Heading into another election with a deeply divided electorate, Americans have two big questions: It’s not just who will win the presidency, but when we’ll know who won the presidency.
In 2020, election week replaced election night: Joe Biden wasn’t declared the winner until Saturday. It could go either way this year. It can take a week for the NBC News Decision Desk to predict the winner of a presidential election, or it can happen on Wednesday, or even Wednesday morning.
The truth is that no matter how carefully we analyze polls, early voting, and other election data, Decision Desk cannot know which scenario will play out until election night. The answer depends not only on how the states count their votes, but also on the unknown factor of how close the margins will be.
One thing is clear: the days of predicting the winner on election night itself are pretty much over.
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Read more election explanations from the NBC News Decision Desk
Predicting the winner in a presidential election like Wednesday’s requires that key battleground states, particularly Pennsylvania, remain essentially untied. There must be a wide enough spread between first and second place to predict the winner.
In 2020 races that are nearly tied (Joe Biden’s margins were 11,779 and 10,457 votes, respectively) in Georgia and Arizona, NBC News’ Decision Desk requires all votes to be counted before making a draft. the winner This may take days.
But let’s move on to battlegrounds where Wednesday challenges are at least possible.
How critical “blue wall” states count their votes — and how they differ from 2020
Any path to winning the White House will likely go through the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. In 2020, Pennsylvania was a key state for the Electoral College presidential nomination, and it has a chance to play that role again. But in 2020, NBC took four days from Election Day to announce the winner for the News Decision Desk.
Maybe it could happen at the beginning of this year. That’s because 98% to 99% of the votes in Pennsylvania will likely be counted by Wednesday morning.
How Pennsylvania counts its votes has remained unchanged since 2020, but the process should be more efficient this year. Key counties like Allegheny (home of Pittsburgh) and Philadelphia invested heavily in new voting machines and added more workers to help process ballots. Also, remember that this election is not being held amid a global pandemic that requires strict social distancing among election officials.
We expect a large number of early votes, followed by in-person voting on Election Day, shortly after polls close in several Pennsylvania counties. It will be counted as early as Wednesday, along with provisional ballots received on Election Day.
If 99% of the total votes are counted quickly, it’s very possible to predict Wednesday in Pennsylvania if the race isn’t a razor’s edge. In 2022, when the NBC News Decision Desk projected Democrat John Fetterman as the winner of the state Senate race at 12:51 a.m. ET, nearly 90% of the vote in Pennsylvania had been counted.
If past reporting patterns continue in Wisconsin and Michigan, most of the votes could also be counted by Wednesday.
Based on these patterns, the count in Wisconsin should be more than 99% through Wednesday morning. In Michigan, it should be over 95%. An important note in Michigan: For the first time, municipalities with more than 5,000 residents are allowed to pre-process absentee ballots — opening envelopes, verifying voter signatures, etc. — a few days before the election. may begin, which may lead to more efficient counting of elections. at night.
On the other hand, the introduction of early in-person voting in Michigan may present some difficulties in quickly counting votes. Regardless of these changes, both Michigan and Wisconsin count almost all of their votes quickly. So unless the races are too close, there’s a decent chance the NBC News Decision Desk could make a projection sometime Wednesday.
If the races are this close, it can take days or maybe a week depending on the variances.
How Sun Belt Battlegrounds calculate their votes
Beyond the blue wall, the critical swing states of Georgia and North Carolina are among the best in the nation when it comes to efficiently processing and counting votes.
These two states are also very good at making their data available to the public electronically. More than 99% of votes in Georgia will be counted on election night. In fact, in the last elections, almost all the votes were counted by 1 am. However, Georgia was so close in 2020 that it took days to call the race.
North Carolina has a similar pattern of voting reporting, with 99% of votes counted by midnight in past elections. Still, any chance of an election night forecast in any of these closely divided states depends on a fairly wide spread between the two candidates.
An electoral vote for the winner of Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District could also play a role in the path to 270. In Nebraska, with no significant change in vote counting, about 90% of the votes can be expected to be counted by Wednesday morning. , which can lead to re-prediction if there is enough spread among the candidates.
The last two battleground states, Arizona and Nevada, won’t be called any time soon. If the presidency falls to one of these states, forget any thoughts about Wednesday’s resolution.
In 2020, NBC News didn’t predict the winner in Arizona until November 12, nine days after Election Day. And unlike some other nearby states, it wasn’t just because the margin was too thin.
Typically, up to 20% of Arizona votes still need to be counted after election night – mostly late mail ballots. There are stark differences between Republicans and Democrats in terms of who votes when (as opposed to early on Election Day). This makes predicting the winner in Arizona on election night nearly impossible.
Nevada is a state with a high number of early votes, both absentee and in-person, that do not count on election night. In the past, about a quarter of the votes were still not counted by the Wednesday morning after polling day.
Given that the state has historically been close in presidential elections, the likelihood of calling it a close race with a large number of uncounted votes is very low.
Bottom line: It will likely take a few days, maybe longer, to know the winner in Arizona and Nevada.