The results of the race for the White House to find the 47th president of the United States are unlikely to be determined on election night.
In 2016, the world knew that Donald Trump was elected president on the morning after Election Day. Four years later, Joe Biden was only confirmed as the 46th president of the United States four days after election night.
This year, the timing of the presidential election results announcement will depend on the gap between the two candidates.
If Trump and Harris remain in a tight race as indicated by the polls, the vote count may be compiled within a similar timeframe as in 2020.
However, if one of the candidates pulls far ahead of the other, the race may be decided much earlier.
In 2020, Election Day was November 3, 2020 (U.S. time), but the vote counting in the 7 important disputed states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—was not completed until the morning of November 4, 2020.
AP news on November 4, 2020 (local time) announced that Biden won in the states of Michigan and Wisconsin, helping the Democratic candidate take the lead in the electoral votes but still falling short of 270 votes, so it was not yet certain that he would win overall.
In the following three days, all of America waited. Due to the pandemic context, the vote counting in the disputed states took longer than usual.
Not until November 7, 2020, four days after election night, did the media confirm that Biden won in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, thereby becoming the 46th president of the United States.
The results in Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, and North Carolina will be announced later. However, since Biden has secured 270 out of 538 electoral votes, the overall outcome was determined as soon as Pennsylvania reported its results.
On election night, determining whether a state is trending "blue" (supporting Democrats) or "red" (leaning Republican) can easily lead to discrepancies.
This is because Democratic voters often prefer to vote by mail, while Republican voters tend to vote in person. Therefore, depending on which type of ballot is counted first, the estimated results based on the counted ballots may be skewed compared to the final vote totals.
This leads to a situation where a candidate initially appears to have an advantage and is likely to win in a state, but the final results show that the other candidate has actually won that state.
This phenomenon is often referred to by analysts as the "illusion in vote counting."
In 2020, Trump and his allies relied on these "illusions" to bolster claims of election fraud. He asserted that he won in several states but later claimed that the vote counting was interfered with, causing the former president to "lose."
In the history of modern U.S. elections, except for 2020 with the Covid-19 pandemic and the turmoil of the 2000 election, Americans have been accustomed to knowing who is elected president on election night.
Before the pandemic, news agencies like AP often had enough data to determine who the winner was on election night. However, these declarations were not officially recognized.
In 2020, due to pandemic-related changes, the number of mail-in ballots surged, resulting in longer vote counting times.
Therefore, on election night, some states will not have finished counting the popular votes, making it impossible to determine who has secured the necessary 270 electoral votes to become the new president.
This year, some states, including the battleground state of Michigan, allowed staff to start counting ballots even before Election Day. However, the early voting results may not accurately reflect the final outcome since Republicans often take advantage of early voting compared to Democratic voters.
Additionally, the partisan gap and the "illusion" in vote counting are likely to persist, so the timeline for determining the overall winner may remain unchanged.
The voting process in the 7 disputed states, which is believed to determine the election outcome, will end between 7 PM and 10 PM Eastern Time.
The earliest indicators in these battleground states are 7 PM in Georgia and 7:30 PM in North Carolina (Eastern Time). If the situation looks positive for Harris in these two states, the final results are likely to be determined soon.
Conversely, if Trump wins in the two aforementioned Southern battleground states, the presidential election results may depend on who secures the "blue wall," which includes the three states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, known for completing vote counting the latest.