When will voters learn who the next US president will be?

On November 1, 2024By Karl

As election night approaches, all eyes will be on the results, but in close elections it may take days to make a prediction.

In 2020, Joe Biden was not declared the winner of the presidential race until the Saturday after the election. It wasn’t this close in 2016. Donald Trump was declared the winner early Wednesday morning. In 2012, the call came even earlier. President Barack Obama won his re-election contest before midnight on Election Day.

Pennsylvania could be the state that will decide the 2024 presidential election with 19 delegate votes.

Lamont McClure, the election official in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, warned that the immediate election results were unofficial and said they planned to receive all votes by 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. on Election Day, according to Scripps’ report.

If the rest of Pennsylvania follows that timeline, it might be possible to predict who will win the state early Wednesday morning. But whether Pennsylvania is the state that will tip the scales in a candidate’s favor will depend on how they perform in other battleground states.

There are seven battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona.

In 2016, six out of seven states voted for Donald Trump. In 2020, six out of seven states voted for Joe Biden.

Each state has different rules for how and when votes are counted. In Florida, for example, election officials have already tabulated ballots submitted by early voters. In Pennsylvania, officials must wait until Tuesday to even open mail ballots. In Georgia, all early votes must be counted and reported by 8 p.m. on election night.

Rachael Dean Wilson, executive director of Alliance Defending Democracy, does not expect a quick outcome.

“The questionable margins of this race will be very narrow,” he said. “There’s still a chance it will be a few days before we know who won the election.”