Marianna Spring
Specialist disinformation and social media reporter

President Trump has tweeted multiple times today promoting claims of voter fraud without providing any evidence, and is hinting at conspiracy theories about rigged elections.

And he also promoted similar claims in a speech early this morning.

As the vote count has dragged on, these unsubstantiated claims from Trump and others appear to have created the perfect conditions for a storm of disinformation on social media.

Experts have long been concerned about the impact of viral disinformation on the voting process and conspiracy theories that push the view that something untoward is going on. They fear all of this could undermine trust in the eventual election result.

This disinformation is not limited to Facebook groups. It is mainstream, promoted by public figures, partisan media outlets and the president himself.

Over 70 tweets from President Trump’s official account have cast doubt on or criticised postal voting, mentioned voter fraud or referenced rigged elections before polling day, according to research from BBC Monitoring.

Here are some tips for spotting disinformation in your social media feeds today.

Nick Eardley
Political correspondent

Downing Street has said it is confident the relationship with the United States will go "from strength to strength" regardless of who is named victor of the election.

The PM’s spokesman told journalists the government had "full confidence in the checks and balances in the US system to provide a democratic result".

He said few countries worked closer together on issues like trade, security and technology, adding: "The US is our closest ally and we’re confident our special relationship will go from strength to strength."

A spokesman also revealed Boris Johnson had watched coverage of the results coming in, saying he watched "quite a lot of it".

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf has said that delays are a sign that the system is working in the state.

Results may not be known today, but accuracy is paramount, the Democrat said.

The Trump campaign says they will request a recount in the battleground of Wisconsin.

"Wisconsin has been a razor thin race," a statement from campaign manager Bill Stepien read. "There have been reports of irregularities in several Wisconsin counties which raise serious doubts about the validity of the results."

"The President is well within the threshold to request a recount and we will immediately do so."

In Wisconsin, candidates are allowed to request recounts if the winning margin is one percent or less.

We heard earlier today from Wisconsin election officials, who said counting was going well.

Local officials have until the end of today to finish their vote counts before the counties start canvassing (reviewing) the votes. County officials must wrap that up by 17 November and then send their results to the state-level commission, which will certify the results in December, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, external.

A recount would drag things out a bit, but it's not unprecedented. Under Wisconsin law, the recount would need to be completed within 13 days of the request.

Image source, Getty Images

Sarah McBride is to become the first transgender state senator in the US, making her the highest-ranking trans official in the country.

McBride, 30, who worked as a trainee in the White House during the Obama administration, declared victory in Delaware, beating Republican Steve Washington.

She tweeted:, external "I hope tonight shows an LGBTQ kid that our democracy is big enough for them, too."

Separately, Taylor Small, 26, is expected to become Vermont's first transgender state legislator, after projections showed her winning the race to make it to the House of Representatives.

Several other records have been broken.

In New York, Ritchie Torres, 32, is projected to be the first black gay member of Congress. He is expected to be joined by fellow New York candidate Mondaire Jones, who is also gay.

Last night when former Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton posted a photo of her leaving a polling booth near her New York home, Jones replied to ask who she had voted for. "You, of course," came the reply from the former first lady.

And Republican Madison Cawthorn, 25, was projected to win in North Carolina - which would make him the first member of Congress born in the 1990s.

Image source, Getty Images

Nevada's secretary of state has just announced that no more vote tallies will be released until Thursday morning. He said the decision was made to ease pressure on counties to ensure they have time to tabulate their votes accurately.

In northern Nevada, Washoe County is running a livestream, external of vote counting, so citizens can see how the sausage is made for themselves.

Biden is currently leading in the state by less than 8,000 votes and with about 85% of the vote counted.

In a phone call with reporters earlier today, top Trump aide Jason Miller said that Nevada is a state "rife with corruption", though offering no evidence.

The White House has expressed frustration over the Democratic-led state's decision to send mail-in ballots to all registered voters.

Robert Cuffe
BBC head of statistics

It's too early to tell whether or not this election has been a disaster for pollsters.

The national poll average had Joe Biden about eight points ahead of Donald Trump, 52% to 44%.

But the so-called battleground states were tighter, with many showing a narrower Biden lead.

In fact, his lead was often smaller than the margin of error that all polls have.

It will be a bad night for pollsters if President Trump overturns that narrow opinion poll lead in every battleground state.

Each one would be a slight upset, and a lot of slight upsets like Florida adds up to a big upset, or a big miss by the opinion polls.

But that hasn't happened yet as many battleground states are yet to be projected.

