Election Day 2020: Here’s what you need to know

How long will Election Night last?

Who knows! CNN won’t project a winner of a state until polls in that state close (and maybe much later if things are tight).

When do polls close?

Polls close at various times starting at 7 p.m. ET on the East Coast. The last polls will close at 1 a.m. ET in Alaska.

When do the last polls close in key battleground states?

• 7 p.m. ET — Georgia, which is interesting at the presidential and Senate levels. Kentucky and South Carolina have key Senate races.
• 7:30 p.m. ET — North Carolina and Ohio. There’s a tight Senate race in North Carolina.
• 8:00 p.m. ET — Florida and Pennsylvania. Maine has a key Senate race.
• 9:00 p.m. ET — Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Texas and Wisconsin. There are also key Senate races in Arizona, Michigan, Colorado and Texas.
• 10:00 p.m. ET — Iowa and Nevada

When will we know the winner?

This is an impossible question to answer, because we don’t know how all the early voting will affect different states’ ability to report results quickly.

Many, many more millions of Americans have voted early in person or by mail this year than usual because of the pandemic, so it could take more time to count those ballots, particularly in a few key battleground states (ahem, Pennsylvania).

Is there a problem if we don’t know the winner on election night?

No, there is not. In fact, it’s happened in recent memory. Here is a breakdown of when CNN projected the last five presidential elections:

• 2016–2:47 a.m. ET — CNN projected Donald Trump would win after Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump to concede.
• 2012–11:18 p.m. ET — CNN projected Barack Obama would win shortly after polls closed on the West Coast. 11:18 p.m.
• 2008–11:00 p.m. ET — CNN projected Barack Obama would win as polls on the West Coast closed.
• 2004 — No projection — It was close and came down to Ohio. John Kerry conceded the next day after Bush had a 100,000 vote lead in decisive Ohio. A concession on such a small margin is hard to imagine today with all the absentee and provisional ballots cast in 2020.
• 2000 — No projection. We didn’t know George W. Bush would be the President until December, after a Supreme Court showdown. It was wild.

So, while Trump has repeatedly said we should know the winner on Election Night, that’s just not factually true. In fact, under federal law, states have until December 8th to count ballots and settle disputes. Some states have earlier deadlines.

What do we know about how the vote will come in on election night?

We have some educated guesses.

We might know some states early. A very large proportion of Americans are voting early and in most states, election officials can tee up those ballots to generate results quickly after polls close.
Originally published by https://cnn.com/