CHICAGO (NewsNation Now) — When the polls close on Tuesday night, all eyes will be on the first states that start reporting election 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.
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.
Here’s a breakdown of when polls close in each state via The Associated Press.
- Alabama, 8pm ET
- Alaska, 12pm ET
- Arizona, 9pm ET
- Arkansas, 8:30pm ET
- California, 11pm ET
- Colorado, 9pm ET
- Connecticut, 8pm ET
- Delaware, 8pm ET
- Florida, 7/8pm ET
- Georgia, 7pm ET
- Hawaii, 12am ET
- Idaho, 10/11pm ET
- Illinois, 8pm ET
- Indiana, 6/7pm ET
- Iowa, 10pm ET
- Kansas, 8/9pm ET
- Kentucky, 6/7pm ET
- Louisiana, 9 p.m. ET
- Maine, 8 p.m. ET
- Maryland, 8 pm ET
- Massachusetts, 8 pm ET
- Michigan, 8/9 pm ET
- Minnesota, 9pm ET
- Mississippi, 8pm ET
- Missouri, 8pm ET
- Montana, 10pm ET
- Nebraska, 9pm ET
- Nevada, 10pm ET
- New Hampshire, 7/8pm ET
- New Jersey, 8pm ET
- New Mexico, 9pm ET
- New York, 9pm ET
- North Carolina, 7:30pm ET
- North Dakota, 8/9pm ET
- Ohio, 7:30pm ET
- Oklahoma, 8pm ET
- Oregon, 10/11pm ET
- Pennsylvania, 8pm ET
- Rhode Island, 8pm ET
- South Carolina, 7pm ET
- South Dakota, 8/9pm ET
- Tennessee, 8pm ET
- Texas, 8/9pm ET
- Utah, 10pm ET
- Vermont, 7pm ET
- Virginia, 7pm ET
- Washington, 11pm ET
- West Virginia, 7:30pm ET
- Wisconsin, 9pm ET
- Wyoming, 9pm ET
NewsNation’s television broadcast and digital properties will rely on The Associated Press for all vote counting and race calls. NewsNation chose to rely on the AP because they call races based on the facts.
According to the AP, a race is only called when they “conclude that the trailing candidate will not catch the leader.” In fact, AP did not call the closely contested race in 2000 between George W. Bush and Al Gore, standing by its assessment that the margin in Florida made it too close to call. You can read more information about how AP calls races here.
We may not know who won the presidential election on Tuesday night. The biggest factor that may slow things down this year is the millions of Americans who voted by mail rather than risk being in a crowd during the coronavirus pandemic. In general, mail ballots take longer to count.
Election workers must remove the ballots from their envelopes, check for errors, sort them and flatten them — all before they can be run through scanners the moment polls close and be tabulated. In states with well-established vote-by-mail programs, this processing happens weeks before Election Day. The results are often released quickly.
But several states did not have this system in place before this year and laws on the books prohibited election officials from processing the ballots well in advance of Election Day. Without a head start, there’s virtually no way to process and count all the mail votes on Election Day, while also counting all the in-person votes.
Some states with extensive experience in using mail-in ballots have adjusted for the extra steps needed to process them.
In Florida, clerks can start counting ballots 22 days before an election. Georgia also allows election officials to begin processing ballots weeks before Election Day, allowing the count to go much more quickly. In North Carolina, beginning five weeks before the election, county boards insert approved ballots into a voting machine, allowing for a prompt tabulation on Election Day.
But other states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all with Republican-led legislatures and all of them swing states, made a conscious decision to wait. There is no counting of mail-in ballots prior to Election Day, As a result, it could take days to tally enough ballots to project a winner.
