Rachel Looker
Reporting from Washington

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Voters in several states across the US braved freezing weather conditions and snow on their way to the polls on election day.

Colorado and Montana were both hit with winter weather as snow fell outside several polling locations.

In Routt County, Colorado, snow fell in Steamboat Springs, a ski resort town, where several stood along the street waving signs at passing cars encouraging people to vote.

Nederland, in Boulder County, Colorado, located to the northwest of Denver, saw snow at the Nederland Community Centre polling location where one "vote" sign fell in a pile of snow.

Image source, Reuters

Bernie Sanders is projected to win his Senate race in Vermont, according to our US news partner CBS.

That was widely expected. The veteran progressive has served the state as an independent since 2007.

While he doesn't run on a Democratic ticket, he tends to vote with the party in the Senate.

He came to national prominence after unsuccessfully seeking the Democratic presidential nomination ahead of the 2016 election, and is a popular figure on the left of American politics.

The main event tonight is the race for the White House - but it's by no means the only election we're watching.

The next biggest prize up for grabs tonight is control of the Senate, the upper house in America's Congress. About a third of Senate seats are being contested.

At the moment, the Democrats are in charge of the Senate, but only by the slimmest of margins - and polls indicate that could well change this evening.

There's a long way to go, but Republicans have snagged at least one new seat, with Jim Justice now projected to win in West Virginia.

He was widely expected to win after the retirement of Joe Manchin, a former Democrat who recently served as an independent and had bucked the state's trend for voting Republican.

We won't know the significance of that result until others come through, but it's some early good news for Senate Republicans.

Police in DeKalb County, Georgia have been conducting bomb sweeps at seven more polling sites. DeKalb County is a majority-black area that voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden in 2020.

Voting has already been extended at five polling sites in predominantly black Fulton County, after they temporarily paused voting amid bomb threats.

Both the FBI and Georgia's elections chief Brad Raffensperger said earlier today that many of the threats appear to originate from Russian email domains and are hoaxes.

A few polling places in two other swing states - Michigan and Wisconsin - have also seen their own disruptions to voting from apparent hoaxes.

To be clear, these threats apply to only a small amount of polling locations across the country. Voting nationwide has largely gone smoothly.

West Virginia was expected to be projected for Donald Trump.

Students at West Virginia University often sing the famous John Denver song Take Me Home Country Roads at campus American football games, thanks to the opening lyric: "Almost heaven, West Virginia."

As a reminder, a candidate must reach 270 electoral college votes to win the presidency. This now brings Donald Trump up to 23 electoral college votes, while Kamala Harris has three. These are very early results and do not give us much information about the final outcome.

It’s now 19:30 EST (00:30) and polls have closed in three more states: Ohio, West Virginia, and the battleground state of North Carolina.

To recap, two states have been projected for Trump (Indiana and Kentucky) and one state for Kamala Harris (Vermont). These results are unsurprising as they mirror how these states have voted traditionally over the years.

But it’s still early and more results could be projected very soon.

Daniel Wainwright
Senior data journalist

We have a bit more information from those exit polls we told you about earlier.

There's a divide in how voters for the two presidential candidates feel about their financial situation, according to the early exit poll data.

About three quarters of those asked who voted for Donald Trump said they and their families were worse off today than in 2020 and fewer than one in 10 said they were better off.

Among those who said they voted for Kamala Harris, four in 10 said they were doing better.

There was a split in how each candidate’s supporters felt they’d been affected by inflation too.

A third of Donald Trump’s voters in the exit poll data said it had caused them and their families "severe" hardship, compared with about one in 10 of those who voted for Kamala Harris.

Across all voters, two thirds said the state of the national economy was “not so good” or “poor”, with Trump voters more likely to pick the lowest option.

This is the first batch of exit poll data, so the exact numbers may change as more responses are added.

Katty Kay
US special correspondent

Just a few years ago, if I’d seen exit polls show – as they have tonight — that 76% of the voters who say abortion is their top issue came from one party, I would've assumed we were talking about the Republicans.

But tonight, it was Democratic voters who said abortion was a key topic for them. Since the Dobbs ruling that overturned the national right to an abortion, the political landscape around the issue has flipped.

The Harris campaign hopes that they'll see increased turnout tonight, specifically among women voters, who will vote her into office in an effort to protect abortion access across the US.

By Anthony Zurcher, North America correspondent

Donald Trump has been projected to win Indiana, but I’m not done looking at the results there.

Hamilton County is a suburban area outside the state’s biggest city, Indianapolis. It's full of the kind of college-educated voters that Kamala Harris has courted in this election. Back in May, Nikki Haley won 33% of the vote there in the Republican primary, well after Trump had locked up the party nomination.

