An Hour-By-Hour Guide To Election Night
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Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druke, and today is the day we have had marked on our calendars for oh so long. It is finally here, November 5th, my birthday, and I am so glad there's nothing else that can distract from my special day. Yeah, we're doing like a rager later, right? You know, uh, uh...

I mean, we have nothing else to do. Nothing else going on. I totally expect it. Literally all of FiveThirtyEight gathered together for this day. For Galen's birthday. We're ordering pizza all together. We're going to be staying late into the night here doing very exciting things. So, yeah, all of that tracks. Sorry. Actually, I'm getting the producers in my ear right now saying that actually today is the...

Tuesday after the first Monday in November in an even numbered year. And I guess. OK, so actually, I guess that means there are two big events happening today, folks. It is my birthday. It is also Election Day 2024.

Democracy is happening. At last check, more than 75 million Americans already voted early, and today, many more millions will join them. I know it's a stressful day for many, but thinking about the tens of millions of people having their say in how we will be governed, it's a lovely thing. It's a beautiful thing. It's almost as nice as a birthday.

We are publishing this episode early Tuesday morning. We'll be back in your feed in the early hours of Wednesday morning. And in those roughly 24 hours ahead, a lot is going to happen. And so on today's show, we are presenting our hour-by-hour guide to election night. As the night rolls on across the battleground states...

what we'll know and when we'll know it, which states count quickly, which states count slower than a sloth at a Wawa the morning after an Eagles game. Pennsylvania, I'm looking at you here. And of course, we're going to talk about counties. I'm talking Bucks. I'm talking Saginaw. I'm talking Maricopa and Washoe and Gwinnett.

We'll talk about the counties whose returns we're watching most closely and what they might tell us. And for all of that, I am joined by senior elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich. Welcome to the podcast, Nathaniel. Howdy, Galen. Happy birthday. Thank you. Also here with us is senior elections analyst Jeffrey Skelly. Welcome to the podcast, Jeff. Thank you, Galen. And happy birthday. I appreciate it. So, you know, I have my own election day routine in this case, which is eating cake, but I

I'm curious, Nathaniel, Jeff, what are your election day routines? Well, ideally sleeping in because God knows election day is more than Tuesday. It's Wednesday and possibly Thursday. Because even if it's an early night, we got the house, we got all kinds of races. And a peek behind the curtain, we are recording this on Monday. But yes, we are pretending that it is in fact election day. So you can hear this in the morning on election day. Nathaniel, what about you?

I don't really think I have any Election Day traditions other than voting, which I did early or rather by mail. If anybody's watching this on video, I am wearing my I voted sticker. I put my ballot in the drop box on Sunday night before I came up here to New York. With that out of the way, really, my Election Day is just sitting around until polls close. One of the 75 plus million Americans. So let's talk a little bit about elections.

state benchmarks. FiveThirtyEight has calculated benchmarks in every state, and you can view them at our website. Jeff, this was a big undertaking, and it is a tool that folks can use to see if Harris or Trump

is on track to win by presenting a benchmark for where they would be at if the race was purely 50-50. How should folks be using this? Right. So, I mean, they should hopefully use it the way I will literally be using it as the results come in on election night, because I created the benchmarks originally for my own use. And then we decided, hey, be cool to share them.

So essentially what I do is I'm looking for counties that in a given state, you know, particularly the swing states, look at counties where you have a fair amount of the vote in, you know, maybe it's 90% of the expected vote, 85%, you know, a lot, like a fair amount.

And see, OK, well, in those counties are Trump or Harris running ahead of where I have estimated the race in that county would have to be for the state to be roughly 50 50. So, you know, in a state like Pennsylvania, we're expecting Harris to easily carry Philadelphia, of course.

But is she only winning it by about 62 percentage points, which is roughly what my benchmark has. So unclear if she's kind of running ahead of where she needs to be or running behind. Or is she ahead by like 65, 66 points there? That might be a sign that she is leading in Pennsylvania.

