What time are the first US election results due UK time?

Americans are heading to the polls on November 5 to decide whether Republican ex-president Donald Trump or the Democrat Vice-President Kamala Harris will replace Joe Biden in the White House.

The polls will begin to close in some states from 6pm Eastern Time (such as Indiana and Kentucky), which is 11pm in the UK on November - although all polls won't close in the first states until 7pm (12am UK time). Forecasts and results from those states could come in before midnight and give us an idea of each candidate's level of support.

For those states that traditionally vote solidly Republican (such as Wyoming and Oklahoma) or Democrat (California and New York), results are likely to happen almost the moment the polls close, before a single vote has been officially counted.

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For example, polls close in Wyoming at 7pm local time (2am UK time) and in New York at 9pm local time (2am UK time).

When the final result comes in is a bit more complicated. The race is expected to be very close-run so watchers could wait a few days for every state’s votes to be counted. For example, the 2020 election took nearly four days for all votes across the US to be counted.

Results will trickle in state by state with some declaring much quicker than others, while certain swing states can heavily impact who wins the race to the Oval Office.

For example the battleground state of Pennsylvania, which could decide who wins the election, has absentee ballot procedures that can require days to conclude. This means the result may now be known until the weekend.

Uncertainty has reigned during the final full week of the 2024 US election campaign with Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump locked in a fiercely competitive contest.

On Sunday October 27 Mr Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York where several speakers made racist and crude remarks, including comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who described Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage”.

Puerto Ricans cannot vote in general elections despite being US citizens, but they can exert a powerful influence with relatives on the mainland.

Ms Harris said Mr Trump’s rally at Madison Square helped prove her point about the stakes of the election, adding the event “really highlighted the point that I’ve been making throughout this campaign,” which is that Mr Trump is “fixated on his grievances, on himself, and on dividing our country, and it is not in any way something that will strengthen the American family, the American worker”.

American voters are approaching the presidential election with deep unease about what could follow, including the potential for political violence, attempts to overturn the election results and its broader implications for democracy, according to a poll.

The findings of the survey, conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research, speak to persistent concerns about the fragility of the democracy, nearly four years after former president Mr Trump’s refusal to accept the 2020 election results inspired a mob of his supporters to storm the US Capitol in a violent attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power.

About four in 10 registered voters say they are “extremely” or “very” concerned about violent attempts to overturn the results after the November election. A similar share is worried about legal efforts to do so. And about one in three voters say they are “extremely” or “very” concerned about attempts by local or state election officials to stop the results from being finalised.