US Election 2020 results: which swing states have Trump, Biden won?
As Donald Trump and Joe Biden go head to head for the US presidency, we look at which candidate has come out on top in which swing states.
US Election 2020 live: Trump and Biden results | Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia...
Trump vs Biden: US Election 2020 swing-state results so far
Florida:
Electoral-college votes: 29
Winner: Trump
Pennsylvania:
Electoral-college votes: 20
Winner: no winner called yet
Ohio:
Electoral-college votes: 18
Winner: Trump
Georgia:
Electoral-college votes: 16
Winner: no winner called yet
Michigan:
Electoral-college votes: 16
Winner: no winner called yet
North Carolina:
Electoral-college votes: 15
Winner: no winner called yet
Arizona:
Electoral-college votes: 11
Winner: Biden
Wisconsin:
Electoral-college votes: 10
Winner: Biden
Iowa:
Electoral-college votes: six
Winner: Trump
Nevada:
Electoral-college votes: six
Winner: no winner called yet
Maine:
Electoral-college votes: four
Winner: Biden
New Hampshire:
Electoral-college votes: four
Winner: Biden
Why are swing states important?
While 38 out of the 50 states in the US voted for the same party’s candidate in the five presidential ballots before this year's, the result in other states can go either way from one election to the next, and is likely to be decided by fine margins.
This makes such states, known as swing or battleground states, crucial to the overall outcome of the election. Why? Well, it chiefly comes down to the system used to decide the winner of a US general election.
This is because a candidate does not necessarily have to win the popular vote to win the race for the White House; indeed, Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 despite receiving nearly three million votes fewer. What really matters is how many votes the candidates get from what is known as the US electoral college.
Each state has a certain number of electoral-college votes - depending on its number of representatives in Congress - which are awarded to the victor of the popular vote in that state. With 29, Florida has the most electoral-college votes of all the swing states, followed by Pennsylvania with 20 and Ohio with 18.
And with the exception of Maine and Nebraska, a state's electoral college distributes its votes on a winner-takes-all basis.
As a result, a candidate may well take victory in a swing state with only a very slim majority in the popular vote, but see that win boost their electoral-vote count to a comparatively large degree. For the loser, meanwhile, the difference between winning and losing the state may have been small, but the cost in terms of electoral votes may not be.
For example, Trump's win over Clinton was aided by hugely tight wins in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which brought him 46 electoral-college votes - and saw Clinton come away empty-handed - despite his combined margin of victory across the three states being just 77,000 votes.
Presidential contenders therefore tend to focus their pre-election campaigning on these toss-of-a-coin swing states, rather than those where they already know they are likely to win or lose. “Swing states are the presidential campaign,” says John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brooklings Institution.
To be elected as US president, a contender needs to get 270 votes from the electoral college.
(Note: Arizona, Maine and Georgia are among the 38 states which voted the same way between 2000 and 2016, but have now developed into states where the result is difficult to predict.)
Live coverage of the 2020 US election
As the count continues in several states, you can stay up-to-date with the latest developments in what has proved a tight US presidential election with our live rolling feed.