If you want to know who won the US presidential election between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, we don’t have a clear answer yet. However, the first results have started to come in, with voting completed in almost all states.

What do the first results say?

More than two hours after the count began, Donald Trump leads against Harris. According to CNN, Trump is leading 211
Electoral College votes and Harris 145. Each of them needs 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

According to the Associated PressTrump has 178 electoral votes and Harris 99.

As the first results came in, US media predicted that Trump would win in 15 states and Harris in seven. There are 50 states in the country.

US election results 2024 LIVE: California brings Harris back into race with 54 more votes but Trump still leads

US media projects victories for Trump in Ohio, Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, Texas, l Iowa, Kansas, Idaho and Mississippi. These are the states he won in 2020.

Several states, including California, Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, Vermont and the US capital Washington, DC, are expected to turn to Harris.

What matters most in this hotly contested election is the swing states. They hold the key to victory in the American elections.

For now, Trump leads on three points and Harris on two. The Republican candidate is leading in Wisconsin, Georgia and North Carolina, while the vice president is leading in Pennsylvania and Michigan. It is too early to determine the battleground states.

For now it appears that Trump has the upper hand, but that could change.

According to CNNAccording to Chris Wallace, there were “no surprises” or states that flipped parties. “All the states that (Donald) Trump won tonight are states that he won in 2020… All the states that (Kamala) Harris won are states that (Joe) Biden won in 2020. He does not There has been no swing state that has not yet been toppled.

Why early results are not an indicator of a winner

Early voting results in U.S. battleground states may not be a good indicator of whether Harris or Trump will win, experts say, because of vote-counting rules and quirks in several key states .

In the 2020 elections, some states showed a
“red mirage”in which Trump was ahead on election night, before a “blue shift” saw Democrat Joe Biden overtake him as mail-in ballots favored by more Democratic voters were accounts.

Pundits had accurately predicted this would happen, but Trump still took advantage of this change to amplify his false claims that the election was stolen.

It could happen again this week, notably in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. The opposite – a “blue mirage” apparently showing a strong result for Harris only with a “red shift” to reverse the trend – could also happen this week, notably in North Carolina and Georgia.

With the contribution of agencies

Get all the latest updates from the 2024 US elections