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.
US
Trump criticises Biden’s death row decisions – saying he backs capital punishment for ‘rapists, murderers, and monsters’
Donald Trump says that when he takes power next month he will direct the US Justice Department to “vigorously pursue” the death penalty.
The US president-elect, 78, said he would do so to protect Americans from what he called “violent rapists, murderers and monsters”.
Mr Trump was responding to President Joe Biden’s decision to commute the sentences of almost all federal inmates on death row – whom Mr Trump called “37 of the worst killers in our country”.
“When you hear the acts of each, you won’t believe that he did this. Makes no sense,” Mr Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social.
“Relatives and friends are further devastated. They can’t believe this is happening!”
He continued: “As soon as I am inaugurated, I will direct the Justice Department to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers, and monsters.
“We will be a Nation of Law and Order again!”
President Biden, 82, announced on Monday that he would reduce the sentences of 37 of the 40 federal death row prisoners to life in prison without the possibility of parole, saying he was “guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender”.
The three others the president did not spare are Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018; Dylann Roof, who gunned down nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who carried out a 2013 bombing at the Boston Marathon that killed three people and injured almost 300 others.
(L-R) Robert Bowers, Dylann Roof and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
‘I condemn these murderers’
Despite sparing the lives of 37, Mr Biden added: “Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss.”
During Mr Trump’s first term in office between 2017 and 2021, the US Justice Department put 13 federal inmates to death.
He has since said he would like to expand capital punishment to include child rapists, migrants who kill US citizens and law enforcement officers, and those convicted of drug and human trafficking.
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Denmark to boost Greenland’s defence
Pic: Reuters
Mr Biden, who ran for president opposing the death penalty, put federal executions on hold when he took office in January 2021.
His latest decisions come after a coalition of criminal justice advocacy groups, former prosecutors and business leaders wrote letters to the White House asking for Mr Biden to commute the sentences ahead of Mr Trump’s inauguration on 20 January.
Pope Francis also appealed to Mr Biden, who is Catholic, to reduce the sentences to imprisonment.
Unlike executive orders, clemency decisions cannot be reversed by a president’s successor, although the death penalty can be sought more aggressively in future cases.
Denmark has announced plans to boost its defence spending for Greenland with a “stronger presence in the Arctic” – a few hours after Donald Trump repeated his call for the US to buy the vast island.
Danish defence minister Troels Lund Poulsen said the package would amount to a “double-digit billion amount” in krone, or at least $1.5bn (£1.2bn).
He told the Jyllands-Posten newspaper the money would be used to buy two inspection ships, two long-range drones and two sled dog teams as well as more personnel for Denmark’s Arctic Command in the capital Nuuk.
Denmark will also upgrade the Kangerlussuaq Airport so that it can handle F-35 fighter jets.
Donald Trump has restated his desire for the US to control Greenland. Pic: Reuters
Greenland, which sits between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, is 80% covered by an ice sheet and is home to a large US military base.
The world’s biggest island, whose capital is closer to New York than the Danish capital Copenhagen, has mineral, oil and natural gas wealth.
But development has been slow, leaving its economy reliant on fishing and annual subsidies from Denmark.
“For many years, we have not invested sufficiently in the Arctic, now we are planning a stronger presence,” Mr Poulsen said.
He called the timing of the announcement an “irony of fate”, coming just hours after Mr Trump’s latest comments on purchasing the territory.
With the Pituffik air base, Greenland is strategically important for the US military and its ballistic missile early-warning system.
Greenland defiant
The president-elect sparked anger on the territory when he wrote that American ownership and control of the island was an “absolute necessity” for “purposes of national security and freedom throughout the world”.
Its prime minister Mute Egede hit back, saying: “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom.”
And Danish defence minister Mr Poulsen said: “My response to Trump is the same as the prime minister’s. Greenland does not want to exchange the Commonwealth for other relations. But that is up to Greenland itself.”
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Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Egede. File pic: Reuters
Mr Trump also proposed buying Greenland during his first term in office – an idea the Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called “absurd”.
Greenland has been part of Denmark for more than 600 years and gained autonomy from the country in 1979.
Under Greenland’s self-government act, enacted by Denmark and Greenland in 2009, Greenlanders are recognised as a people or nation entitled to the right of self-determination, with the option of independence.
On Monday, in an announcement naming Ken Howery as his ambassador to Denmark, Mr Trump wrote: “For purposes of national security and freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”
He has also threatened to take back control of the Panama Canal, accusing Panama of charging excessive rates to use the waterway, which allows ships to cross between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
American Airlines was forced to ground all flights in the US on Christmas Eve due to an unspecified technical issue.
The airline did not immediately say why it was stopping all flights, but social media was quickly abuzz with travellers worrying about getting to their loved ones for the holiday.
A groundstop notice was lifted not long after it was issued, but the possibility of disruption remains with so many flights needing to make up time.
Earlier on Tuesday, the airline said on social media: “An estimated timeframe has not been provided, but they’re trying to fix it in the shortest possible time.”
The Federal Aviation Agency said American Airlines was reporting “a technical issue and has requested a nationwide ground stop”.
In an update on Tuesday afternoon it said: “American Airlines reported a technical issue this morning and requested a nationwide ground stop. The ground stop has now been lifted.”
The groundstop notice that was later rescinded
Passengers on social media reported having their flights stuck on the runway at various airports and being sent back to the gate.
American Airlines operates thousands of flights per day to more than 350 destinations in more than 60 countries.
It comes months after a faulty CrowdStrike software update led to worldwide flight cancellations.
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