US election: Who’s winning so far – and when will we know for sure?
Donald Trump is projected to have won the first two of the seven swing states to be declared – narrowing Kamala Harris’s routes to the White House.
Trump and Harris both need to hit the magic 270 Electoral College votes to become the next US president.
Trump wins are projected in they key battlegrounds of North Carolina and Georgia.
Losing there could indicate that any route for Kamala Harris has to go through the “blue wall” states – Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – which are all tight battlegrounds.
Votes are still being counted, and counting is generally more complicated in the US than in the UK, largely due to the country’s sheer size; the varying time differences alone make for a longer process.
Polls began closing at 11pm UK time and the last of them closed at 4am UK time.
In many past elections, it’s at around this time that a winner has been declared.
Election latest: Live updates as results come in
But US election results can take days – or even weeks.
Even with Donald Trump ahead in early battleground voting, factors like high turnout and voting by post can mean leads later change hands in crucial states.
Before we get into those factors in detail, you need to know how a winner is declared.
How calling the election works
When a winner is declared, whether it’s hours or days from now, it will initially be a “projected” winner.
It’s projected because the official results are typically only confirmed by state officials after 7-30 days, depending on the state.
Sky News has access to the most comprehensive exit poll and vote-counting results from every state, county and demographic across America through its US-partner network NBC.
Big voter turnout
There are some 240 million people eligible to vote in the US.
And if voter turnout is particularly high, it means vote counting will take longer than usual.
This was the case in 2020, when a record 158.5 million people voted – the highest turnout since 1900.
It isn’t yet known how many voters have visited the polls on election day, but more than 77 million Americans had already cast their votes by Monday, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab – 42,195,018 returned in person and 35,173,674 by mail.
In the 2020 presidential election, it took four days for Mr Biden to be called the winner, but that wasn’t just put down to the turnout.
Many also said it was because more people – around 100 million – voted by post than usual due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and those votes took longer to count.
Election officials have been optimistic that the 2024 vote count will be smoother without the many challenges the pandemic posed to officials in 2020, according to NBC News.
Tight race will lead to a longer wait
For months, polls have suggested this will be an incredibly tight election – particularly in a few battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
It’s been so tight that most experts have refused to predict the outcome – and exit polls have done little to separate the candidates.
But you’ll have seen overnight that Ms Harris and Mr Trump were projected winners in certain states early on after polls closed.
These are states where votes are so clearly leaning in one direction as they get counted that there is too much ground for the trailing candidate to make up.
In those swing states, however, voting is going to be far closer, and a winner will not be projected until the NBC News decision desk is certain of an outcome.
That could mean waiting until practically all the votes in some of the states are in to project a winner – which could take days.
An election worker processes mail-in ballots in Philadelphia. Pic: AP
Key terms to listen out for as the count progresses
There are a number of key stages between now and reaching a projected winner, NBC News says. Listen out for these calls:
- Too early to call: This can mean two things: there might be a significant margin for one of the candidates, not enough to meet NBC’s statistical standards to project the race; or there is not enough data to determine the margin with certainty.
- Too close to call: This means the final margin between the candidates will be less than five percentage points. NBC News’ decision desk will not use this characterisation until it has statistical confidence that the race will be this close.
- Leaning: This status is introduced when the decision desk is confident that the candidate who is ahead is going to win, but the statistical threshold for calling the race has not yet been met.
- Projected winner: NBC News has made a projection that a candidate will win.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
How long has it taken in the past?
It’s common in the US for it to take a couple of days to know who the next president will be.
The 2020 election’s four day wait was an anomaly, but it paled in comparison to the 2000 election, when it took weeks.
Florida and its 25 Electoral College votes (it now has 30) were set to decide the contest between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W Bush, whose brother was Florida governor.
On election night on 7 November, TV networks called the state for Gore before polls had closed everywhere in the state. Later that evening, they reversed their stance and said it was too close to call, then called it for Bush and then returned to “too close to call”.
A preliminary vote tally the day after the election had Bush ahead by around 1,700 votes in Florida – so close that state laws triggered an automatic machine recount. The first recount winnowed Bush’s lead down to just 317 votes.
The issue was around Florida’s punch-hole ballots and hanging chads – punched holes that might still have a corner intact – and how these were counted.
A legal battle ensued that went right up to the US Supreme Court, which in a 5-4 decision along ideological lines ruled that any solution to the recount issue could not be put in place by the deadline, thus handing the state to Bush.
A disputed ballot being examined in Florida in 2000. Pic: AP
What happens after a winner is declared?
Whether a winner is declared on the night or in the following days, they aren’t officially elected until the electoral votes are formally cast and counted.
