On November 5, voters in the United States will go to the polls to cast their votes in the 2024 presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. But as in 2020, they may not know the results on election night.
That’s because it takes time to count votes — a record number of which were cast before Election Day. And in a race expected to be extremely close, more votes will have to be counted before a winner can be declared.
Individual states determine their own laws and timelines for processing ballots, including those submitted during the early voting period and the mail-in period. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, 46% of voters opted for mail-in ballots. And the increase in mail-in ballots, combined with vote-counting rules that vary by state, led to days of waiting for a result. Joe Biden was not officially declared the winner until Saturday, November 7, four days after Election Day. During the gap in reporting of the results, Trump and his supporters spread conspiracy theories about election fraud – baseless claims that they continue to make.
For this election, some swing states, including Nevada and Michigan, have introduced new laws and policies to speed up the vote counting. But others, including the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, still won’t allow absentee and mail-in ballots to be counted until Election Day — which could lengthen the process of declaring a winner, especially in such a hotly contested presidential elections.
“We’re counting ballots faster than ever before,” David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, said on a call with reporters. “But as margins tighten, more ballots will be needed to count before we can call a race.”
And even in states that have tried to speed things up, there are several factors that could leave Americans waiting again to find out who won.
“I think it’s likely that by the end of the week (Thursday, maybe Friday) we’ll have an idea who will have won the presidency,” Becker said in response to a Yahoo News query.
Here’s a quick guide to when the 2020 battleground states were declared, as well as changes to the vote counting process for 2024.
Battlefield states
Pennsylvania
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Results 2020 (margin): Biden +1.2% (80,555 votes)
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When called by the AP: Saturday, November 7 at 11:25 am ET
Pennsylvania does not allow mail-in ballots to be counted until 7 a.m. on Election Day, a process that took several days in 2020. (That year, the Associated Press didn’t call Pennsylvania for Biden until Saturday, four days after Election Day. And election officials say it will likely take days again this year, especially because the state legislature rejected changes that would have sped up the vote count.
Wisconsin
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Results 2020 (margin): Biden +0.6% (20,682 votes)
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When it was called by the AP: Wednesday, November 4 at 2:16 PM ET
Like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin doesn’t begin processing mail-in ballots until Election Day. And the state Legislature declined to change the law to allow election workers to do so in advance, which could again lead to delays in election calling.
Michigan
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Results 2020 (margin): Biden +2.8% (154,188 votes)
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When called by the AP: Wednesday, November 4 at 5:56 PM ET
Four years ago, it took until Wednesday afternoon to determine that Biden had carried the midstate into the so-called blue wall, partly because of a law that didn’t allow the counting of mail-in ballots to begin until Election Day. Michigan now allows these ballots to be processed eight days before the election in communities of 5,000 or more people — including Detroit.
Georgia
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Results 2020 (margin): Biden +0.2% (11,779 votes)
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When called by the AP: Thursday, November 19 at 9:25 PM ET
In 2020, it took weeks for an official race call to come out of Georgia, during which time Trump and his allies pressured states’ election officials in an effort to overturn the results. But the state made changes to the law in 2021 that allow mail-in ballots to be processed (but not tabulated) before Election Day, while requiring all counties to tabulate their results by 5 p.m. the day after the election. And a state court in Georgia recently blocked a new rule requiring election workers to count ballots by hand.
Arizona
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Results 2020 (margin): Biden +0.3% (10,457 votes)
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When called by the AP: Wednesday, November 4 at 2:51 PM ET
In Arizona, most residents vote via ballots mailed to their homes, and many return them to their mailboxes on Election Day. The process of verifying signatures on those ballots takes time and could delay the outcome, especially in such a close race. In 2020, Arizona was decided by a vote margin even narrower than Georgia’s. And in 2022, vote counting for the gubernatorial election continued for days after the state received a last-minute flood of ballots.
Meanwhile, a federal judge recently denied a request for Arizona to verify the citizenship of some 42,000 voters who were registered only to vote in federal elections, which could have added more time to the count.
Nevada
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Results 2020 (margin): Biden +2.4% (33,596 votes)
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When called by the AP: Saturday, November 7 at 12:13 PM ET
Nevada changed its election laws after 2020 to try to release results earlier, allowing ballots submitted during the early voting period to be counted when polls open — rather than when they close — on Election Day.
In a statement, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said the changes were made to “increase transparency, help us combat misinformation, and ease the burden on election officials.”
Still, ballots postmarked before Election Day and arriving up to four days afterward will also be counted, which could make the changes moot.
North Carolina
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Results 2020 (margin): Trump +1.3% (74,483 votes)
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When called by the AP: Friday, November 13 at 4:35 PM ET
In North Carolina, a new law requires county boards to wait until polls close on Election Day before they can begin counting and reporting early voting results, potentially delaying the count for hours or more.
“It’s getting late at night,” Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the state Board of Elections, said at a news conference earlier this month.
And even in states that allow early votes to be counted early, chances are they won’t be completely finished by the time in-person voting begins. New laws in some states require additional verification and opportunities for voters to correct or “cure” errors on ballots, which can also add significant time to processing.
How Helene could influence voting in swing states
However, there is also good news about Hurricane Helene’s impact on the mood in North Carolina and Georgia.
In North Carolina, which was devastated by Helene, the state’s election board unanimously approved a series of emergency measures that will allow officials in the 13 most affected counties to adjust the times and locations of early voting sites, limit restrictions on mail-in ballots in case of absence and give them more options. freedom to recruit poll workers. And in those counties, 75 of the 80 early voting locations were able to open as planned.
In Georgia, which was also hit hard by Helene, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger reported shortly after the storm that election offices across the state had been “spared from substantial, long-term damage.”
And on October 15, Georgia set a new record for the most votes on the first day of early voting, with more than 305,000 votes cast, breaking the previous record of 136,000 in 2020.
Delays do not mean fraud has occurred
Even if it takes days to declare a winner, like in 2020, it doesn’t mean anything nefarious is going on. It just means that the election was as close as expected.
“It’s normal for it to take a few days to see results,” Becker said. “That’s how it should be.”
“We want them to be carried out accurately,” he added. “And anyone who questions that process while that process is going on probably thinks they’ve lost.”
