US election 2024 results: When will we know who won?

Republican Donald Trump will be the next US president - in a victory that secures his historic return to the White House.

Projected results in crucial swing states - including North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - have gone in favour of the 78-year-old, who has already served as president once before.

The race with Democrat Kamala Harris was thought to be on a knife edge, but overnight results showed Trump had secured more than the 270 electoral votes required.

The race between Trump and Harris came down to results from seven swing states, which, before election day, experts believed either Harris or Trump could win.

On election night, Donald Trump was projected by the BBC's US partner CBS News to win:

• North Carolina, the first swing state to be projected
• Georgia, which Democrat Joe Biden narrowly won in 2020
• Pennsylvania, which Biden also narrowly won last time around
• Wisconsin, which was also won by Biden in 2020

Winning in these swing states, combined with Trump's earlier wins in solidly Republican states, would mean he would reach the magic 270 electoral votes needed to secure the presidency.

CBS projected Donald Trump as the overall winner just after 05:30 EST (10:30 GMT).

The race was seen by CBS to be very close in other swing states:

• Michigan, where a final result is not expected until the end of Wednesday
• Arizona, where the overall count could take days
• Nevada, where the overall count could also take days

Trump has already been congratulated by world leaders.

There were fears that what appeared to be a knife-edge race in many states could complicate the speed at which media outlets projected a winner. Narrow victories could also have meant recounts.

But the 2024 results arrived in many of the battleground states much more quickly than had been predicted - allowing media outlets to project Trump as the overall winner.

But it might still take days or even weeks for the detailed final results of the election to be confirmed officially in every state. Some local legal challenges are also possible, even after Trump's victory.

Donald Trump, as president-elect, will be sworn in as president after an inauguration on Monday, 20 January 2025.

Before that, once every valid vote has been included in the final results, a process known as the electoral college comes into play.

In each state a varying number of electoral college votes can be won. It is securing these – and not just the backing of voters themselves – that ultimately wins the presidency.

Generally, states award all of their electoral college votes to whoever wins the popular vote, and this is confirmed after meetings on 17 December.

The new US Congress then meets on 6 January to count the electoral college votes and confirm the new president.

After the 2020 election, Trump refused to concede and rallied supporters to march on the US Capitol as Congress was meeting to certify Joe Biden's victory.

In the 2020 election, US TV networks did not declare Joe Biden the winner until four days after election day, when the result in Pennsylvania became clearer.

In other recent elections, voters have had a much shorter wait.

In 2016, Trump was declared the winner shortly before 03:00 EST (08:00 GMT) a few hours after polls closed.

In 2012, when Barack Obama secured a second term, his victory was projected before midnight the same evening of election day.

However, the 2000 election between George W Bush and Al Gore was a notable exception. The race was not decided for five weeks, when the US Supreme Court voted to end Florida's recount. That kept Bush in place as winner and handed him the White House.

Additional reporting by Sam Cabral