Or is she only ahead by like 60 or 59 there? Maybe that's a sign Trump is doing better. Now, obviously, you don't want to ever rely on one county as a part of this. But if you're sort of looking at groups of counties that have reported a fair amount of their election results,

And you're consistently seeing, for the most part, one candidate outperforming the benchmarks by, you know, it could be a couple points, could be four points. I mean, it's going to range. It's not going to be perfectly linear where it's exactly, you know, X amount better in every single county. That's not how this works. But if you're seeing a general trend of one candidate tending to do better than that benchmark, then

across multiple counties in the state, especially the ones where there are more votes, that could be a sign that candidate is ahead. So that's how I use them. That's how I think they are most useful for people to use. And I even made them for states that are not going to be competitive. So you can also, maybe if there's a little bit of a surprise happening on election night, maybe that's useful. Or if you're just

a sad Republican in Hawaii wondering what it would take to ever be competitive there in a presidential race, you can look at it and be like, oh, so that's what it would do. Or if you're a Democrat in South Dakota being like, oh, my God, we'd have to do that well in that place where we usually lose by 40. We'd have to only be down 10 to have a shot. Well, it also means that folks can be a little bit of their own sleuths. So as we start getting in

early results in Indiana and Kentucky, even though those are not states that anybody has a real eye on. If you see any places that have close to full results, you can take a look and see who is over or underperforming, understanding that we may not see a nationwide shift in this election. We may see differences from state to state. So there are caveats with all of this. But

I mentioned Kentucky and Indiana, so let's begin the show.

In the 5 and 6 o'clock hours, we get at 5 o'clock our first round of exit polls, and we get at 6 o'clock polls closing in most of Indiana and eastern Kentucky. Is now when I get to do my exit poll rant, Galen? That means that we have very partial, very preliminary sets of data in both two states and in the exit polls. And now, Nathaniel, the floor is yours.

Alright, so I really, really caution against reading anything into those early exit polls or really exit polls later in the evening when of course, you'll have results anyway, and people will be focusing on that. But it's important to know for many reasons. So first of all, those exit polls at five o'clock, they're obviously preliminary, there are still

millions of people probably yet to vote, especially on the West Coast. There are hours and hours of voting time left. So it is an incomplete picture of the electorate. In addition, the way that exit polls work is that because they're basically just another poll, they are a high quality poll to be sure, but they are just another poll. They are not kind of what they were 20 years ago, where it's people standing outside polling places with clipboards. There is still some of that. But because so many people do vote early and

by mail nowadays, they have to make it more like a traditional poll where they call people on the phone and things like that and supplement that with the kind of in-person research that they do. So essentially, it is a poll. It is a high quality poll, but it's not going to be it's not gospel. It's not like they have truly talked to everybody exiting polling places all across the country and submitting their ballots and totaled up the votes. Secondly, the

The results of the exit poll later on after Election Day, days later, are weighted to the final results of the election in order to give us a picture demographically of what happened, of kind of what percentage of the electorate was Latino, how women voted, things like that. At five o'clock.

They are obviously not weighted to that yet. And so they can be fairly off the mark. They just are kind of guessing at what the final composition of the electorate is going to be. And so those numbers that you see at five o'clock will shift perhaps drastically between

that point and when they are final. And so I really caution people. You've seen this in 2004, famously, maybe I'm doubting myself, people call John Kerry Mr. President based on the results of the early exit polls. Obviously, that did not work out for him. So I really do not recommend that people look into those too much. And frankly, at that point, I would just recommend waiting a few hours and then you'll get concrete results anyway.

It happened in 2016 as well. The early exit polls in 2016 showed exactly what the polls leading up to Election Day showed. OK, so those are your caveats for the exit polls.

Indiana and Eastern Kentucky, there's always a moment early on on election night where like Wolf Blitzer is zooming in on a county in Eastern Kentucky or Indiana that has reported four percent of its results. And we're trying to say something about the election. And Lord knows I have sympathy because we are all watching, looking for something and that something is just so inadequate. But do we want to say anything?

anything about either of those two poll closures before we move on to seven o'clock. Look, by God, Brethak County in eastern Kentucky with all of its 5000, 6000 votes, that's a is a real bellwether. No, no, I think actually, if anything, a good reminder of this was the twenty eighteen midterms when the the sixth district in Kentucky was considered competitive. It was

Clear pretty early on that Amy McGrath, who people have heard her name a lot in the years since, was trailing in that competitive congressional district. And that suggested initially that maybe Republicans were not going to have as bad a night as people thought.

