witkoff and the president see it in terms of real estate. But it has never been about territory.

Vladimir Putin has made it abundantly clear that Ukraine’s existence as a sovereign democratic entity cannot be tolerated. He has made no pretence that his views on that have changed.

Ukrainians know that and fear any deal cooked up in Alaska will be used by Putin on the path towards that ultimate goal

US

Melania Trump threatens to sue Hunter Biden for $1bn over Epstein comments

Published

2 days ago

August 14, 2025

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Melania Trump threatens to sue Hunter Biden for bn over Epstein comments

Melania Trump has threatened to sue Hunter Biden for more than $1bn (£736.5m) in damages if he does not retract comments linking her to Jeffrey Epstein.

Mr Biden, who is the son of former US president Joe Biden, alleged in an interview this month that sex trafficker Epstein introduced the first lady to President Donald Trump.

“Epstein introduced Melania to Trump. The connections are, like, so wide and deep,” he claimed.

Ms Trump’s lawyer labelled the comments false, defamatory and “extremely salacious” in a letter to Mr Biden.

Her lawyer wrote that the first lady suffered “overwhelming financial and reputational harm” as the claims were widely discussed on social media and reported by media around the world.

The president and first lady previously said they were introduced by modelling agent Paolo Zampolli at a New York Fashion Week party in 1998.

Mr Biden attributed the claim that Epstein introduced the couple to author Michael Wolff, who was accused by Mr Trump of making up stories to sell books in June and was dubbed a “third-rate reporter” by the president.

The former president’s son doubled down on his remarks in a follow-up interview with the same YouTube outlet, Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan, entitled “Hunter Biden Apology”.

Asked if he would apologise to the first lady, Mr Biden responded: “F*** that – that’s not going to happen.”

He added: “I don’t think these threats of lawsuits add up to anything other than designed distraction.”

Ms Trump’s threat to sue Mr Biden echoes a strategy employed by her husband, who has aggressively used legal action to go after critics.

Public figures like the Trumps must meet a high bar to succeed in a defamation suit like the one that could be brought by the first lady if she follows through with her threat.

In his initial interview, Mr Biden also hit out at “elites” and others in the Democratic Party, who he claims undermined his father before he dropped out of last year’s race for president.

The letter threatening legal action against Mr Biden is dated 6 August and was first reported by Fox News Digital.

It was addressed to Abbe Lowell, a lawyer who has represented Mr Biden in his criminal cases. Mr Lowell has not yet commented on the letter.

This comes as pressure on the White House to release the Epstein files has been mounting for weeks, after he made a complete U-turn on his administration’s promise to release more information publicly.

The US Justice Department, which confirmed in July that it would not be releasing the files, said a review of the Epstein case had found “no incriminating ‘client list'” and “no credible evidence” the jailed financier – who killed himself in prison in 2019 – had blackmailed famous men.