And, nationally, we're still waiting to count all the postal votes or the votes from big, blue states like California.

Image source, Getty Images

Voters in California have passed a measure that will see freelance workers continue to be classified as independent contractors, in a victory for companies such as Uber and Lyft.

It overturns a landmark labour law passed last year that ruled gig-economy workers should have employee status and the protections that go with it.

The new measure, Proposition 22, was backed by Uber, Lyft and DoorDash.

Their campaign cost $205m (£157m), the most expensive in state history.

The two ride-hailing firms' shares soared in extended trade - Uber was trading 13% up on Tuesday's closing price, while Lyft rose 17%.

Read more here.

Image source, Getty Images

Well, here we are. It's now been over 24 hours since polls first opened in the US and about 12 hours since they've closed. And we still have no clue who the next president of the US will be.

This isn't surprising, given how many postal votes are being counted this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. Postal votes take longer to count, and it's completely normal for voting to continue for days after a US election.

Here is where we are at the moment:

• The race is coming down to a handful of states - like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan - where results are still trickling in.

• Michigan's election chief said today that they have about 100,000 votes remaining to count. Wisconsin said all the votes have been counted and that they are now "triple-checking" their math.

• Georgia has around 200,000 more ballots to process.

• Across the country, millions of votes remain to be counted.

• Both campaigns are saying today they feel confident about their chances of victory.

• Biden is expected to address reporters later today on the state of the race. Trump has no official events on his schedule.

While we're still waiting for the outcome of some key states, Joe Biden's lead in the popular vote is continuing to grow.

The Democrat now leads President Trump by more than 2.5 million votes nationally - putting him on 50% of the overall vote share and Mr Trump on 48%.

Obviously, that doesn't mean Mr Biden is necessarily on course for victory - as Hillary Clinton found out in 2016 when she finished with nearly three million more votes than Mr Trump, but still lost the electoral college battle.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has said the state still has around 200,000 ballots to count.

Raffensperger told a press conference that “every legal ballot will be counted".

Georgia, which has 16 votes in the electoral college, is one of the close-fought states yet to declare.

Ritu Prasad
BBC News writer, Florida

We've been asking our readers for their most pressing questions about the US election. Now it's our turn to respond.

Sandra, 59, from Scotland asks: Why do Americans have to wait a few days to find out who the next president is?

Let me preface this by saying that certified results always take days to process.

States actually have several weeks to certify and finalise their results before electors cast their ballots. In 2016, the final count took over a month.

What we usually see on election night is a result based on projections.

This year, the counting is taking longer because of the massive volume of mail-in ballots cast due to the pandemic.

It doesn't mean there are problems with the counting, or issues of fraud - but it just takes a bit longer to tally up postal votes than votes cast in-person.

For all the details, read our explainer on when we’ll get a result here.

And if you want to learn more about this project - or send in a question of your own - click here.

Michigan Secretary of States Jocelyn Benson has just given an update on the state's tallies.

She began by saying she was "optimistic that by the end of the day," Michigan would be "much closer to having a full, if not a full and complete unofficial result to announce".

She estimates that “just over 100,000 or so” ballots remain to be counted.

Wayne County, the most populous in Michigan and the home of Detroit, is tallying two Biden votes for every Trump one, she says, adding that Biden is currently leading Trump by about 32,000 votes.

Anyone who wants to be sure their vote was counted can go to the state's election websites and check that it was received. Benson said that she checked to make sure her own vote was counted just before this news briefing.

Here are some pictures from election day - and a night of results.

Below, voters cast their ballots in the city of Bangor, Maine.

Image source, Getty Images

Grammy-nominated rap artist DaBaby hosted an event at a polling station in Charlotte, North Carolina, wearing "Vote Baby Vote" shoes to help encourage people to cast their ballots.

Image source, AFP

Voters were able to drop their ballots in boxes as they drove through a station in Rollinsville, Colorado.

Image source, AFP

People gathered at the Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House in Washington DC to watch the early results come in.

Image source, Reuters

See our full picture gallery here.

As the election hangs in the balance, the campaign teams for both candidates maintain they’ve done enough to win the White House.

The race has come down to a handful of swing states where ballots are still being counted.

"The Democrats are pushing to count late ballots. Why? They know, and we know, that if we count all legal ballots, we win,” Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien told reporters on Wednesday.

According to the campaign’s own figures, Trump appeared on course to win Arizona by 30,000 votes, Pennsylvania by 40,000 votes and Nevada by 55,000 votes, Stepien said.

“We're confident on our pathway, we're confident on our math,” he said.

