Belfast: In November 2020, when Americans last went to the polls to elect a president, it took four days after voting closed for Joe Biden to be declared the winner.
This was largely due to razor-thin margins in the crucial battleground states, which resulted in some recounts, as well as large numbers of mail-in ballots that had to be counted after election day. There was the added challenge of this entire process being conducted amid a global pandemic.
Since then, some states have changed their election laws to speed up the election count. But while it may not take as long this time round, one thing we can be sure of is that a winner will not be known on election night itself.
When do polls open and close?
Polls close at a range of times across the country, too. Voting will end as early as 6 p.m. US eastern time (11 p.m. GMT) in Indiana and Kentucky, while polls in Hawaii and Alaska, the western-most states, do not close until midnight US Eastern Time (5 a.m. GMT).
An early indicator of which candidate is performing better will come between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. Eastern time (midnight and 1 a.m. GMT) when polls close in the key battleground states of Georgia and North Carolina. Both states are competitive for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, and if the former is declared the victor in either, then the contest will pivot in her favour.
The next key moment could occur between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern time (1 a.m. and 2 a.m. GMT), when voting ends across the so-called blue wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
However, it is unlikely that a winner will be declared in any of these states straightaway. By 10 p.m. Eastern time (3 a.m. GMT), polls will have closed in two other critical swing states, Arizona and Nevada.
There are several factors that could hinder results being announced in the hours immediately after voting ends. In Arizona, for example, state laws allow voters to drop their completed ballot papers off at the polling station on election day or the day prior — something that not all states do. However, these ‘late early’ ballots cannot be processed until after voting ends.
Pennsylvania is arguably the most prized swing state that both the Democratic and Republican campaigns are vying for. The state has 19 electoral votes, the most of any battleground state, so the victor will probably win the electoral college (the group of officials that elect the president based on the vote in each state) and thus also the presidency.
But Pennsylvania does not allow election workers to process mail ballots until 7 a.m. local time on election day, which could mean the result takes longer than 24 hours after polls close to be made known.
That said, Alauna Safarpour, an assistant professor at Pennsylvania’s Gettysburg College, does not think the wait will be as long as it was four years ago. Writing for The Conversation on October 29, she said that it was ‘highly likely’ that fewer Pennsylvanians would choose to vote by mail this time around.
“A smaller proportion of voters opted to vote by mail in the 2022 midterm election than in the 2020 general election, and that trend is likely to continue in 2024,” she says.
Two more crucial states, Michigan and Nevada, have also made changes to the election count since 2020. These states now permit ballot papers to be processed in advance of polling day. On the other hand, the ability of North Carolina to process votes ahead of the election has been made more difficult due to the damage recently caused by Hurricane Helene. This may lead to further delays.
In Wisconsin, vote counting in two of the state’s biggest counties ‘Milwaukee and Dane’ can also be particularly slow. Milwaukee and Dane’s counties are both significant urban centres with a combined population of around 1.5 million people. The margin in these counties will be significant to the result in Wisconsin and the presidential race overall.
What might delay the results?
There are concerns that certain domestic players could seek to frustrate and delay election results in the critical swing states.
In January 2020, for example, a large number of Republicans in Congress objected to results in Pennsylvania and Arizona — states that were both won by Biden.
In seven swing states, people falsely claiming to be members of the Electoral College attempted to declare Trump as the winner of their state. Their votes were sent to Congress to be counted alongside those of the true electors, with some Congress members arguing that the new slate of electoral votes cast doubts over the official result in certain states.
In 2023, a Trump campaign lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, pleaded guilty in Georgia to his role in subverting the election.
Norman Eisen, Samara Angel, and Clare Boone, who are all fellows at the Brookings Institution think tank, have provided a detailed analysis of how this scenario could be repeated in 2024. They point to nefarious strategies that could be utilised to confuse results by refusing to certify elections at the ‘county level.’
For example, three election deniers “Rick Jeffares, Janice Johnston, and Janelle King” hold the balance of power in Georgia’s state election board. They have jointly devised new rules that allow vote certification to be paused while investigations are launched into alleged ‘irregularities.’
Eisen, Angel, and Boone assert that while “these attempts will likely meet the same fate as prior efforts, they could still stoke uncertainty and distrust.” So, given the existence of these threats and the fact that polls show a dead heat, we will probably not know the election’s winner for at least a few days.