An in-person early voting location at city hall in Racine, Wis., on Oct. 24.Scott Olson/Getty Images
The winner of the razor-thin race between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump may not be known for days after the polls close on Nov. 5.
As ballots are counted, one candidate may appear to be leading based on early returns, only for a rival to close the gap as more votes are tallied.
In 2020, some states experienced a “red mirage,” in which Mr. Trump was leading on election night, before a “blue shift” saw Democrat Joe Biden overtake him, a phenomenon Mr. Trump used to amplify his false claims that the election was stolen.
Nothing untoward had occurred.
Democrats tend to live in more populous urban areas, where counting votes takes longer. Democrats also have embraced mail voting more readily than Republicans after Mr. Trump’s false claims that mail ballots are untrustworthy. Those ballots also take longer to count than ones made on election day. Mr. Trump has both encouraged and criticized early and mail-in voting in 2024.
There are seven battleground states likely to decide the election, each with its own rules for handling and counting ballots. Here’s what to expect.
Arizona
Election workers open and sort envelopes with ballots in Phoenix on Oct. 23.OLIVIER TOURON/AFP/Getty Images
Voting by mail is extremely popular in Arizona; nearly 90 per cent of voters cast their ballots early, most by mail, in 2020. Election officials in Arizona can begin processing and tabulating mail ballots upon receipt, but results cannot be released until one hour after polls close.
Any mail ballots dropped off on election day itself cannot be processed until the polls have closed. That is often a sizable number. In 2022, those “late early” votes comprised one-fifth of all ballots in Maricopa County, the state’s largest, and can take days to count.
The initial results on election night should be mostly early votes, which could favour Ms. Harris, before the numbers shift toward Mr. Trump as election day votes are tallied. They could move back toward Ms. Harris in the days to follow as late-arriving mail ballots are tabulated.
Georgia
Early in-person voting is popular in Georgia, where officials expect 65 per cent to 70 per cent of ballots to be cast at early poll locations. Absentee or mail ballots, which may comprise around 5 per cent of the vote, can be processed, which includes steps such as verifying signatures, starting two weeks before the election, though workers must wait until election day to begin counting them.
All early votes, in-person and mail, must be counted and reported by 8 p.m. ET on election night, according to state law. Officials are aiming to have all votes, including those from election day, tallied by midnight.
Ballots from overseas and military voters will be accepted up to three days after the election if postmarked by Nov. 5. There were more than 21,000 such ballots requested, so an extremely close election might not be resolved until those votes are tabulated.
The Nov. 5 election is shaping up to be extremely close, with potentially even tighter margins than in Joe Biden’s narrow win in 2020.
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Michigan
Michigan has instituted early in-person voting for the first time since the 2020 election and allowed jurisdictions with more than 5,000 people to begin processing and tabulating mail ballots eight days before election day. Smaller jurisdictions can do so the day before Nov. 5.
Officials hope those changes will allow the state to report results more quickly than in 2020, when mail ballots could not be processed in advance. That created a “red mirage” on election night, when the state’s early counts of election day votes favoured Mr. Trump. Mr. Biden eventually surpassed Mr. Trump on the strength of mail ballots, which took longer to tally. Mr. Trump falsely claimed he was the victim of fraud.
Nevada
Officials say changes since the 2020 election, when Nevada’s slow vote counting meant news outlets did not call the state for Mr. Biden until five days after election day, should speed up the process.
Counties were permitted to begin processing and counting mail ballots on Oct. 21. Workers can start tabulating early in-person votes from 11 a.m. ET on election day, rather than waiting until polls close.
But Nevada still might not get called right away. Mail voting has grown popular in the state, and it is the only battleground that accepts late-arriving mail ballots. Any ballot postmarked by Nov. 5 will still be counted if it arrives within four days. Those late ballots historically favour Democrats, so a shift toward Ms. Harris could occur as votes are counted after election day.
North Carolina
People wait in line at the polling place in Black Mountain, N.C., on the first day of early in-person voting on Oct. 17.Stephanie Scarbrough/The Associated Press
Election officials start processing and scanning mail ballots ahead of election day. After polls close, the first reported results will likely be mostly mail ballots as well as early in-person votes. Election day votes will be counted and reported throughout the evening, with full results expected by midnight.
Ms. Harris may appear to lead early thanks to mail ballots, while Mr. Trump could close the gap as election day votes are counted.
If the election is as close as polls suggest, the outcome in North Carolina may remain unclear for a week or more. Absentee ballots that arrive on Nov. 5, as well as ballots from overseas and military voters, are tallied during a 10-day canvass period that follows election day. In 2020, media outlets did not call North Carolina for Mr. Trump until Nov. 13, 10 days after the election.
Pennsylvania
Perhaps the most important battleground, Pennsylvania did not have a clear winner in 2020 until four days after election day, as officials sifted through a huge backlog of mail ballots. The state is among only a handful that do not permit election workers to process or tabulate mail ballots until 7 a.m. ET on election day, which means it will likely again take days before the outcome is known.
With more Democrats than Republicans voting by mail, the early results, based on in-person election day votes, will probably show Mr. Trump ahead, but his lead will likely shrink as more mail ballots are counted.
That pattern in 2020 prompted Mr. Trump to falsely claim fraud. This year, a new law requires most counties to announce at midnight on election night how many mail ballots remain to be counted in an effort to forestall conspiracy theories.
Wisconsin
A sign directs people to an in-person early voting location in Somers, Wis., on Oct. 24.Scott Olson/Getty Images
Like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin is among the few states that do not allow election officials to process or count mail ballots until the morning of the election, which means there can be a delay in reporting the results of those early votes.
Many of the state’s largest cities transport mail ballots to a centralized location for processing and tabulating. That can lead to significant batches of votes getting reported all at once in the early morning after polls close.
In 2020, Mr. Trump and his allies falsely claimed fraud after Milwaukee, the state’s largest city, reported nearly 170,000 absentee ballots around 4:30 a.m. ET, giving Mr. Biden a huge spike that moved him into the lead for the first time. But that increase was expected due to the way the city processes those ballots and the fact that Democrats were more likely to vote by mail. A similar pattern is probable in 2024.