US Election 2024: How the night unfolded
Watch the key moments from election night as Donald Trump claims victory.
Words by ITV News Producer Connor Parker
Donald Trump has pulled ahead in the race for the White House with him leading in most of the swing states and securing the first big wins of the night - Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia.
Kamala Harris's campaign remains hopeful they can still secure a path to victory in the northern swing states that are still being counted.
Speaking to a crowd of her supporters at Howard University, her top adviser Cedric Richmond said: "We will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken.
"So you won't hear from the vice president tonight, but you will hear from her tomorrow."
As the votes continue to be counted, ITV News has put together a list of the biggest moments of the night.
Donald Trump declares victory
Speaking to supporters at his watch party in Florida, Donald Trump declared a "magnificent victory".
He was joined by his family and running mate JD Vance on stage as the crowds chanted "USA".
"I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honour of being elected your 47th President and your 45th president," Trump said.
Donald Trump wins North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania
At around midnight in North Carolina polling pundits began calling the state for Trump - becoming the first of the key swing states to produce a result.
The state is one of the most evenly divided in the country but Trump has now won it in all three of the elections he has run in.
At the time of the writing, the result was called with more than 90% of the votes counted with Trump leading by 130,000.
Trump blitzed North Carolina in the final days of the campaign, stopping in four cities over four days and finishing his campaign in Raleigh on Monday.
Several hours after North Carolina was called, Georgia - another major swing state - was called in Trump's favour.
It also became the first state of the night to flip from the previous election after Joe Biden narrowly won it in 2020.
With more than 90% of votes counted, Trump was ahead by slightly less than 120,000 votes. Biden won it by little over 11,000 four years ago.
In the early hours of the morning, the key battleground state Pennsylvania was called for Trump.
Bomb threats delay voting
Tensions have run high throughout the election and have spilt over into violence several times, most notably with the two assassination attempts against Trump.
Threats carried on during polling day as non-credible bomb threats at polling stations in Georgia, Michigan, Arizona and Wisconsin caused voting hours to be extended.
The FBI said in a statement on Tuesday that "Russian email domains" were behind bomb threats at "polling locations in several states".
Georgia appeared to be the worst-hit state with the state's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger telling reporters that there had been around 60 bomb threats in the state alone, which he said came over the internet and included cyrillic text indicating it was "from Russia."
Technical errors extend counts
Technical problems were reported in several states delaying voting and counting by several hours.
In Nevada, officials had issues with thousands of mail-in ballots mostly from young people that had signatures that did not match the state's record.
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CNN's Kevin Liptak reported the fully online younger generation had no experience with signing their names so their signatures often appeared different each time they were written out.
By late Tuesday night, more than 11,000 ballots were reported to have issues with their signatures.
Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said he was concerned by the delay because the races were so tight in the state.
He said: "It’s mostly the fact that young people don’t have signatures these days and when they did register to vote through the automatic voter registration process, they signed a digital pad at D.M.V., and that became their license signature."
In the key swing state of Pennsylvania also struggled to count votes in Cambria County digitally due to a software issue, leading to hand votes being done instead.
The "software malfunction" led to voting being extended across the county.
A night of firsts
The election also set a number of firsts overnight as a new sweep of senators and members of Congress were elected.
For the first time ever, two black women were elected to serve in the US Senate. Delaware’s Lisa Blunt Rochester and Maryland’s Angela Alsobrooks prevailed in their races, doubling the number of black women ever elected to the Senate – from two to four.
Harris was only the second black woman and first South Asian woman to serve in the Senate, before she was elected vice president.
Their election also raises the number of black members of the Senate to five.
The US also elected its first transgender member of Congress on Tuesday night after Delaware's Sarah McBride won a seat.
McBride had previously made history when she was elected the only openly transgender state senator in the country.
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