When will we know the first important results of the American presidential elections?

Although one polling station has already been counted, it will take some time until the first significant results of the American presidential elections trickle in. Who will it be: Kamala Harris or Donald Trump? We will probably only know for sure within a few days.

3-3. That is currently the standings between Harris and Trump. Both presidential candidates received exactly the same number of votes in Dixville Notch. Since 1960, it has been tradition in the small New Hampshire town for the polls to open at midnight, and because there are only six registered voters (there was a 100 percent turnout), the counting moves quickly.

Storming the Capitol

It also promises to be an exciting battle in the rest of the United States between the Democratic candidate and her Republican rival. The latest polls show minimal differences between the two. And the closer the results are, the longer it takes to know the result. With the 2021 storming of the Capitol still in mind, election officials will likely want to double-check all the numbers.

270 electoral votes

The time at which the first significant results trickle in depends from state to state. In some states, polling stations close at midnight Belgian time on Tuesday, while in others voters have a few hours longer. It is expected that in most places first provisional results will be released soon after the polls close.

Once sufficient results have been released, news organizations will begin to project winners per state and you can follow live how many electoral votes Harris and Trump have already collected. Whoever gets 270 (or more) wins. It often takes weeks for official confirmation from the states themselves until all voting figures have been collected and certified.

Four days

In 2020, the Associated Press news agency and other news organizations determined that Joe Biden had won the election four days after the polls. The ‘swing states’ or battleground states that took the longest were Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada. It is now expected that they will again be “slow”. If the race is as close as predicted, other states could join this list and it could therefore last even longer than in 2020. In less close elections, the winner was already known on election day itself.