On presidential election day in the United States, the last polling stations in each of the individual states will close at very different times, from one in the morning on Wednesday, Italian time, until seven. Also for this reason, as well as for the large amount of data, information, acronyms that will arrive during the night, following what is happening in real time will not be easy. The Post’s live video, which will follow the vote in real time, and a live blog updated throughout the night will ensure order.
To be even better prepared, it is worth reviewing what the main political issues will be on election night: that is, understanding when the polls will close in the states to be followed most carefully, and how to interpret the news that arrives from there.
(all times below are in Italian time)
At 11pm on Tuesday evening
The first states to close the polls will be Indiana and Kentucky, two central states where voting in the most inland areas will close at midnight. For the first projections, however, we will have to wait a little longer, given that the media and television channels will not reveal their balance about the result until after the polls close throughout the territory of the two states, that is, at one o’clock.
In the first part of the evening it will only be possible to comment on the polls carried out on the day of the vote, in front of the polling stations or by telephone or online. By far the two most commented exit polls will be the national ones carried out by the National Election Pool (NEP) consortium of TV networks, which also includes, among others, CNNand by AP VoteCast, commissioned by Associated Press. The Americans call them “exit polls” but they are not exactly exit polls as we understand them: also because it will not be possible to show the voting indications for individual candidates – the polls will still be open throughout the country – but only the answers to some more general questions. Those alone, however, could give us some indication of how the night will go.
The NEP, for example, asks respondents to declare their ethnicity, and in 2020 it was immediately evident that the Democrats had regained some consensus among white voters and female voters. In 2016, Hillary Clinton had obtained 37 percent of the white vote, while Donald Trump had 58 percent (at least according to the exit polls), with a gap of 21 points: Clinton then lost the elections.
In 2020, however, Biden obtained 41 percent of the white vote, and the gap with Trump was reduced to 17 percent. Not since 2008 has a Democratic candidate achieved more than 40 percent support among whites. Biden then won the election, thanks above all to a small advantage accumulated in predominantly white states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
If Harris gets similar or even higher percentages among white voters, it is possible to expect her to do well in states where whites are still the vast majority of the population, including several swing states. A poll carried out in Iowa and which has been talked about a lot in recent days, because it even gives Harris the lead in a state populated mainly by white voters and voters where everyone took Trump’s victory for granted, could be the sign that in recent weeks several undecided whites ultimately voted for Harris. It could, but it’s not certain.
In red the percentage of voters and electors who voted for the Republicans, in blue the percentage who chose the Democrats, according to the 2020 NEP exit polls
The NEP also asks voters and voters what the most important issue is for them. In 2020, 35 percent responded that it was the state of the economy, and 83 percent of them ended up voting for Trump. If both of these numbers increase this year, it would be an excellent signal for Trump, who during the election campaign insisted a lot on the increase in the cost of living that occurred during Joe Biden’s presidency.
The exit polls of CNN of 2020
At 1 a.m. Wednesday: Georgia and Virginia
At 1am Italian time, the rest of the polls in Indiana and Kentucky and all the polls in South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia and Georgia will close. The states to keep an eye on will especially be the last two.
For about ten years now, Virginia has no longer been a swing state: the fact that many people who work in the city of Washington live there, therefore tending to be young and educated, has made it a state that votes for the Democrats with a decent margin. In 2020, Biden won by 10 points over Trump, and the news agency Associated Press he “called” his victory – that is, he established that Biden would obtain more votes than Trump at the end of the counting – at 1:36, therefore just over half an hour after the polls closed.
If Virginia is still very much in the balance at that time, it would be a bad sign for Kamala Harris.
Georgia, on the other hand, is one of the swing states to watch most carefully during election night. In 2020 Biden won by around 11 thousand votes, this year polls put Trump ahead by a couple of points. It is possible that the winner in Georgia will only be known after many hours or even days of counting: if instead Trump wins overnight, it will be an excellent signal for him. In 2016, when he surprisingly won the presidential election, Trump won, trailing Hillary Clinton by about 5 points. That year Associated Press awarded Georgia to Trump at 5:33 a.m. Wednesday morning.
(AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
North Carolina e Pennsylvania
Between 1.30am and 2am Italian time, the polls will close in states where, barring huge and unforeseeable surprises, Trump will win – Ohio, West Virginia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee – and in others where instead Harris will win – Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Washington DC.
In all these states the victory will be awarded to Trump or Harris when the polls close, or in any case shortly thereafter. In 2020, for example, Associated Press awarded the West Virginia victory to Trump at the exact moment the polls closed, at 1:30 am on Wednesday, while Missouri took about two and a half hours of counting, and the award came at 4:35 am on Wednesday morning (Trump still won by 15 points over Biden).
But at this time the polls will close especially in two important swing states: North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Especially Pennsylvania this year is lo state that Harris and Trump must win to have a good chance of becoming president.
In the last fifty years, North Carolina has voted for a Democratic president only twice, in 1976 and 2008: for years now, however, the margin between the two parties has progressively reduced, so much so that polls show Harris and Trump practically equal. In 2016 Trump won by a margin of just under three points, and Associated Press he broke the news of his victory at 5:11 am on Wednesday morning. For Trump, winning in North Carolina wouldn’t mean much: after all, he received more votes than Biden in 2020 too. If, however, Harris were to win, perhaps already in the early hours of Wednesday morning, it would be an excellent signal for the rest of the night.
Whoever wins Pennsylvania, however, would gain excellent chances of becoming president: above all because it is the state among those in the balance that assigns the highest number of electors, i.e. delegates who actually vote for the president (the more populous a state is, the more the number of electors it expresses is high). To be elected, a candidate must reach 270: Pennsylvania alone guarantees the candidate who obtains even a single vote more than all the others in his territory 19 electors, that is, 7 percent of those needed to win .
– Read also: The state where Kamala Harris can’t lose
Historically, the voting trend in Pennsylvania is rather aligned with that of two other swing states that are more or less in the same region of the United States, Michigan and Wisconsin. If a certain candidate does well in Pennsylvania, there’s a good chance he’ll do the same in Michigan and Wisconsin, where the polls close a little later. In 2016 Trump won both Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, building his victory there. In 2020, Biden did the same, trailing Trump by a few thousand votes in all three states.
In summary:
• It would be excellent signs for Trump to stay close to Harris in Virginia and win in the early hours of the morning in Georgia. If he then wins soon in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, Harris would need a miracle to beat him.
• It will take a little more time for Harris to understand what chances he will have. Something can be guessed from the exit polls: if he doesn’t collapse in the white vote, it will at least mean that he should play for it. A first excellent sign could be a victory in Georgia. More likely we will have to wait for the first signs from Pennsylvania, in the early hours of Wednesday.
And later?
Between 3 and 4 on Wednesday morning the polls will close in many other states: the ones to follow most carefully will be Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona (at 3) and Nevada (at 4).
The first two belong to the so-called Blue Wall, a region in which from the 1980s to the 2000s the Democrats won almost without effort, but in which Trump gained ground above all thanks to his grip on white voters and voters who were not particularly educated, that is, the main part of his electorate (as well as still today majority of people, in Blue Wall). Arizona and Nevada instead belong to the so-called Sun Belt: states that until recently voted Republican by large margins, but are increasingly moving to the left due to the dynamism and economic and demographic growth of their large cities.
A first indication of how Harris and Trump will fare in Michigan and Wisconsin could be obtained from Pennsylvania, where the polls will close an hour early, i.e. at 2 in the morning; more or less the same reasoning can be made for Georgia, where they will close at one o’clock, compared to Arizona and Nevada, two other states that tend to vote in a similar way, although not always and not everywhere.
A good part of these arguments will fail if Harris and Trump are really very close, as several polls seem to say, in all the swing states: in that case it could take days to determine the winner of these elections, exactly as happened in 2020 when the US media awarded the victory (later also certified by the counting of the final votes) to Joe Biden, five days after the polls closed.
