Elizabeth Melimopoulos wrote in Al Jazeera English a report explaining how the US election results will be sorted today, how they might unfold, and their potential timeline. Here are 9 questions and answers to explain this process:
1- When does voting start?
Polling stations open between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. local time. Given the different time zones in the United States, this will be between 10:00 and 15:00 GMT.
2- When does voting end?
Polling end times vary from state to state and sometimes from county to county.
3- When does the counting of votes start, and when can we expect the results?
Just hours after the end of the first polls at 7pm ET (00:00 GMT), the results are expected to start coming in. However, some states will count votes more quickly than others. With voting ending several hours later in the western states than in the eastern states, their first results will begin only later, when some eastern states have already announced their results in favor of Harris or Trump.
In a tight race between them, the counting could continue beyond election night, and we may not know the winner for several days.
“The competition is really intense,” says Raymond J. La Raja, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
According to the 538 National Poll Tracker, Harris has maintained a narrow national lead of about 1.2 points as of Friday.
However, La Raja explained that exit polls may not accurately capture some groups of voters, which could lead to surprising results for either candidate. “If the polls are wrong and the race is not as tight as expected, we will know very quickly, but my guess is that we will not know in the first few days,” he added.
He added: “The gap is so narrow that the losing candidate may not concede. So I will bring out enough coffee and tea because it will be a long evening and it may take a few days for the final results to appear.”
4- What do we know about the swing states?
Seven swing states are expected to be key in determining the outcome of the presidential race.
These key states include Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes), North Carolina (16), Georgia (16), Michigan (15), Arizona (11), Wisconsin (10), and Nevada (6), for a total of 93 Electoral College votes.
A candidate needs at least 270 votes out of 538 electoral votes to win the election.
Voting in these states will end between 7pm and 10pm ET (00:00 to 03:00 GMT).
Some of the first results will likely come from Georgia, where state law requires all early votes to be counted and reported by 8 p.m. ET (01:00 GMT) on election night.
Next comes North Carolina. In this case, votes will be counted and reported throughout the evening, with full results expected by midnight (04:00 GMT).
5- In Nevada and Pennsylvania, results may appear within days
In 2020, Nevada was slow, with the state’s results not being announced until five days after Election Day. Since then, the rules have changed, and the process is expected to move faster this time. However, the results may not be known on election night. The state allows late mail-in balloting, so it could be days until we know the final results.
Pennsylvania, one of the most important battleground states, did not have a clear winner in 2020 for four days after Election Day. This state is one of the few that does not allow election workers to begin counting mail-in ballots until Election Day, meaning it will likely be several days before the results are known.
6- In Michigan and Arizona, the results will appear quickly
In Michigan, counting may be faster than in previous elections, because officials are now allowed to start counting mail-in ballots before Election Day, but we don’t have a clear time yet for when the state’s results will be announced.
In Arizona, officials can begin counting mail-in ballots as soon as they are received. The first results are expected to be reported at around 10pm ET (03:00 GMT), one hour after polls close.
Finally, in Wisconsin, poll workers cannot start counting ballots until Election Day, which means there may also be delays, similar to Pennsylvania. According to a CNN report, results are not likely to be in until Wednesday.
7- What happens if there is a tie?
If there is a 269-269 tie or a third-party candidate wins electoral votes, preventing either candidate from reaching 270 votes, the next step is known as a “contingent election.”
A emergency election is the process that occurs when the US House of Representatives decides the winner. Each state’s delegation in the House of Representatives casts one vote, and a candidate must receive a majority of the votes of the state’s delegation to win.
The Senate then chooses the Vice President, with each Senate member casting one vote and a simple majority (51 votes) required to win.
8- Emergency elections
There have been three emergency elections in the United States, in 1801, 1825, and 1837. The closest election in recent years was the 2000 presidential election, when George W. Bush won 271 Electoral College votes — just one more than he needed — after a controversial recount in Florida. Outgoing Vice President Al Gore received 266 Electoral College votes.
Is there concern about a possible delay this year?
La Raja said that if the results are delayed, “it definitely increases the feeling that there is fraud and illegitimacy, and the longer we wait, people will start to say: What is happening behind those closed doors? How do they count the ballots? Who is lying?”
According to him, it is better to hold highly competitive elections and reach “the final result quickly.”
These fears and doubts arose in 2021, when thousands of supporters of then-President Trump stormed the Capitol, trying to overturn his 2020 election loss and forcing lawmakers to flee for their safety. This happened after he asked his supporters to “fight hard.”
9- What happened in previous years?
In the last election in 2020, results were announced four days after the election on November 3, once Pennsylvania’s results were confirmed. In the previous election in 2016, Hillary Clinton conceded to Donald Trump the morning after the election.
In the 2020 election, some states experienced what is known as a “mirage red,” the color of Republicans, as Trump appeared to lead when primary votes were counted on election night. Then there was a shift to blue – the color of the Democrats – as additional mail-in votes were counted, and President Joe Biden seized the initiative.
