As we all remember, it took four days for the 2020 presidential election to be “called” by media outlets, and nearly two more months to make the results stick after an attempted insurrection. So when will we know whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump won the 2024 election?
It’s complicated. Of the seven 2024 battleground states, Georgia closes its polls first at 7 p.m. ET. It’s followed by North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and, finally, Nevada at 10 p.m. ET (7 p.m. local time). Obviously, it will take longer to get a call if the results are close, and the final 2024 polls show an incredibly tight race. Two factors that slowed the count in 2020 — a big jump in turnout and voting by mail — should have less of an impact this year. Most experts doubt 2024 turnout will be as high, and states are not hastily implementing mail voting due to a pandemic. But it still seems extremely likely that, as in 2020, Trump will declare victory before all the votes are counted and challenge the results if Harris wins.
Here’s what time the polls close in the battlegrounds on November 5, when each state is likely to be called, and a few scenarios for how the results could play out on Election Night and beyond.
WHEN WILL EACH BATTLEGROUND STATE BE CALLED?
Georgia
When Polls Close in Georgia: 7 p.m. ET
Vote-Counting Process: Georgia was the closest state in 2020; Joe Biden carried it by just 0.23 percent. That’s why it took the normally efficient state election machinery so long to tally enough votes to be certain that Biden had won. The state has had heavy in-person early voting this year, but since Georgia has no registration of voters by party, it’s not easy to tell which side that will benefit. Its mail ballot system is not as permissive as it was in 2020, when every registered voter was sent a mail ballot. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has promised that all but a handful of ballots will be counted on Election Night.
There had been a lot of talk about Georgia’s vote count being delayed on Election Night due to the state election board’s highly partisan decisions to require hand counting of all ballots and to enable open-ended “inquiries” about the authenticity of ballots. But the courts, with Raffensperger’s support, struck these provisions down. So there should be a relatively straightforward count.
When Georgia Will Be Called: If the state isn’t extremely close, we could see a call late on Election Night. But if it is a virtual tie again, there’s no telling when we’ll know who won Georgia’s 16 electoral votes. As of November 2, Trump leads Harris in the FiveThirtyEight polling averages for Georgia by 1.5 percent, well within the standard margin of error.
North Carolina
When Polls Close in North Carolina: 7:30 p.m. ET
Vote-Counting Process: Like Georgia, North Carolina has a history of relatively efficient vote counting. However, the entire electoral machinery is in the hands of a state Republican Party that’s more systematically MAGA than its Georgia counterparts. Republicans have instituted a rule that could slow down and skew the results: Mail ballots received before Election Day are the only ones that can be tabulated before polls close, which means in-person early votes will be counted later in some jurisdictions. Whether that matters depends on how close the results are, as WTVD reports:
The State Board anticipates that the unofficial results reported by the end of election night will include about 98% of all ballots cast in the election. On election night, after all ballots available to count at that point have been tabulated, the county boards will stop uploading votes to the Dashboard. Over the 10-day canvass period after Election Day, as the counties meet to consider additional eligible absentee ballots and provisional ballots, the counties will upload those additional votes to the Dashboard.
While there were concerns that damage from Hurricane Helene could harm election infrastructure, the Brennan Center reports the state seems to be coping with these voting issues pretty well.
When North Carolina Will Be Called: We could have a call in North Carolina on Election Night or one that drags on, mostly depending on the margin by which one of the candidates leads. As of November 2, Trump leads Harris in the FiveThirtyEight polling averages of North Carolina by 1.4 percent.
Pennsylvania
When Polls Close in Pennsylvania: 8 p.m. ET
Vote-Counting Process: Pennsylvania implemented no-excuse voting by mail for the first time in 2020 due to the pandemic. A lot of Pennsylvanians (2.6 million) voted by mail, which flummoxed inexperienced election officials and slowed down the count. This year, similar numbers may vote by mail (in-person early voting is not available). Now, as in 2020, election officials are laboring under a Republican legislative restriction that prohibits preprocessing of mail ballots until the polls are closed (in most states, mail ballots are at least opened and preprocessed, though not counted, earlier).
