Donald Trump won North Carolina and Georgia and took the lead over Kamala Harris in most of the five other battleground states that will determine the winner of the US election, which the BBC’s US partner CBS projects.

CBS says Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are leaning toward Trump, and Trump is ahead in Michigan, the other so-called Rust Belt state. The results are not final.

Incomplete returns also show Trump leading in Nevada, while the race remains tight in the other sunbelt battleground of Arizona.

In other good news for Trump’s fellow Republicans, the party is expected to win majority control in the Senate.

As expected, Trump won conservative strongholds from Florida to Idaho, while Harris swept CBS projects in liberal states from New York to California.

The Democrat was expected to spend election night at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he is an undergraduate, but after midnight it was revealed he would not be attending.

Following campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond’s announcement, the crowd at Harris’ headquarters at the historically black college all but disappeared.

A few hours earlier, the party-like atmosphere in Howard had already soured as two swing states were called for Trump.

Lindy Li, a Democratic fundraiser from Harris HQ, told the BBC the situation was “pretty bad right now”.

“People are getting more and more worried,” he said, “but there’s still a way. I’m still holding on to it, but it’s not the night we want.”

Trump was expected to attend a celebratory campaign watch party in West Palm Beach, Florida, shortly after.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and Trump megadonor, is spending election night with the Republican candidate.

Whichever way it goes, the result will be historic: giving America its first female president or marking a seismic political comeback for Trump.

Whoever takes the White House may have their hands tied by Congress, which will be up for grabs in Tuesday’s vote.

CBS predicts Republicans will take control of the Senate After taking two seats from Democrats in West Virginia and Ohio and beating a tough challenge in Texas.

Neither party appears to have an overall advantage in the House of Representatives, which Republicans narrowly control.

Nearly 86 million voters cast their ballots early amid one of the most tumultuous campaigns in recent American history.

Vice President Harris, 60, became the Democratic Party’s nominee in July after President Joe Biden withdrew from the race due to pressure from within the party.

78-year-old Trump became the target of two assassination plans after narrowly avoiding a sniper’s bullet in Pennsylvania.

The former president said he felt “very confident” as he and his wife, Melania, voted near his home in Palm Beach, Florida, early Tuesday.

“If I lose an election, if it’s a fair election, I’ll be the first person to admit it,” he said.

He previously posted on the social media platform Truth Social stating that “law enforcement is coming to Philadelphia” due to “massive fraud.”

The Philadelphia police department told BBC Verify they were unaware of any election fraud. The city’s attorney general said the allegation was “not based on facts at all.”

Both parties have armies of lawyers on standby to fend off legal challenges on election day and beyond.

If Harris wins, she will be the first woman, black woman and South Asian American to win the presidency.

Trump will be the first president in more than 130 years to serve non-consecutive terms. He was also the only president to be impeached twice and the first former president to be criminally convicted.

CBS exit poll data suggests Harris may have underperformed with women.

Figures show that 54 percent of female voters voted for him. However, Joe Biden won the support of 57 percent of women in 2020.

Law enforcement agencies across the country are on high alert for potential violence.

Nearly 30 bomb threat hoaxes targeted election-related locations across the country on Tuesday, more than half in the state of Georgia alone, CBS reported.