on the House side in the 2018 midterms, well, lo and behold, that election was not indicative of how things were going. So I think the way I would look at it is I'm going to be glancing at the results in those places. And if we have a fair amount of the vote in from some of them,

early on in the night. I mean, a lot of these places don't have a ton of votes, but a lot of them are very rural, especially in Eastern Kentucky. So that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be counting super fast. But if they've got a fair amount of the vote in from those places and I'm seeing, you know, it's looking a lot like 2020, I'm probably not going to have much of a takeaway. You know, I guess if Harris were doing better, that would be interesting. If Trump is doing better than he did in 2020, then

That also could be interesting, but I think it's definitely a situation of you want to wait and get some confirmation from other places. Yeah. And I think it's worth remembering that a lot of these places, especially like in Eastern Kentucky, right, these are areas with a lot of

working class white voters who have zoomed toward Donald Trump in the year since 2016. If they continue to zoom, it wouldn't be that surprising. So I wouldn't be shocked to see Trump do better than he did in 2020 in some of those areas. Similarly, I think one bellwether that some people are looking at is Hamilton County in Indiana, which

is a suburban area of Indianapolis, and maybe Harris is going to do better there than Biden did in 2020, which would be a good sign for her, obviously, in terms of other suburban areas. But also at the same time, it's not necessarily going to be like a uniform shift if that county moves 10 points toward Harris or something like that. So caution is definitely warranted. The other thing I would say, though, is that Indiana itself is inherently interesting because there

is a potentially competitive gubernatorial race there. That's a race that actually has barely been pulled in the last month, but a lot of money has been spent in those campaigns. And it seems like the parties are seeing something there that maybe we are kind of in the dark about. So I'm going to be watching that.

But in terms of the presidential race, I completely agree with Jeffrey. To Jeffrey's point about 2018 having some false flags early on in the evening, let's move on to 7 p.m. Eastern, which is when polls close in Florida and then also in the battleground state of Georgia. So, of course, in 2018, Republicans did a bit better in Florida than expected, but that didn't end up being a harbinger of what was to come across the rest of

But what is unique about Florida is that it has some of the fastest vote counting in the country, including a law that requires all early and mail-in ballots be reported within 30 minutes of polls closing. In 2020, some 90% of votes cast had been counted by 9 p.m. So in all likelihood, we will have a sense of what happened here pretty early on in Florida.

Now, to be clear, Trump is polling more than six points ahead in Florida, according to our average. You never know, but unless there's some significant polling error, it's not going to be a big deal.

It's not necessarily going to be close. Nonetheless, what are we going to be watching in Florida as the results come in, perhaps based on that benchmark tracker you just mentioned, Jeffrey? Yeah, I mean, I think there's got to be interest in places like Miami-Dade County, the southern part of the state. I mean, that was a place where Trump made noticeable gains in 2020 compared to where he was in 2016. And, you know, are there continued shifts there?

in a place that has a large Latino population. Also, you know, some of the some of the more bellwethery. Well, traditionally, at one time, bellwethery counties around Tampa, like Pinellas County, for instance. So, you know, those are places you'll be watching and be curious to see if, you know, is Harris doing worse than Biden in those places? Because, look,

National polling wise, at least relative to what we saw in the 2020 election result, the national polling race looks closer. And that would seemingly be indicative of an environment where maybe Florida is not as close as it was in the 2020 election, but are some places that Harris needs to do relatively well in.

writ large around the country, places more like a place like a Pinellas County, suburban and part of Tampa. Yeah. And in Orange and Osceola counties in Central Florida, which is where a lot of the Puerto Rican population lives. And I think I'll be looking at that to see whether there's any kind of noticeable impact of the Puerto Rico comments from the other day. So the main battleground state that we will be watching in the 7 p.m. hour is... Is Vermont. No. Georgia. Georgia.

Polls in Georgia close at 7 and we should start getting returns relatively quickly. In 2022, Georgia had about half of its ballots counted by 9 p.m. This year, Georgia's secretary of state estimates that they will reach 90 percent reporting by 1030 p.m. Eastern. But as we know that this process can stretch out if the vote is especially close.

Trump won the state in 2016. Biden won it in 2020. Our average shows Trump with a little over a point lead there at the moment. So what county should we be watching for an early-ish read on the night, Jeffrey?