When Pennsylvania Will Be Called: The prohibition on early handling of mail ballots will significantly slow down the count, though to what degree depends, as elsewhere, on how close the race winds up being. The odds are pretty high that the Keystone State will be one of the later battlegrounds to be called. The FiveThirtyEight polling averages as of November 2 show Trump leading Harris by 0.1 percent.
Michigan
When Polls Close in Michigan: Polls mostly close at 8 p.m. ET, but in some parts of the Upper Peninsula, voting goes until 9 p.m. ET. The Associated Press won’t call the state until polls have closed everywhere.
Vote-Counting Process: Unlike its Blue Wall neighbors, Michigan has made some changes to accelerate vote counting since 2020. This year, Michigan will allow the preprocessing of mail ballots before Election Day, which should eliminate an artificial Republican lead based on Election Day votes coming in first, as PBS recently reported:
The law change may result in a speedier release of mail voting totals and may mitigate the so-called “red mirage” that Trump falsely claimed was evidence of voter fraud in Michigan and in a handful of other key states.
But three major urban counties may still have some issues in efficiently counting and reporting votes, as the Michigan Bridge observed:
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said earlier this week that Michigan is likely to have results within 24 hours of the polls closing.
Even so, there are several factors that could disrupt that timeline, and there is a significant chance that delays will happen again during next week’s election.
That’s not very speedy, and the count could get slower:
In Warren, the third-largest city in Michigan and the largest in Macomb County, City Clerk Sonja Buffa has opted not to pre-process ballots, going against the guidance of county and state officials.
“Pre-processing is not the law,” Buffa told Votebeat. “We do everything that is mandated.”
When Michigan Will Be Called: As elsewhere, the call in Michigan will be affected by how close the race is. According to the polling averages at FiveThirtyEight as of November 2, Harris leads in Michigan by 1.1 percent, which is closer than the 2020 results.
Wisconsin
When Polls Close in Wisconsin: 9 p.m. ET (8 p.m. local time).
Vote-Counting Process: The Badger State was decided by less than one percent in four of the past six presidential elections. Like Michigan, Wisconsin (governed by a Republican legislature) doesn’t allow preprocessing of mail ballots until Election Day but does allow counting them that morning. As PBS notes, ballots get mixed together after that:
In Wisconsin, the first vote results reported on election night tend to be a mix of ballots cast on Election Day and in advance. In the April presidential primaries, more than a third of counties reported most or all of their vote results in their first vote report of the night — including in-person Election Day votes as well as mail-in and early votes.
But larger counties, including the Democratic strongholds of Milwaukee and Dane, took much longer. Their first vote update of the night included only a small share of the total votes cast. In a close race, that likely means waiting for final results in both places to know who has won the state.
In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton lost to Trump despite winning Milwaukee County with 66% of the vote; Dane County, the home of Madison, with 70%; and LaCrosse County with 51%. Four years later, Biden won Milwaukee with 69 percent of the vote, Dane with 76 percent and LaCrosse with 56 percent, eking out a narrow statewide victory.
When Wisconsin Will Be Called: According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, we should not expect a call on Election Night:
Given the 2016 and 2020 timelines, it’s unlikely Wisconsin will be called for either Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris before midnight on Election Day. Election officials seem to agree we’ll likely have to wait until very late on Election Day or the early morning hours of Nov. 6 for unofficial results.
As of November 2, Harris is leading Trump in the FiveThirtyEight polling averages for Wisconsin by 0.8 percent. But the polls grossly underestimated Trump’s Wisconsin vote in both 2016 and 2020.
Arizona
When Polls Close in Arizona: 9 p.m. ET (7 p.m. local time).
