After years of anticipating, months of campaigning, and weeks of early voting, we (like, as a country) finally made it to Election Day. Now, voters across the nation are awaiting the results of the 2024 presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris (with Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate) and former President Donald Trump (with Sen. JD Vance as his running mate). But is Election Day actually the finish line, or is there more of the proverbial race to run after Nov. 5?
With all of the understandable amount of anxiety among voters — particularly from first-time voters who have never been through this process before — there’s a looming question of when, exactly, the presidential election results will be decided and officially announced to the public. Unfortunately, there isn’t a straight answer to this question.
Your parents or professors may have told you about how, back in the day, they knew who the next president was on election night — or, if they went to sleep early on Election Day — by the very next morning. However, in close presidential elections like this one, it sometimes takes longer to ensure all votes are counted, especially due to all the mail-in ballots that come in at the last minute.
Take the 2020 election between Trump and President Joe Biden. Unlike the 2016 election, in which Trump was declared the winner the day after Election Day, and in 2012, when Barack Obama was announced the winner before election night was even over, in 2020, officials needed a whopping four days to determine that Biden had indeed won the election. Since 2020 saw the peak of Covid, there was an influx of mail-in ballots, since more people were opting to stay at home rather than vote in person. Plus, as Teen Vogue reports, Trump and his allies requested recounts of the results, which further held up the process.
But this was not a one-off fluke. Elections have taken a while to conclude on other occasions, too. In 2000, for example, when it was between George W. Bush and Al Gore, the winner was not officially decided until mid-December of that year.
A reason why we could see a similar effect in the 2024 election as we did in the past is because certain states actually have laws regarding when the processing and counting of the mail and absentee ballots can start to take place. When it comes to counting the ballots and tabulating for a result, only 12 states allow counting before Election Day. The rest cannot begin to count at all until Election Day. And even then, there are still holdups: 23 states are able to start counting before the polls close on Election Day, and then 14 states do not allow any counting to begin until after the polls close.
So, being that so many states don’t even begin counting votes until at least the day of the election, it may take some extra time to process all of these votes. Thus, if certain states have Trump and Harris close, they will need to take additional time to count all the votes before anyone can know for sure who the winner is.
Basically, we’ll all just have to sit tight and stay tuned as the results start coming in.