The closing times of the polls differ in the 50 states because the USA has 6 different time zones, from the East coast on the Atlantic to Hawaii in the Pacific. The first to close at midnight (Swiss time) will still be Indiana and Kentucky, followed an hour later by Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia. At 2, among others, the closing and the first projections of two very important states among those considered in the balance will arrive, Pennsylvania and Michigan. The last state to close the polls will be Alaska, at 6am tomorrow morning (Swiss time).
However, it could take days to find out who the next president of the United States will be, particularly if the race is decided by a few thousand votes as happened in 2020, when Joe Biden was proclaimed the winner only the following Saturday, i.e. after the assignment of Pennsylvania . Four years ago, on the morning after election Tuesday, none of the seven swing states had yet proclaimed a winner. The delays in 2020 were caused in particular by the enormous amount of postal votes received – 65 million – and by the fact that many states, including Pennsylvania, did not allow officials to carry out pre-processing, i.e. counting and counting votes in advance. ballots arrived by mail. In 2016, however, at 3 am on Wednesday (Swiss time) it was clear that Donald Trump would become president: this scenario is possible if one of the two candidates wins by a good margin in three or four swing states.
In the seven swing states, the polls close between 7 and 10 in the evening in America, or between 1 and 4 in the morning in Switzerland. The first clues on the progress of the presidential elections will therefore come from Georgia at 1 Swiss, then from North Carolina at 1.30: if Harris were to do well in these states, the chances of victory would increase, while if they are firmly in Trump’s hands – as expected – we will have to wait a little longer to understand who could win. Polls close at 2 a.m. in Pennsylvania and much of Michigan; to 3 a.m. in Wisconsin, Arizona and northern Michigan; at 4 in Nevada: Harris’ road to the White House passes above all through the three Blue Wall states – Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – which however are those in which the counting will take place most slowly.
The vast majority of polls show a virtually tied race. Kamala Harris is clearly favored in states that, overall, should give her 226 electoral votes (out of a total of 538), while Donald Trump is favored in states that would guarantee him 219 electoral votes. To win (and surpass the threshold of 270) Harris will probably need at least 44 electoral votes, Trump instead of 51. In the 7 swing states, 6 electoral votes are assigned to Nevada, 10 to Wisconsin, 11 to Arizona, 15 to Michigan, 16 in Georgia and North Carolina and 19 in Pennsylvania.
With its 19 electoral votes, Pennsylvania will probably be decisive for the 2024 presidential elections. In 2016, after almost 30 years of Democratic successes, it had gone to Donald Trump’s Republicans, together with the other two states of the so-called Blue Wall, Michigan and Wisconsin. Four years ago, Joe Biden had won it back with a margin of around 80 thousand votes (out of a total of over 6.9 million). The 2020 race was as thrilling as it was uncertain: Biden took an early lead but Trump overtook him hours later. On Wednesday morning, the tycoon was ahead by almost 700 thousand ballots, an advantage that would gradually be reduced as the postal votes were stripped. And only on Friday morning did Biden return to the lead. The suburban “collar counties” around Philadelphia are key battlegrounds and have skewed Democratic in recent years. In state elections, Republican candidates tend to win overwhelmingly in rural areas, while the Dems hold sway in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. In Pennsylvania, elections with a vote margin of 0.5 percentage points or less are subject to an automatic recount.
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