Electors cast them on 17 December, they are counted and certified by Congress on 6 January and then the new president will take office after being inaugurated on 20 January.
Unlike the general election in the UK, there is a transition period between the election result and the new president taking over.
During the gap, Mr Biden will continue as president, with the election winner known as the president-elect until the transfer of power in January.
Experts have described engravings left on ammunition at the scene of the Charlie Kirk shooting as “extremely online” – so what do the words and symbols actually mean?
Authorities said on Friday that the suspect accused of fatally shooting the Conservative activist left behind bullet casings featuring references to fascism, video games and internet memes.
Kirk at Utah Valley University where he was shot. Pic: Reuters/The Salt Lake Tribune
To those who aren’t chronically online, the messages may appear to be total gibberish. But for others, specifically gamers, many of the meanings will have immediately been clear.
Here’s what each of the casings reference – and why experts have cautioned against using them to make assumptions about the suspect’s political leanings.
1. ‘notices, bulges, OWO, what’s this?’
This writing appears to reference a meme about the furry subculture, which centres on an interest in anthropomorphic animal characters.
Within the furry community, OwO is an emoticon of a cute face (with the Os as the eyes and the w as a cute mouth or nose) and used as a way of flirting – but outside the community, it is often used in a mocking way, or as part of trolling.
It’s incredibly common for phrases used by people who are “extremely online” – which essentially means highly engaged in online culture – to have double or multiple meanings.
For this reason, experts have cautioned against trying to interpret messages such as these engravings to determine an attacker’s political leanings or motive.
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What we know about the shooting arrest
Jamie Cohen, an assistant professor of media studies who studies memes at Queens College in New York, said: “Oftentimes this extremely online disguise is meant to be doublespeak.”
Speaking to Sky News’ US partner NBC News, he continued: “It’s meant specifically for someone like me to dive into what they would call meme culture and declare them something so that they get more press.
“So it could just be another bait and switch for researchers who are falling into the same trap that they are designing for more viral exposure.”
2. ‘Hey, fascist! Catch ↑ → ↓↓↓’
When asked by Sky News’ US correspondent James Matthews what the messages on the casings meant, Utah governor Spencer Cox said the writing referring to a fascist “speaks for itself”.
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Engraving on bullet casing ‘speaks for itself’
The second half of the inscription – the directional arrows – were immediately identified by some gamers.
Helldivers 2 players have pointed out that the arrow sequence is the code used to summon a 500kg bomb in the 2024 game – which itself has been interpreted as a satire of fascism.
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3. ‘Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao’
Bella Ciao is a classic Italian song that became a popular anti-fascism anthem during Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship.
It has won renewed popularity in recent years thanks, in part, to featuring multiple times in Netflix’s Spanish television series Money Heist.
A popular remix of Bella Ciao has hit more than 260 million streams on Spotify worldwide and it’s become a favourite on TikTok, as well as within the gaming community.
Read more:
All we know about the suspected assassin
The string of bloody political violence in the MAGA era
4. ‘If you read this, you are gay lmao’
This juvenile insult, using the well-known abbreviation for ‘laughing my ass off’, is a common ‘gotcha’ phrase and simply appears to mock investigators.
The messages, another expert has said, make one thing clear – the suspect was likely seeking fame.
Lindsay Hahn, a University at Buffalo associate professor who researches ideological extremism and the ways in which perpetrators of violence justify their actions, said the messages do not necessarily indicate a specific ideology.
“But what they do indicate, is that the shooter wanted to get a message across and therefore be talked about online,” she told NBC.
“It sort of seems like these messages, at the very minimum, were selected because he knew they were going to be talked about.”
A memorial for right-wing US influencer Charlie Kirk will be held next Sunday, in a stadium that previously hosted the 2023 Super Bowl.
The 31-year-old, who was a close ally of Donald Trump, was fatally shot in the neck on Wednesday while speaking to university students at an event in Utah.
His appearance at Utah Valley University was part of a planned tour of US college campuses.
A memorial for Charlie Kirk at Turning Point USA headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona. Pic: Reuters
Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, shortly before he was shot. Pic: AP
Turning Point USA, the prominent youth conservative organisation of which Mr Kirk was the president and co-founder, is holding the event at State Farm Stadium outside Phoenix.
The venue is the home of the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals and can hold more than 60,000 people.
Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old from Washington, Utah, is being held without bail after being arrested on suspicion of aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily harm and obstruction of justice charges, according to court documents.
The motivation behind the fatal shooting is still unclear, but Utah governor Spencer Cox commented that Robinson described Mr Kirk as “full of hate and spreading hate”.
Robinson is due to make an initial court appearance on Tuesday, when he is also expected to be charged, the Utah County attorney’s office said.