Well, you know, I will say one of the challenges in the 2020 election is that it took a little while to get more complete data from the counties in the Atlanta metro area. And that, of course, is the bluest part of the state. Atlanta is the key cog in the machine for for Kamala Harris to win. She needs she needs to run up the score there. So for Harris, you know, it's, say, the two counties where the city of Atlanta is.

And its immediate environments are like Fulton and DeKalb.

Then some of the suburban counties that have been shifting blue, like Gwinnett and Cobb, just north of Atlanta. So a ton of the vote is going to be in those places. And so I think those are interesting. I also think it's interesting to look even at places like Chatham, which is where Savannah is down in the southeast corner of the state. We saw some campaigning down there in a way that I think was not

typical in terms of campaign visits by Harrison Trump. The thing with a place like Georgia is that we know that the Atlanta metro area is so pivotal. It's a huge part of this, like, I think 60 percent of the vote roughly in all the counties in the Atlanta metro area in Georgia. And so then it's sort of a question of, OK, are there these red counties in the Atlanta metro area like a Forsyth County that

Yeah.

Or does it not? Does Trump actually gain background there? And then in some of the really rural counties with small populations, but maybe have a sizable African-American population, is Harris sort of holding up in those places that are little blue dots around the state of Georgia? So it's kind of a mixed bag. Obviously, it's really easy to focus on the Atlanta area counties, though.

The clock keeps ticking, and now we are headed towards the 8 o'clock hour, although I should say polls close in North Carolina at 730. So by 8 o'clock, we should have some early signs of what's going on there and that it

Eight o'clock, we have polls close in Michigan and Pennsylvania. So let's start in North Carolina and then we'll get to the Midwest. And we're expecting two main waves in North Carolina. First, starting at 730, we'll get early voting results as they're tabulated. Then starting at 830, we'll start getting tallies of votes cast on election day.

day. Right now, our polling average has Trump up one point in North Carolina. Jeffrey, what counties are we watching there? Well, I mean, again, it's easy to point to the largest counties, you know, the places where the most people live. So Wake County, where Raleigh is in the eastern part of the state, is a big one. It's one that has trended, continued to trend more and more Democratic. And, you know, it's a place where, I mean, I think if you're Harris, you want to be winning

65, even more percent of the vote in a place like that. But the really interesting thing with North Carolina is that if you look at how it has shifted over the last two decades in terms of the county level vote, the metro areas, so like the Research Triangle where Raleigh and Durham are and Charlotte down in Mecklenburg County in the southwest corner of the state, those places have gotten a lot bluer.

But at the same time, the areas outside of them have gotten a lot redder. And so there's been this very interesting sort of tradeoff going on. And so North Carolina on the whole has remained very slightly to the right of the country consistently in all these presidential elections, especially 08 present. When Obama carried it in 08 narrowly, it was still slightly to the right of the country. And so it's close every time. But the suburbs and exurbs aren't getting quite as blue as we've seen in other places. So I think

It's in part a question of you could even look at some of the sort of rural counties in eastern North Carolina where you do have some sizable African-American populations or rural counties in the western part of the state that are a lot wider, more Appalachia and be like, OK.

We expect Harris maybe to be losing, especially those ones out in the West. But is she losing by more than Biden was losing by while potentially gaining in places like Wake County, where Raleigh is? This tradeoff that's been going on there, which has continued to work to the GOP's advantage, is something that I'm going to be watching very closely. And I think it's also like the counties just outside of those big metro counties that are more suburban, exurban counties.

Do they start to trend a little bluer in a way that we've seen in other states because many of these places are more highly educated?

But it's not quite happened in North Carolina the way we've seen in some other spots. So that's what I'll be watching. Yeah. One broader thing that I would also say about North Carolina and Georgia and a lot of states probably is that you're likely to see some version of what we saw in 2020, which are these like red or blue shifts in the state. So, for example, in Georgia and North Carolina, those first votes to report that will have

and right after polls close are going to be early and absentee votes, which are likely going to be pretty good for Harris. Now, basically, the divides that we're seeing by vote method aren't as severe as they were in 2020. You are seeing a lot more Republicans cast their votes early this year, so it won't be quite as bad. But I do still suspect that

on the whole, those early votes will be more Democratic than the overall state. So when those come in in North Carolina and in Georgia, just bear that in mind. Then, of course, bear in mind that as Election Day votes are counted, which are likely to be pretty Republican, things will drift toward Trump. But then again, at the end of the night or perhaps in the days following, you might see things go back toward

toward Harris because those states count. Basically, what happens is that the absentee votes that are like received and processed before Election Day get counted first, but the ones that are received and processed on Election Day itself get counted last. And so the last votes to count are going to be absentee ballots again. So it's just worth noting for readers and I think people who were around in 2020 remember this. The vote totals will shift because of the type of vote that is reporting at different points in the night.