Vote-Counting Process: Arizona has been a pioneer in early voting, particularly among Republicans. But it counts its votes slowly, in part because a lot of so-called early voters drop off ballots on Election Day (20 percent of them in Phoenix’s Maricopa County in 2022). In addition, the state does not count votes until the polls close, and sometimes a lot later, as NBC News reports:
Officials in the state say ballot counting could take 10 days, although mail votes can start being counted upon receipt, according to the Arizona secretary of state … Provisional ballots, which require additional research by officials or documents from voters, can be counted up to 10 days after the election, according to state law.
There’s also a two-page ballot this year for a majority of Arizona voters, which could significantly slow down processing.
When Arizona Will Be Called: The speed of the count in Arizona will depend on whether Trump maintains his lead. According to FiveThirtyEight averages as of November 2, Trump leads in Arizona by 2.1 percent.
Nevada
When Polls Close in Nevada: 10 p.m. ET (7 p.m. local time).
Vote-Counting Process: Since 2020, Nevada has gone to a system of mostly voting by mail. The Republican Party’s recent abandonment of hostility to mail ballots is helping Trump in the state. Nevada went Democratic in the past four presidential elections, in part because that party embraced early voting. Nevada political wizard Jon Ralston notes that Republicans have made voter-registration gains in the past four years and have benefited a lot from a rocky economy in the state:
Our unemployment rate was astronomical … [I]t’s still either the highest or one of the highest in the country, even though it’s still relatively low — it’s around 5 percent right now. But you have an economy that is based on service workers, many of whom lost their jobs and some of whom didn’t get them back, and the Republicans have taken advantage of that.
When Nevada Will Be Called: Trump has a lead of 0.4 percent in Nevada as of November 2, per FiveThirtyEight. Nevada should have a pretty brisk count, but there is one catch: It’s one of 19 states (and the only battleground state) that allows mail ballots postmarked by Election Day to count if they arrive by a date certain (5 p.m. on November 9). If it’s extremely close, that could be the day we find out who won. In 2020, Nevada wasn’t called for 88 hours after polls closed.
WHAT TO EXPECT AFTER POLLS CLOSE
Scenario No. 1: The race is called for Trump on Election Night.
If the media arbiters show Trump winning 270 electoral votes on Election Night or early on Wednesday, the contest may be called quickly. Nate Silver calculates that there is a 22.8 percent probability that Trump will win all seven battleground states.
It’s been clear for a good while that Trump will likely declare victory on Election Night as he did in 2020. He might hold off a bit if he calculates that he can win legitimately, or he may start crowing right away. Kamala Harris may delay conceding a bit to make sure the results stick, but there’s no evidence she and her campaign will challenge the results if the race is legitimately called for Trump.
Scenario No. 2: The race is called for Harris on Election Night.
Since Trump has been saying for months that the election is “rigged” and “corrupt,” an early call for Harris, which would indicate a pretty robust margin of victory in the battleground states, might not keep him from declaring victory or at least from conceding defeat. This will be the moment of truth for Trump. His election challenge in 2020 at least benefited from very close margins in key states (a shift of 44,000 votes in three states would have created an Electoral College tie). The Republican’s refusal to accept a wider margin in 2024 may be less credible, even to Trump voters.
Scenario No. 3: The race is called days after November 5.
A repeat of 2020 seems pretty likely — particularly if Trump takes an early lead based on the “red mirage” phenomenon of Republican-leaning Election Day votes being counted first. He’s been claiming throughout this cycle that the election is “rigged,” so it’s extremely likely that he’ll claim victory unless Harris is winning big and early. In this scenario, the likelihood of pro-Trump Sun Belt states getting called before Blue Wall states like Pennsylvania could loom large in perceptions of who’s “ahead.”
Fox News decision-desk director Arnon Mishkin said recently that “the over-under is Saturday” for when his and other media outlets call the election. Another lengthy delay could help Trump convince his supporters that something fishy is going on with the tally.
If Trump refuses to concede, the two dates that could settle the matter are December 14, when the Electoral College meets, and January 6, when Congress confirms the results. If he keeps battling after that, we’ll be back in the realm of insurrection, where actual votes don’t matter as much as conspiracy theories.
