When Will We Know 2024 Election Results?

Alabama is one of the few states that still requires an excuse to vote absentee, so the vast majority of its votes (90+ percent) are cast in person. That should enable nearly all of its votes to be tallied on election night.

The state Division of Elections expects the first results to be reported around 1 a.m. Eastern. They hope to provide updates every 30-40 minutes until about 3 a.m. Eastern, with more sporadic updates after that. These results will consist of Election Day votes and early votes from October. After election night, the next update will not come until Nov. 12, when the bulk of mail-in votes, early votes from November and provisional ballots will be tallied. Additional results from these types of ballots may trickle out through Nov. 15. One last wrinkle: Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, so the results you’ll see through Nov. 15 will reflect voters’ first choices only. We won’t know the winner in races in which no candidate receives a majority of first-place votes until Nov. 20, when the state runs its ranked-choice tabulations.

Arizona doesn’t post any election results until all precincts have reported or one hour after polls close, whichever comes first. That’s almost always 10 p.m. Eastern. Shortly after that time, counties are expected to release results from mail-in ballots received days before Election Day — a significant share of the total vote. The rest will take a while, though. Votes cast at polling places on Election Day will trickle in over the next several hours: The state’s largest county, Maricopa, estimates that it could take until 5 a.m. Eastern to report the full Election Day vote. Last but not least, results from mail-in ballots received on or just before Election Day will be released over the next several days. Election officials estimate it will take 10-13 days to count all these ballots, which in 2022 constituted about 20 percent of the total number of ballots cast.

The state will release the first results, which usually consist of early and absentee ballots, shortly after polls close. Historically, Arkansas has been able to count virtually all of its votes on election night.

First results will be released shortly after 11 p.m. Eastern, but a significant share of the vote (in 2022, it was half) won’t be reported on election night. Almost everyone in California votes by mail, and ballots can arrive as late as Nov. 12 and still count as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. For that reason, it will take at least one week to get full results, and likely longer. Legally, counties have until Dec. 5 to finish their counts, but in practice the vast majority of votes are counted within two weeks of Election Day.

State law requires counties to report first results by 10 p.m. Eastern, and election officials estimate that between 60 and 70 percent of the total ballots cast in the election will be reported by then. However, election officials think it could take until the Friday or Monday after Election Day to count most of the remainder because there are so many ballot measures in Colorado this year.

In the past, Connecticut has counted most of its votes on election night, but larger municipalities have needed until Wednesday to finish counting absentee ballots.

Results will roll in starting at 8 p.m. Eastern, and election officials expect to have full results by midnight Eastern.

Washington, D.C., votes predominantly by mail, and ballots (assuming they’re postmarked by Election Day) aren’t due until Nov. 15. As a result, we’re expecting most, but not all, results on election night.

Florida is one of the fastest states at counting ballots. By law, early votes and all mail-in ballots received during the early-voting period must be reported within 30 minutes of polls closing. Historically, this has constituted a majority of the eventual total vote. After that, Election Day votes are released in 45-minute increments until they’re all counted.

Recently passed laws have really sped up the counting process in Georgia. Counties are now required to report early votes and absentee votes that are received before Election Day by 8 p.m. Eastern. That should account for more than half of the eventual total vote. We’ll then get Election Day votes between 8 p.m. and midnight Eastern. The secretary of state’s office estimates that the state will reach 90 percent reporting by 10:30 p.m. Eastern. Counties are required to finish counting absentee ballots by 5 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday.

Hawaii reports its returns in a few big batches. The first will be a very large batch of mail-in ballots reported shortly after polls close (although it cannot be released until the last voter in line has voted). The second is scheduled for 3:30 a.m. Eastern and will include in-person votes plus additional mail-ins. The third batch will come once all mail-in ballots have been processed, which might not be until Wednesday.

Idaho typically reports early and absentee votes first. While counting may stretch into the early morning hours, election officials say they plan to count all votes before they go to bed on election night.

Most jurisdictions will report the early vote and early-arriving mail-in ballots very quickly after polls close. That will be followed by the Election Day vote, which is usually all in by midnight Eastern. Finally, in subsequent days, the state will count mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day (as long as they are properly postmarked). The bulk of those ballots should arrive within three or four days, but they’re not due until Nov. 19, so the count won’t be totally complete until then.

State law requires counties to release unofficial results at 8 p.m., 10 p.m. and midnight local time on election night. Most results should be in by then, but if not, counties are also required to report results at 9 a.m. local time the next day and every subsequent hour after that. Larger counties will likely take until Wednesday to finish counting.

Virtually all results are expected to be reported on election night.

Kansas tabulates the vast majority of ballots on election night, although mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day can arrive as late as Nov. 8 and still count.

Counties whose polls close at 6 p.m. Eastern should start releasing results soon thereafter. Election officials estimate that all or nearly all counties will be fully reporting by midnight Eastern.

The first results (likely early and absentee votes) typically drop as soon as polls close, and counting is usually done by 1 a.m. Eastern.