Tyler Robinson. Pic: Utah Governor’s Office
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Suspect’s movements before and after shooting
President Trump, who will be back in the US after his UK state visit next week, has previously said he plans to attend Mr Kirk’s funeral.
Mr Trump has said he will be posthumously awarding Mr Kirk with the nation’s highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Mr Kirk’s body was flown back from Salt Lake City to his home state of Arizona on Air Force Two on Thursday, with the US vice president and close friend JD Vance on board.
JD Vance helps carry the coffin of Charlie Kirk from Air Force Two in Arizona
His widow, Erika Kirk, has vowed to continue his campus tour and his radio and podcast shows.
Speaking publicly for the first time in a livestreamed video on Friday, she said: “To everyone listening tonight across America, the movement my husband built will not die.”
“It won’t. I refuse to let that happen.”
She said she told her three-year-old daughter: “Daddy went on a work trip with Jesus.”
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Charlie Kirk shooting: What bullet inscriptions mean
Read more: What the engravings on bullets in Charlie Kirk case may refer to
Mr Kirk, who was a father of two, had millions of followers across social media.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
A makeshift memorial to Mr Kirk has been set up at Utah Valley University, with flowers, American flags and handwritten messages left at the main entrance.
The university says there will be increased security when classes resume on Wednesday.
Experts have described engravings left on ammunition at the scene of the Charlie Kirk shooting as “extremely online” – so what do the words and symbols actually mean?
Authorities said on Friday that the suspect accused of fatally shooting the Conservative activist left behind bullet casings featuring references to fascism, video games and internet memes.
Kirk at Utah Valley University where he was shot. Pic: Reuters/The Salt Lake Tribune
To those who aren’t chronically online, the messages may appear to be total gibberish. But for others, specifically gamers, many of the meanings will have immediately been clear.
Here’s what each of the casings reference – and why experts have cautioned against using them to make assumptions about the suspect’s political leanings.
1. ‘notices, bulges, OWO, what’s this?’
This writing appears to reference a meme about the furry subculture, which centres on an interest in anthropomorphic animal characters.
Within the furry community, OwO is an emoticon of a cute face (with the Os as the eyes and the w as a cute mouth or nose) and used as a way of flirting – but outside the community, it is often used in a mocking way, or as part of trolling.
It’s incredibly common for phrases used by people who are “extremely online” – which essentially means highly engaged in online culture – to have double or multiple meanings.
For this reason, experts have cautioned against trying to interpret messages such as these engravings to determine an attacker’s political leanings or motive.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
What we know about the shooting arrest
Jamie Cohen, an assistant professor of media studies who studies memes at Queens College in New York, said: “Oftentimes this extremely online disguise is meant to be doublespeak.”
Speaking to Sky News’ US partner NBC News, he continued: “It’s meant specifically for someone like me to dive into what they would call meme culture and declare them something so that they get more press.
“So it could just be another bait and switch for researchers who are falling into the same trap that they are designing for more viral exposure.”
2. ‘Hey, fascist! Catch ↑ → ↓↓↓’
When asked by Sky News’ US correspondent James Matthews what the messages on the casings meant, Utah governor Spencer Cox said the writing referring to a fascist “speaks for itself”.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Engraving on bullet casing ‘speaks for itself’
The second half of the inscription – the directional arrows – were immediately identified by some gamers.
Helldivers 2 players have pointed out that the arrow sequence is the code used to summon a 500kg bomb in the 2024 game – which itself has been interpreted as a satire of fascism.
👉 Follow Trump100 on your podcast app 👈
3. ‘Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao’
Bella Ciao is a classic Italian song that became a popular anti-fascism anthem during Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship.
It has won renewed popularity in recent years thanks, in part, to featuring multiple times in Netflix’s Spanish television series Money Heist.
A popular remix of Bella Ciao has hit more than 260 million streams on Spotify worldwide and it’s become a favourite on TikTok, as well as within the gaming community.
Read more:
All we know about the suspected assassin
The string of bloody political violence in the MAGA era
4. ‘If you read this, you are gay lmao’
This juvenile insult, using the well-known abbreviation for ‘laughing my ass off’, is a common ‘gotcha’ phrase and simply appears to mock investigators.
The messages, another expert has said, make one thing clear – the suspect was likely seeking fame.
Lindsay Hahn, a University at Buffalo associate professor who researches ideological extremism and the ways in which perpetrators of violence justify their actions, said the messages do not necessarily indicate a specific ideology.
“But what they do indicate, is that the shooter wanted to get a message across and therefore be talked about online,” she told NBC.
“It sort of seems like these messages, at the very minimum, were selected because he knew they were going to be talked about.”
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