In 2020, Trump beat Joe Biden in this county by 7%. In 2016, he bested Hillary Clinton by 19%.

With 60% of the votes counted there today, Harris is ahead 49.7% to 48.6%.

Those numbers could shift as more of the election day vote is counted. But if this county stays close, it could be a sign that Harris’s efforts in the suburbs are paying off.

The Visual Journalism Team
BBC News

Polls have closed in the first battleground state: Georgia.

Here's when to turn your eyes to the other six swing states.

Former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry - who lost to George W. Bush in 2004 - believes we may not get a "full sense of things" by the end of the night.

Speaking from Boston on the BBC's US election TV special, he says the race "is up for grabs".

"We will have some indication from the early returns of Georgia, the early returns of Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina," he says, listing other key swing states.

"Those can tell us a lot and that could be a leading indicator as to what may happen in the so-called blue wall of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania."

You can listen to more from Kerry's interview below:

Rachel Looker
Reporting from Washington

Georgia could have results by 20:00 EST (01:00 GMT), according to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

He told reporters on Tuesday evening that by new state law, early votes in Georgia are required to be publicly reported one hour after polls close.

"You'll get a lot of results really quick," he said.

Angelica Casas
Reporting from Georgia

I’m in the battleground state of Georgia, where voting has just ended and polls indicate Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are locked in a tight race.

The historically Republican state in the US Sun Belt has seen political shifts in the last few decades as its population grows and diversifies. More than 30% of voters in Georgia are African American, a group that often votes Democrat.

In 2020, Joe Biden flipped the state blue to win by less than 12,000 votes.

There’s no guarantee what will happen today.

Top issues for voters here are the economy and abortion, with the state banning most procedures after six weeks of pregnancy. The state, with 16 electoral college votes up for grabs, has become one of the most closely watched in the 2024 race for the White House.

This state was expected to vote for Trump.

Largely rural and Republican-leaning, Indiana does have one major metropolitan area: Indianapolis, which has hosted the Indy500 car race every year since 1911.

It's now 19:00 EST (00:00 GMT). Polls have now closed in Kentucky and Indiana, as well as South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, and the key battleground state of Georgia.

Georgia is one of seven states that will decide the presidential election. Here are the key things to know:

Vermont was expected to vote for Harris. As a reminder, a candidate must reach 270 electoral college votes to win the presidency.

Vermont is home to the Ben & Jerry’s factory, a famous ice cream brand known for their original flavours and unique flavour names. The state is the largest producer of maple syrup in the US.

This result was expected. As a reminder, a candidate must reach 270 electoral college votes to win the presidency.

Helena Humphrey
reporting from North Carolina

With less than an hour left until polls close here North Carolina, I’ve been checking in with sources on both sides to get a vibe check.

North Carolina Republican Senate candidate Kristie Sluder told me she's optimistic, hoping that "the wrongs perpetrated on the American people over the past four years will be righted today."

Meanwhile, Michael McLamb, Democratic chair for Catawba County told me that "even in this deep red county, we're seeing many voters motivated by reproductive rights coming to the polls", adding that he thought that “Harris had a better endgame and can totally do this."

Conversations that highlight just how deeply polarised this race remains - in other words: It’s a true toss-up.

Sarah Smith
North America editor

It won't be long now until we begin to get the first hard data that may point to which way this election is going when we start to get early results from the swing states of Georgia and North Carolina.

Both campaigns will be pouring over this detail as much as we are. Despite the millions they have spent on their own private polling, it’s the final results that matter.

Contacts in the Harris campaign have told me tonight that although they are optimistic, "there are too few tea leaves to read".

However, they have been hearing anecdotal stories from the key states that they are on course to outperform the polls.

Shortly the first tea leaves will emerge and they will be carefully scrutinised.

John Sudworth
Reporting from Georgia

I'm spending the evening at a GOP watch party in Atlanta, Georgia.

This state was won by Joe Biden by a razor thin margin in 2020, but the Republican Party faithful gathering here tonight seem in confident mood.

We should know fairly soon whether that's misplaced.

All of the early votes cast before polling day – well over half of the total – will be counted and reported by 8pm.

As for the rest, the man overseeing the election here is promising a quick count, with Georgia likely to be one of the first swing states to provide a clue about the relative strengths of the two candidates.

"By the end of the night, you’ll have these results," Georgia's Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, told reporters a few hours ago.

It was Raffensperger, a Republican, who took the post-election phone call from Donald Trump in early 2021, asking him to "find" the 11,000 or so votes he needed to overtake Biden's victory in that state in 2020. He refused.