Right for those of you who'll be staying up tomorrow to watch the US elections here's what to look out for and when....

At midnight UK time polls in the first swing states - Florida (mostly) and Georgia will close. North Carolina will close at 12:30 am. These states, esp Florida + NC, should count quite fast. If Biden is winning well in either then he'll v likely have won the whole thing.

HOWEVER - Florida and NC will drop all their early vote ballots pretty much straight away and these are very likely to skew Biden so he may have a decent early lead that then diminishes. I'll be doing county by county comparisons from 2016 as data comes in.

Polls in Texas and Arizona close at 2am (some in Texas at 1am). But again they should count quite fast. Again if either go Biden it will likely be enough for him. Again you'll probably see Dems with an early lead as early votes are released before those made on the day.

The other key group of states is up in the rust belt. Michigan and PA close at 1am UK time. Wisconsin at 2am. However, unlike the sun belt states they aren't allowed to count early votes before election day. So here Trump will likely have an early lead that diminishes.

Because there have been so many more early votes than usual - if it's close in these rust belt states they won't be able to declare overnight at all and quite possibly not until the weekend.

So basically if Biden doesn't nab a sun belt state or two, and it's close in the rust belt, we may well not have a result tomorrow night.