The election process in the United States can seem complicated for those of us following it on the other side of the world, so what can we expect to see when on Election Night?
Polling Stations
While postal votes and early voting has been open in many states since September, the Election Day itself is Tuesday 5th November. A poll by NBC News suggests that around half of registered voters will have already voted before the polling stations open on Election Day, a shift that has become more and more popular since the pandemic.
For those voting on the day, the polling stations in most states open between 7am and 9am local time. Because the United States spans four different time zones (Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific), this will mean that the polls will open over a range of around five hours between 12am and 5pm GMT, moving from East to West across the US.
The polls will begin closing in the Eastern Time Zone first, between 6pm and 8pm ET (11pm -1am GMT). This is a zone which includes two states where Harris and Trump remain neck and neck – Georgia and North Carolina.
By 8.30pm ET (1.30am GMT) half the states will have closed, and by 9pm ET (2am GMT) most of the Central Time Zone and some of the Mountain Time Zone states will have closed polling, including the battlegrounds of Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin.
The final battleground state of Nevada will close at 10pm ET (3am GMT), with the Democratic leaning Pacific Time Zone states closing at 11pm ET (4am GMT). The last two to close, Hawaii and Alaska, will be around 12am (5am GMT).
Results
The first results will begin to come in around midnight UK time, and traditionally the results are known by the time the West Coast closes at 11pm ET (4am GMT). In 2020 there was a delay of four days in calling the result, but many feel that this was due to the impact of the pandemic on the voting process and should not be repeating this time around.
The actual winner of the election is called by The Electoral College, but this can take weeks due to the bureaucratic process of counting and communicating across the fifty-one states. Since 1848, The Associated Press has declared the winner by gathering results from county clerks, local officials, and state and county websites, and creating a count which news organisations around the world use to report on the results of the election. The call is made by the AP Decision Desk by combining the vote count with demographic data, voting history, and other statistics.
While there have been some errors in the past, on the whole The Associated Press get the call right, so we should have a good idea of who will be the next president of the United States by 4-5am GMT.