He described Wisconsin, where projected results indicate Biden has a lead of about 1%, as being in “recount territory”.

Meanwhile, Team Biden has released its own set of estimates.

Biden’s campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said the former vice-president was heading for the White House.

“We are on track to win in Michigan by more than Donald Trump did in 2016. To win in Wisconsin by more than Trump did in 2016. To win in Pennsylvania by more than Trump did in 2016. And we flipped one of his states, Arizona,” she said.

More detailed estimates from Biden’s team were tweeted by Bo Erickson of CBS News.

It is not clear how either campaign team has arrived at these estimates. They cannot be verified by the BBC, which is projecting results based on its own data.

Image source, Getty Images

The results from Pennsylvania may not be ready today, Democrat Governor Tom Wolf has said.

"We may not know the results even today, but the most important thing is that we have accurate results, even if that takes a little longer than we are used to," he just told a press conference.

"Make no mistake, our democracy is being tested in this election. This is a stress test of the ideals of what this country was founded, and the basic rule of one person, one vote still carries and it has to carry here.

"Pennsylvania will have a fair election and that election will be free of outside influences," he added.

Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said that around 50% of the mail ballots had now been counted, adding that election day in the state was one of the "smoothest" she had witnessed.

"There are still millions of ballots waiting to be counted," she said.

Joe Biden is trailing in the state, but the remaining votes to be counted could favour the Democrat.

Trump has said it would be "almost impossible" for Biden to catch up in Pennsylvania, a state he won in 2016 by 44,000 votes, or less than 1% point.

The state carries 20 electoral college votes.

Image source, Getty Images

Oregon has become the first US state to decriminalise the possession of hard drugs, including cocaine and heroin.

People caught with small amounts of drugs for personal use will now have to pay a $100 (£77) fine or have a health check at an addiction-recovery centre.

The new measures - which include legalising the therapeutic use of hallucinogenic mushrooms - were approved by a public vote as part of a nationwide push to relax drug laws.

Despite the change in policy, however, those who manufacture or distribute hard drugs will still face criminal punishment. Possession of larger quantities could also result in misdemeanour charges, rising to felony charges if the quantity is considered large enough to be commercial.

Elsewhere, voters in Arizona, New Jersey, Montana and South Dakota passed a ballot to legalise marijuana.

• Read more on this story here

We've just heard from the Trump campaign, which held a press call to say the team is "confident on our pathway" to 270 electoral college points.

They said the vote in Wisconsin could go to a recount, and they believe that Trump will "continue to overperform" among minority voters in Pennsylvania.

"We want to make sure all legally cast ballots are counted," said top campaign advisor Jason Miller.

"We also want to make sure that illegally cast ballots are not counted."

Image source, Reuters

It's easy to forget that Donald Trump and Joe Biden were not the only candidates for president in this year's election. So was Kanye West - though it's fair to say his bid for the White House didn't have the lustre of his musical career.

West appears to have acknowledged as much, posting a picture of himself, external on social media earlier with the message "KANYE 2024".

The rapper launched his campaign in July but failed to make the ballot in several US states. Yet that did not prevent his supporters putting his name forward as a write-in candidate.

According to Deadline, external he managed to get 60,000 votes across 12 states, with more than 10,000 of them cast in Tennessee.

On Tuesday, West said his ballot was "the first vote of my life" and was "for someone I truly trust... me."

Kerry Allen
BBC Monitoring, Chinese Media Analyst

Rather than the election, it's America's imminent withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement – the deal that unites the world’s nations in a single pact on tackling climate change – that is topping China’s news agenda.

Chinese media are keen to emphasise that the US, as the world’s biggest and most powerful economy, represents a significant proportion of the world’s global greenhouse gas emissions (15%), and so its withdrawal could have devastating consequences for everyone.

The US notified the UN of its intention to leave a year ago, but the decision came into effect today.

Many in China see this move as an indication that “the US no longer stands with the people of the world”. This comment by a user on the popular Sina Weibo social media platform has received more than 4,000 likes.

China’s foreign ministry has stressed that seeing as the US election is an “internal affair”, its government has no interest in who wins.

At the same time, state media are keen today to highlight whhat they say are imminent dangers that the world now faces, specifically as a result of the Trump administration’s earlier actions.

Alongside these, it’s a prominent story in China that White House Coronavirus Coordinator Deborah Birx has warned that the US - the country hardest hit by the coronavirus - may soon enter the “deadliest stage” of its outbreak. She warned earlier this week that the US could soon see 100,000 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 per day.