US election results: Five things you need to know

Votes are still being counted in the US election, meaning the race is still far from won – but early projections certainly work in Donald Trump’s favour.

Overnight developments will please Republicans, with Donald Trump edging ahead in the race for the magic number of 270 electoral college votes to win.

But with five swing states still hanging in the balance, the fight isn’t over yet for Kamala Harris.

Election latest: Live updates as results come in

Here’s the story of the night so far…

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Trump wins first two swing states

North Carolina and Georgia – two of seven critical battleground states – have been called in favour of Donald Trump by Sky News’ US partner network NBC News.

North Carolina was the first battleground win of the election, giving Mr Trump the state’s 16 Electoral College votes, which he also narrowly won in 2020 with 49.9% of the vote, while Joe Biden garnered 48.6%.

It may not be a massive surprise, as North Carolina hasn’t swung to a Democrat for president since 2008, but it is still a significant blow for Ms Harris, who had been eyeing the state as a place to expand her path to 270.

Republican running mate JD Vance admitted before the vote it would be “very hard” for Mr Trump to win if their campaign did not hold North Carolina.

Both candidates have made frequent trips to the battleground in the final weeks of the race.

But perhaps an even bigger loss for Team Harris was Georgia, which Mr Trump was projected to win at about 5.30am UK time.

Numbers had shown Mr Trump was well ahead earlier this morning, but Democrats were holding out hope because he had been 200,000 votes ahead at the same stage of the 2020 election and still lost.

In 2020 it had proved a false lead because votes in the state’s four largest counties – Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb and DeKalb – which normally lean Democrat – had not been counted.

Once they were, Joe Biden came from behind to win the state.

Those same counties took the longest to count this time too, but Ms Harris couldn’t make up the ground in them.

Florida goes to Trump

Sky News’ US partner NBC News projected Donald Trump as the winner in Florida at 1am UK time.

The Republican-leaning state has a massive 30 electoral votes, the third largest number behind California (54) and Texas (40).

Florida, which is Mr Trump’s home state, was once considered a swing state but has been reliably Republican for over a decade.

The last time Floridians went for a Democratic presidential candidate was when Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney by less than a percentage point in 2012.

New York Times needle is back

There was talk that the popular New York Times ‘needle’ may not have been available on election night due to strike action that nearly ran into polling day.

The Tech Guild, which represents the Times’s software developers and data analysts, went on strike on Sunday over contracts, pay and in-office working policies.

But the needle was up and running on election night, predicting a comfortable win for Donald Trump.

The needle is part of the New York Times’s election coverage brought to readers by 100 journalists, engineers, statisticians, data experts and researchers.

It “estimates the final outcome based on partial election results, helping readers understand what to make of the vote that has been counted so far”, the New York Times says.

You can read exactly how the needle works, and see it for yourself, on the New York Times’ website.

Republicans projected to win the Senate

NBC News projects the Republicans will take over control of the Senate from the Democrats.

It is forecast the party will win 51 seats to the Democrats’ 40.

The House, currently held by the Republicans, is still up in the air.

If Donald Trump were to win, having control of the Senate and the House would enable him to govern more freely than if these legislatures were split.

The swing states left to declare

The contest to be president of the US takes place across 50 states but it is generally won or lost in a handful of battlegrounds.

North Carolina and Georgia have been called, but five more are still to come: Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

NBC News says they are all too close to call.

It’s these states that have been tipped to drag out the wait for a projected president, because if voting ends up being as close as experts have anticipated, NBC News’ decision desk may have to wait until practically all the votes in some of the states are in to project a winner. This could take days.