November 3, 2024

When will we know election results for the 2024 presidential race? What experts say

When will we know the results of the 2024 presidential election? Experts say the results probably won’t be known until Election day.

“This will be election week, not Election Day,” said Democratic strategist Peter Giangreco.

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While it is not unusual for results to take a while in a presidential race, some changes will occur in 2024 that could delay voter responses.

Changes to voter ID laws and the early voting process in North Carolina could slow vote counting.

Meanwhile, laws in key states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania mean clerks cannot process mail-in ballots before Election Day. In 2020, those states were decided by approximately 20,000 and 80,000 votes, respectively.

“In other states they can open them, they can verify them. They can flatten them, so all they have to do is run them through the scanners. In Pennsylvania, they can’t even touch them,” Giangreco said. “So we’ll probably see Friday or Saturday before we meet Pennsylvania.”

However, delays are not unheard of in a presidential race, according to Dr. Kevin Boyle, chair of the history department at Northwestern University.

“There are many stories of presidential candidates who simply go to bed not knowing whether they had won the presidency or not,” Boyle said.

In 2020, four days passed before President Joe Biden was officially declared the winner. In 2000, the results hinged on just 537 votes in Florida, with the networks picking the state for Al Gore and then George Bush before ruling the race “too close to call.”

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There are many elections throughout the 19th and 20th centuries that were not called on election night.

“Even in 1960, John Kennedy was not announced as the winner of the presidency until the next day,” Boyle said. “Richard Nixon wasn’t announced as the winner of the presidency in 1968 until the next day. And then what happened was kind of an explosion of exit polls, which made it easier to pick a winner more quickly, name a winner more quickly. And many elections were not very close until 2000.”

Beyond delays in vote counting, experts also say legal challenges are likely before a final announcement is made.

Sharon McMahon, a podcast host and former educator known as “America’s government teacher,” said there are “a multitude of very, very large lawsuits that are already in the works and are going to be filed.”

“There are already over 100 lawsuits in process related to the election, and there are absolutely more that are sitting on lawyers’ desks. They are just waiting to plug in the right details and wait to file them,” McMahon said. “If we think there were more than 60 lawsuits in the post-2020 elections, there will probably be twice as many in this election.”

So what would it take to know the results sooner?

Giangreco said there is a scenario in which results could come closer to Election Day.

“Only if [Donald] “Trump wins Wisconsin or Michigan,” Giangreco said. “If he wins any of those states, it’s probably over.” And if we know those states on Wednesday, that’s probably it. “I think the most likely path for Kamala Harris to become president is the blue wall states: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania.”

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It’s unclear if that will happen.

“It all comes down to this: If the polls are right and things are close, there is a huge advantage for Harris on the ground, especially in the blue wall states, and I think that is her ticket to winning. If there is the response bias that we saw in 2016 and we saw in 2020, where the polls underestimate Trump voters, then you might be thinking that Trump is actually up four or five points in all of these states, and it will be a landslide electoral victory. . for Trump, and perhaps even a victory in the popular vote. “So either the polls are right and Harris’ field operation is going to win, or the polls are wrong and it will be a good night for Trump.”

Another potential scenario looms this fall: the “contingent election” of the president and vice president that would occur if no one can secure the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidential election.

That hasn’t happened in the modern era, but there are some conceivable (albeit unlikely) paths on the Electoral College map that could lead Trump and Harris to finish the race tied at 269 electoral votes.

In case of a tie, Congress would decide the next president.

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