TENS OF MILLIONS of people have already cast their vote in the US election via mail-in ballots and many more will have their say in person tomorrow.
Since 1845, US elections have always been held on the first Tuesday of November and this time round, voters will either hand Donald Trump another term in the White House or elect the first female president in Kamala Harris.
It’s been a roller-coaster election campaign, from US president Joe Biden withdrawing from the race to Donald Trump facing two assassination attempts.
However, it could be several days before a winner is announced if the last election is anything to go by.
US voters were previously accustomed to knowing who would be the next president on election night.
In 2008 and 2012, US media had enough data to call the election for Barack Obama before midnight on polling day.
But since Trump entered US politics, that timeline for declaring winners has grown.
In 2016, US media projected a Trump victory in the early hours of the morning, at around 2.30am.
Last time around in 2020, the wait for a winner to be called was the second longest in the television era of election coverage.
Back in 2000, the United States waited five weeks for a Supreme Court decision to settle a recount dispute in Florida between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
Florida’s votes gave Bush 271 electoral votes, only one more than the 270 required to win the Electoral College.
While the situation wasn’t just as dramatic in 2020, it was still a four day wait before US media were confident in declaring Joe Biden to be the next President of the United States.
When the media is confident that a trailing candidate no longer has a pathway to victory, it will declare a winner.
In the 2020 election, the Associated Press declared Joe Biden the winner four days after Election Day at 11:26am Eastern Time on Saturday, 7 November.
However, in the early hours after polling day in 2020, the Associated Press called Michigan and Wisconsin for Biden, which brought him to the brink of an Electoral College majority but not over the threshold.
Speaking to The Journal, Scott Lucas, Professor of American Studies at UCD’s Clinton Institute, noted that while it was four days before a “definitive” answer could be provided in 2020, “we actually knew by about five or six o’clock in the morning” who would be the winner.
“Trump came out at 2.30am and said he won the election, and that’s because he knew that it might swing against him in the states of Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia,” said Lucas.
Trump went on to lose these three states in 2020.
Arizona indicted a number of Trump’s advisers, including former New York mayor Rudi Giuliani, over an alleged scheme to flip his defeat in the state and overturn the 2020 election result.
It also emerged that Trump called Georgia’s election chief to ask him to “find” enough voted overturn Biden’s 2020 win in the state.
Maybe.
One of the reasons why it took so long to declare the results in some states in 2020 was the increase in mail-in voting as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Mail-in ballots take longer to count and verify than in-person voting and some states did not allow for mail-in votes to be pre-processed – such as removing ballots from envelopes – before election day.
Several key states were unprepared for the dramatic increase in mail-in ballots – mail-in and absentee voting accounted for 46% of votes cast in 2020, up from 26% in the mid-term election of 2018.
This resulted in so-called “mirages” in 2020.
Democrats were far more likely to vote by mail than Republicans and this created a situation where one candidate appeared to have a massive lead, only for their rival to surge later thanks to mail-in votes.
Trump seized upon these “mirages” in 2020 and claimed that mail-in ballots were “rigged”.
But this time round, there will be fewer mail-in ballots and some key states, such as Michigan, have changed their laws to allow preprocessing of mail-in ballots before election day.
Like in 2020, it could take days before the US media is confident in projecting a winner.
Polls in the seven key swing states will close between midnight and 3am Irish time on 6 November.
To get elected, either candidate needs to reach the magic number of 270 Electoral College votes out of the 538 on offer.
Each state has a different number of Electoral College votes on offer, which is calculated by adding the number of each state’s elected representatives in the House, which varies according to population, to the number of senators (two per state).
Some states consistently vote either for the Democrat or Republican party in presidential elections and their Electoral College votes are baked into each candidate’s pathway to reaching 270.
But swing states could be won by either candidate and have the power to decide the election.
The polls will close at midnight Irish time in Georgia, with North Carolina closing following at 12.30am.
If Harris does well in Georgia and North Carolina, it could mean the race won’t be decided by the usually slower-counting states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
However, if it looks like Trump will win in Georgia and North Carolina, Harris will require wins in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and that means we’ll be in for a longer wait to know who the next US president will be.
The polls close at 1am Irish time in Michigan and Pennsylvania, 2am in Wisconsin and Arizona, and 3am in Nevada.
The Associated Press notes that “it’s not uncommon for it to take a few days – and in rare instances, a few weeks – to reach that point” where a winner can be declared.
It took a few weeks in 2000, and a few days in 2020, and the results in swing states could determine how long the wait will be this time round.
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