It's been almost 70 years since the first time Americans watched election results being tallied in real time on CBS, and ever since, we've expected to know who the next president will be within a few hours of the polls closing on Election Day. Even in years when the results are contested or represent a confusing disparity between Electoral College and popular votes (hello, 2016), we usually have a pretty conclusive idea of who has won by the morning after Election Day. 2020, however, promises to be very different.
It's a good time to start resetting our expectations and getting used to the idea of an "Election Week" following what we might want to reclassify as the voting "deadline" on Nov. 3, rather than having a single Election Day. With the number of mail-in ballots submitted this year expected to amount to more than double those sent in 2016, and with elections offices and voting locations especially understaffed—all due to the COVID-19 pandemic—it's highly probable that we won't know for certain whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden has won the election until several days after ballots are due. So, while the major news networks will likely carry on the tradition of live-tracking poll returns all night long, don't be surprised when they don't have a solid projection by the wee hours of Nov. 4.
Here's why we won't know the results of the election right away, and when we can expect to know who will be taking the presidential oath of office on Jan. 20, 2021.
Absentee ballots will keep flowing in after Election Day.
The main reason that there's a very good chance we won't know the winner of the presidential election on Nov. 3 is that almost one-third of the United States merely require mail-in ballots to be postmarked, rather than received, by Election Day, and a handful more require postmarks from just one day prior to Election Day. In a normal year, this means there are often a small number of extra ballots left to be counted after polls have officially closed, but usually not enough to make a major difference in the results.
In 2020, however, up to 80 million Americans will be voting by mail, and USPS slowdowns are making it very possible that even ballots postmarked and sent back well in advance won't be counted until Nov. 3 or later. On top of all of this, swing states Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have extended their mail-in ballot deadlines this year to continue counting absentee votes after Election Day. With all of these factors at play, ballots received after Election Day could certainly have a sizable impact on election results.
Some states can't start processing ballots until Election Day.
As if all of that wasn't enough to slow down the mail-in ballot counting process, some states don't even allow election officials to start processing and verifying ballots until Election Day rolls around. To reiterate: Many states are expecting record-setting numbers of absentee ballots this year. If poll workers can't start processing them as they flood in, there will inevitably be a huge backlog of mailed ballots that will take several days after Nov. 3 to tally.
While Michigan, a swing state, changed its rules just this month to allow election officials to begin processing absentee ballots the day before Election Day, per NPR, others have not. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, in about 20 percent of states, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, mailed ballots cannot begin to be processed until Election Day—and in some cases not until the physical polls have closed.
Plus, the majority of states aren't allowed to actually begin tabulating mailed-in votes until Election Day, even if they can start the processing and verification process well in advance. Essentially, expect a massive bump in the returns in the latter half of Election Day (and Election Week!) once absentee ballots are finally allowed to be counted across the U.S.
Early returns may create confusion.
Though absentee votes won't start being counted until Nov. 3 in most states, with early voting now in full swing, some states are already beginning to release results. According to the University of Florida's U.S. Elections Project, with two weeks to go until Election Day, more than 35 million Americans have already cast their ballots via mail-in or early voting, with Democrats more than doubling Republicans.
As these numbers only continue to grow, there will surely be plenty of headlines touting what appears to be an early lead for Joe Biden. But these headlines and the early voting numbers should be taken with a grain of salt: For one thing, party affiliation does not automatically determine a person's vote. For another, there is a well-documented party divide when it comes to early voting, with Trump supporters expressing a significantly higher preference for in-person voting and more distrust in mail-in voting than Biden supporters, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll.
With all of this in mind, the election will probably seem to be swinging back and forth between the two candidates for quite some time before a winner is announced—first leaning toward Biden with early voting numbers, then toward Trump with the first in-person numbers, before going absolutely haywire as in-person polls close and mailed votes are officially tabulated.
Trump may be reluctant to accept initial results.
Trump has been sowing distrust in the validity of mail-in ballot counts for many months now (with nothing to back up his outlandish claims) and has refused multiple times to commit to accepting the results of the election outright. Putting aside for a moment the massive threat that poses to our democracy, in which the peaceful transfer of power is a key tenet (*nervous laughter*), there's a good chance the Trump administration will make a point of fighting the results we get in the days after Nov. 3 if they don't favor the current president.
The closest precedent we have for this is the 2000 election, in which the vote count in Florida was too close to call and required a recount. This led to multiple weeks of legal battles, with the Supreme Court ultimately required to settle the recount dispute. Al Gore held off on conceding to George W. Bush until the day after the SCOTUS decision, which came in mid-December, 36 days after Election Day.
For his part, Trump has repeatedly predicted that the results of this election will also be decided by the Supreme Court, which will seemingly be the only way he would accept a Biden win, and is also the reason he has been in such a rush to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg's SCOTUS seat.
With so much up in the air and a certain someone doing everything he can to cast doubt on and around the 2020 election, be prepared not to know definitively who our next president is until at least a few days after Election Day—if not a full 36 days later.
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