As closure of polling stations On election night, across six time zones, millions of people will watch who will be the 47th American president. But the wait is likely to be long for several reasons that may not be obvious. Election results which seems to indicate that a candidate’s victory at 10 p.m. could change the other way at 11:30 p.m., or even later. And it can take days to find out who won.
The reasons election observers may see sudden shifts in Kamala Harris or Donald Trump’s standing in the most competitive states are largely influenced by two factors: how mail-in ballots are processed and the density population of an area.
That’s why live CBS News coverage will show its whole state modelsincluding exit polls and where there are outstanding votes.
Processing of mail-in ballots differs by state
This may seem simple enough: just seven Battlefield States considered at stake in the election: Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, and these are the states likely to determine the winner.
But each state has different rules governing when mail-in ballots can be processed and counted. In the early hours of election night, there may be an incomplete sense of who won in a state, as mail-in ballots will take longer in some states than others to appear in the count .
Arizona And North Carolina require all ballots to be received by Election Day, and both states allow early processing of ballots, suggesting that election night vote totals should include many ballots per correspondence as soon as polling stations close.
Michigan is among the states that are starting to process votes early and requiring all ballots to be cast by Election Day, so ballot totals will likely include mail-in ballots.
Nevada also allows early processing of mail-in ballots, but ballots can also be received after Election Day; they must be postmarked before November 5 or received at the elections office before November 8 if they do not have a postmark. In May, the Nevada Secretary of State issued guidance aimed at expediting the release of election results.
“Releasing results sooner will increase transparency, help us combat misinformation and ease pressure on election officials,” Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said in a statement at the time.
In-person and mail-in ballots can begin to be counted at 8 a.m. PT on Election Day. At 6 p.m. PT (9 p.m. ET) on Election Day, county clerks must provide their first election results to the Secretary of State, who expects to release unofficial results as soon as polls close voting. Previously, no counting began until polling stations closed, according to the secretary of state.
Wisconsin And Pennsylvania both require all ballots to be received by Election Day, but they largely prohibit the processing and counting of mail-in ballots until the morning of Election Day. Some mail-in ballots may appear in early results, but it will take some time for election workers to count those ballots. About 1.8 million people voted by mail in Pennsylvania this year.
In 2020, it was Pennsylvania that won Joe Biden’s presidency, but the state didn’t see a projected winner until four days after the election. However, postal voting was higher that year, due to the pandemic. Another new feature this year, Pennsylvania requires all ballots to be submitted by Election Day. It no longer accepts ballots postmarked on election day and received within three days.
In general, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to vote early, although Republicans have made a concerted effort this year to convince their voters to vote by mail or in person, and appear to have had some success. If they did, it will be despite mixed messages from Donald Trump, who continues to oppose mail-in voting.
Election results in urban and rural counties
In the early hours Tuesday evening after polls close, there may be a lot of red showing on the map for Trump and other Republicans, but that may be a function of population density.
Polling places in smaller areas often tabulate and report results more quickly than their urban counterparts, simply because there are fewer votes to process. In key battleground states for the 2024 presidential election, some of the largest cities — population centers associated with strong Democratic majorities — are expected to be among the last to report complete results, experts say. Fulton County, Georgia — home to much of Atlanta — “has a notorious reputation for being slow,” said Andra Gillespie, a professor at Emory University.
“Fulton County is also the largest county in the state,” Gillespie said. “It’s not like a county that can turn around after just 10,000 or 15,000 votes.”
“Famous” is also how a professor in another battleground, Michigan, described the processing of votes in that state’s largest city.
“Detroit is notoriously slow,” said David Dulio, a professor at Oakland University. And Warren, the state’s third-largest city, will also likely be slower than other areas because it has chosen not to pre-process mail-in ballots. A new law allowed municipalities across the state to begin processing those ballots up to eight days before the election.
“They won’t process any of these absentees until Tuesday,” Dulio told CBS News.
Experts have issued similar warnings about election results in major cities in Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Paulina Gutiérrez recently told Wisconsin Public Radio that she expects that city’s results to be known after midnight.
“We are the largest city in the state of Wisconsin,” Gutiérrez said on the radio. “We follow the same laws as everyone else here in the state of Wisconsin. We just have a lot more to do.”
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a ruling from Pennsylvania’s highest court requiring public officials counting provisional ballots by voters whose absentee ballots were rejected. In a particularly close race, this could mean a significant delay.
Processing those votes could follow a similar pattern, taking longer in Philadelphia and other cities than in less populated areas, says Marc Meredith, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
“Provisional ballots are typically released Thursday in smaller counties, through Monday in larger counties,” Meredith said.