Results will start to be released just after polls close at 8 p.m. Eastern, and the secretary of state’s office expects most, if not all, unofficial results to be available on election night. Municipalities are required to report official results to the secretary of state within two days of the election. However, Maine uses ranked-choice voting, and these results will consist only of voters’ first choices. If no candidate has a majority of the vote in a given race, the state will run ranked-choice tabulations to determine the winner in the week or so after Election Day.

After polls close, most counties will release results from early votes and mail-in votes that arrived before Election Day. Then Election Day votes will be tallied over the course of the rest of the night. Election officials estimate that the election-night count will be done around midnight Eastern. However, three counties (Cecil, Dorchester and Somerset) won’t report any results from mail-in ballots until Nov. 7, and all counties will continue counting later-arriving mail-in ballots until Nov. 15 (the deadline for properly postmarked mail-in ballots to arrive).

Massachusetts is generally slow to count its votes; in 2022, only about half of the vote was known on election night. Tuesday night, Wednesday and Thursday results will consist of Election Day votes, early votes and mail-in ballots received on or before Election Day. Mail-in ballots can arrive as late as Nov. 8 as long as they’re postmarked by Election Day, and those will not be tabulated until 5 p.m. Eastern on Friday. Election officials can also choose to defer counting mail-in ballots that arrive on Election Day itself to this later tabulation date.

Thanks to a new law, most places in Michigan will process absentee ballots before Election Day, which should lead to faster results than in 2020 or 2022. The secretary of state is still cautioning that we won’t get the full picture until Wednesday, but “sooner than the end of the day.” While most localities are expected to finish counting on Tuesday night, others may keep us up quite late: In the August primary, some cities didn’t finish counting until 7 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday. Many of these places say they have fixed these issues for the general (for instance, Detroit expects to finish counting by midnight Eastern), but at least one city — Warren, in Macomb County — is expected to take a while because it chose not to pre-process absentee ballots.

Minnesota usually reports the bulk of its results by late Tuesday or early Wednesday. However, thanks to a new law, the deadline for absentee ballots to arrive is now at the close of polls rather than earlier in the afternoon, which could push the reporting timetable back a bit. But absentees can also be processed earlier, which could, in turn, speed things up.

Mississippi usually takes a while. In 2022, it didn’t hit 90 percent reporting until Wednesday night. This year, the state won’t be 100 percent reporting until at least Nov. 13, which is the deadline for properly postmarked mail-in ballots to arrive and still count. However, very few voters in Mississippi vote by mail, so the vast majority of votes should be in before then.

The state usually begins reporting results between 8 and 9 p.m. Eastern; for most counties, the first results will be absentee ballots. The secretary of state’s office estimates that most results will be in by 11 p.m. or midnight Eastern.

Results will start coming in at 10 p.m. Eastern and proceed slowly from there. In 2022, the state wasn’t at 50 percent reporting until well after midnight Eastern, and in the past three general elections, about 10 percent of the vote was counted after election night.

Results will come in starting at 9 p.m. Eastern. Most counties will report early votes first, followed by Election Day votes, although some will publish them all together. The secretary of state’s office estimates that about 96 percent of the total vote will be counted on election night. The state will report the remaining votes periodically over the next few weeks, with the first update on Friday, Nov. 8.

No results will be reported until the last voter in line has voted, which is usually hours after the official close of polls. (In 2022, it was at 12:42 a.m. Eastern.) At that point, counties release all votes they’ve counted thus far, which is usually a big chunk of the final total. However, subsequent updates come slowly, and a healthy number of ballots will not be counted on election night. Most Nevadans vote by mail, and it takes days to tabulate all those mail-in ballots. Plus, properly postmarked mail-in ballots can arrive as late as Nov. 9 and still count.

In the past, New Hampshire has released initial returns just after 7 p.m. Eastern and continued to report at a steady pace until midnight or 1 a.m. Eastern. Usually about 10 percent of the final vote is left to be counted the next day.

Expect mail-in and early votes to be released first. In 2022, New Jersey counted about three-quarters of its vote on election night, but this year, it could be upward of 90 percent. No matter what, the state won’t be 100 percent reporting until at least Nov. 11, which is the deadline for properly postmarked mail-in ballots to arrive and still count.

Counties usually start reporting results around 9:30 p.m. Eastern. If counties are still counting absentee ballots at 1 a.m. Eastern, they must stop and pick up again the next morning at 11:30 a.m. Eastern. The secretary of state’s office estimates that most unofficial results will be in by 2 a.m. Eastern.

Expect the first wave of results shortly after polls close. The vast majority of ballots are likely to be counted on election night, but it could take a while to project any extremely tight races: Mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day can arrive as late as Nov. 12 and still count.

According to the state Board of Elections, early votes and absentee ballots received before Election Day (which account for a majority of the vote in North Carolina) will be reported first, between 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. Eastern. (These ballots used to be reported right at 7:30 p.m. Eastern, but the state no longer allows early votes to be processed before polls close.) Then, Election Day votes will be added between 8:30 p.m. and 1 a.m. Eastern. This should get the state up to about 98 percent reporting. Provisional ballots, absentee ballots received on Election Day and absentee ballots dropped off outside voters’ home counties in areas affected by Hurricane Helene will be counted over the next 10 days.

