When the polls close on Tuesday night, all eyes will be on the first states that start reporting results.
While it’s possible we could have a winner declared in the presidential race on Election Day, it’s also possible it’ll be too close to call — likely due to the increase in mail-in voting and numbers that aren’t yet calculated.
The first polls close at 6 p.m. ET/3 p.m. PT in swaths of Indiana and Kentucky, followed by a steady stream of poll closings every 30 minutes to an hour throughout the evening. The last polls in Alaska shut down at 1 a.m. ET/10 p.m. PT.
More people will participate in voting by mail in 2020 than in any previous election and that means some uncertainty in what we might see Tuesday night.
When will we know the winner of the presidential race on election night?
There is much uncertainty over whether we’ll know the winner of the presidential election before Nov. 4 dawns. Absentee voting amid the coronavirus pandemic has changed the vote-counting timeline, and there aren’t uniform practices for counting those ballots. That makes it difficult to predict when certain key battlegrounds, much less a national result, could be called.
For example, Pennsylvania and Michigan — battlegrounds Trump won by less than 1 percentage point in 2016 — aren’t expected to have vote totals for days. Florida and North Carolina, meanwhile, began processing early ballots ahead of time, with officials there forecasting earlier unofficial returns. But those two Southern states also could have razor-thin margins.
Early returns, meanwhile, could show divergent results. Biden is expected to lead comfortably among early voters, for example. Trump is likely to counter with a lead among Election Day voters. Depending on which counties report which batch of votes first, perennially close states could tempt eager partisans to reach conclusions that aren’t necessarily accurate.
However, not all battleground states are slow-counting states. So if several key states release their results promptly, one candidate may have a majority of the electoral vote — even without knowing who won in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
That becomes more likely if the races in those states are not close.
Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio and Iowa all allowed mail ballots to be processed early, and are all considered critical this election.
Still, there’s a good chance Americans won’t know the winner of Tuesday’s presidential election before the end of the day.
Here’s an assessment from the New York Times on how long each state expects the process of counting votes to last.
Here’s an interactive map on when the polls close in 50 states:
When do the polls close in key battleground states?
There are 12 key states widely considered to be the ones that could tip the balance in either presidential candidate’s favor on the path to 270 Electoral College votes.
Here are when the polls close in those battleground states, as well as how many electoral votes are up for grabs:
- 7 p.m. local time / 4 p.m. PT —Georgia (16 votes) and most of Florida (29 votes total)
- 7:30 p.m. local time / 4:30 p.m. PT — Ohio (18 votes) and North Carolina (15 votes) (Note: North Carolina election results will be delayed by at least 45 minutes due to some poll places opening late).
- 7 p.m. local time / 5 p.m. PT — Florida’s western panhandle (29 votes total)
- 8 p.m. local time / 5 p.m. PT — Pennsylvania (20 votes), most of Michigan (16 votes total)
- 8 p.m. local time / 6 p.m. PT — part of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (16 votes total), Minnesota (10 votes), Wisconsin (10 votes)
- 7 p.m. local time / 6 p.m. PT — Arizona (11 votes), Texas (38 votes)
- 10 p.m. local time / 7 p.m. PT — Iowa (6 votes)
- 7 p.m. local time / 8 p.m. PT — Nevada (6 votes)