First results will drop just after 9 p.m. Eastern. All in-person votes, as well as mail-in ballots received by Election Day, will be counted on election night. However, North Dakota also accepts mail-in ballots that arrive by Nov. 18 as long as they are postmarked by Nov. 4, and these ballots won’t be counted until Nov. 18.

Most counties will release their first batch of votes (early and mail-in ballots) by 8:15 p.m. Eastern. Election Day results will roll in over the course of the next few hours; by midnight Eastern, the count should be mostly complete. However, mail-in ballots postmarked by Nov. 4 will be accepted through Nov. 9, so it may take until then to find out the winner of any super close races.

Initial returns (consisting of early and mail-in ballots) should come in shortly after 8 p.m. Eastern. Based on previous elections, the state Election Board estimates that nearly all ballots will be counted by 12:30-1 a.m. Eastern.

Counties will start posting results shortly after 11 p.m. Eastern; these first reports will account for about half of the total vote. Some counties will report one or two more batches on election night — enough to get the state up to 70-80 percent reporting. However, the rest will take some time to count. Oregon is a vote-by-mail state and accepts ballots that arrive as late as Nov. 12 as long as they’re postmarked by Election Day.

Although we shouldn’t have to wait as long as we did in 2020, election officials are still cautioning that we probably won’t know who won Pennsylvania on election night. Under state law, mail-in ballots cannot be processed until Election Day, preventing counties from getting a head start in counting them. However, once they start counting these ballots, counties aren’t allowed to stop until they’re done. According to an analysis by Votebeat and Spotlight PA, many counties should be able to count all their ballots on election night, but some larger counties could need until Wednesday or Thursday.

Rhode Island counts early and Election Day votes first, followed quickly by most mail-in ballots. First results will post around 8:15 p.m. Eastern, and we should get to 95 percent reporting within a few hours. However, mail-in ballots dropped off at dropboxes won’t be tallied until Wednesday.

According to the state Election Commission, first results (usually early and absentee votes) are normally posted between 7:30 and 8 p.m. Eastern. Results should be more or less complete on election night.

No results will be reported until the last voter has voted — so 9 p.m. Eastern at the earliest, and possibly later if there are a lot of voters waiting in line. South Dakota has historically needed all night to count its votes but should be virtually done counting by the morning.

The secretary of state’s office estimates that the first returns (early votes) will be reported around 8:30 p.m. Eastern and that the state will be at around 95 percent reporting by 11:15 p.m. Eastern.

Counties will start reporting early votes and mail-in ballots that arrive on or before Election Day just after polls close, and because early voting is popular in Texas, this will account for a big chunk of the final vote. Then it’s time to count the Election Day vote; this can take several hours because it takes time for ballots to travel from hundreds of polling places to central counting locations. Counties are required to finish counting the Election Day vote within 24 hours of polls closing. At that point, the count should be nearly complete.

Get ready to wait. First off, Utah doesn’t report any results until the last voter has voted — so initial results could take a while if there are long lines. Then, Utah is a vote-by-mail state, and ballots postmarked by Nov. 4 aren’t due until Nov. 12-19 (the exact deadline varies by county). Historically, between half and two-thirds of the vote gets reported on election night, and then the rest trickles in over the course of the next several days.

Vermont votes by mail, but the state doesn’t accept mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, so we should get virtually all results on election night. The secretary of state’s office expects results to start coming in shortly after 7 p.m. Eastern and to be nearly complete before midnight Eastern.

Virginia counts votes fairly quickly on election night. However, the state won’t reach 100 percent reporting until Nov. 8, which is the deadline for properly postmarked mail-in ballots to arrive.

A little more than half of the total vote will be known very quickly: Election officials estimate that mail-in ballots processed before Election Day will be reported around 11:15-11:20 p.m. Eastern. After that, though, no more results will be reported until Wednesday. Washington is a vote-by-mail state, and properly postmarked ballots can arrive as late as Nov. 26 and still count. Ballots received on or after Nov. 5 will be processed in the days after Election Day. Larger counties will provide daily updates, while smaller ones will update at least once every three days.

Historically, counties have reported initial results by 9:30 p.m. Eastern and are more or less done counting by midnight Eastern. However, West Virginia accepts absentee ballots that arrive up to Nov. 12 as long as they are postmarked by Election Day, and those ballots aren’t counted until Nov. 12. There aren’t many such ballots, but the count won’t be 100 percent complete until they are included.

First results will come in shortly after polls close, and most ballots have historically been counted by 1 a.m. Eastern. However, Wisconsin doesn’t allow election officials to process absentee ballots until Election Day, and jurisdictions that count all their absentees at a central location can’t release any results from absentee ballots until they are all counted. As a result, absentee ballots in those areas are often not reported until quite late. In 2020, this dragged the count on for days, but things weren’t nearly as slow in 2022 because many fewer people voted absentee that year. This year should be closer to 2022 than 2020, but we are still preparing for absentee ballots in at least one major jurisdiction, Milwaukee, to take until the wee hours of the morning.

Counties will begin to report their results shortly after 9 p.m. Eastern. The secretary of state’s office expects that results will be more or less complete around 2 a.m. Eastern.