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All right, so we have gotten our first picture of the election from largely the southeast. And if somebody is running away with the election, we may already know it by now. But of course, eight o'clock is when we start getting poll closures in the upper Midwest region.

which is going to be probably pivotal, potentially pivotal in this election. It all depends on how close it is and whether we are watching county by county and benchmarks will also probably depend on how close it is. But polls close in most of Michigan at 8 p.m. Eastern. Shout out to the four counties in the Upper Peninsula on Central Time that close an hour later.

A new law lets election officials count early voting ballots before polls close in Michigan. So that should lead to faster results. But Michigan's secretary of state still says to not expect full results before Wednesday. On average, Harris leads in Michigan, according to FiveThirtyEight, by nine tenths of a percentage point. Of course, this is all just very, very close. Nathaniel, what should we be watching for in Michigan? Yeah.

Yeah, so basically the most important county in Michigan is Wayne County, where Detroit is. That accounts for about 16% of the vote. And obviously it's a very blue county and it's going to be very important for Harris. It may also be one of the last ones to report on the night. So this is actually...

kind of interesting. So you mentioned that there's this new law that allows Michigan to pre-process its absentee ballots, which will allow for a faster count. In 2020, folks remember that in a lot of these Midwestern states, these bigger cities kind of came in last. And Wayne County says this year it's going to pre-process its absentee ballots, and it's expecting to report by a

reasonable hour on Tuesday night. But in the primary, they still had some technical issues that kept them from reporting all their results until about 7 a.m. the following morning. So I think it's still TBD about whether we are going to be waiting up late on a place like Wayne County. And obviously, because so many of the Democratic votes in Michigan come from Wayne and Detroit, I don't think the state is necessarily going to be callable until unless there's a really

strong landslide for one candidate. Other places that are worth noting, I think, are the suburban counties around Detroit, Oakland and Macomb counties. Macomb County is another. There's a township

town there, Warren, that is not going to be pre-processing its absentee ballots. So I think you should expect to wait for results there a fair amount. I guess honorable mention also to Kent County, which is where Grand Rapids is, which is this historically Republican area that has been moving toward Democrats recently. It's kind of a swing county. I'm not sure how good of a bellwether it's going to be because of that kind of unique... It's like

It's like basically a county full of Mitt Romneys. Peter Meyer is from there. If people remember, like a lot of kind of old school Republicans who are now Democrats, basically. The other battleground, of course, that closes at 8 p.m. is Pennsylvania. And that is the most likely tipping point state-wide.

In 2020, it was pretty slow to count its ballots. If folks remember that year, just 45% of votes cast were reported by midnight, and it was Pennsylvania that we were waiting for until Saturday morning after Election Day.

Election officials there also say things will be quicker this time around, but in some bigger counties, counting could stretch into Wednesday or even Thursday. By state law, officials must wait until 7 a.m. on Election Day to begin processing mail ballots. So unlike Michigan, they are not going to have more advanced time to tally those up. Our polling average has Trump ahead by one-tenth of a percentage point in Pennsylvania as of the time that we are recording this. So virtual tie again.

Now, what are we watching for in Pennsylvania, which feels like a sea of notable counties, Nathaniel? Yeah, it really is. I would say, you know, obviously the Philadelphia area and the Pittsburgh area are really important. Pittsburgh is basically just Allegheny County. That's where most of the suburbs of Pittsburgh are, as well as the city itself. So that's an important one to keep in mind. That's about 10 percent of the statewide vote.

Philadelphia County itself, also about 10% of the statewide vote, very, very blue. So that's like mostly urban areas. And then the color counties around Philadelphia, so places like Montgomery, Bucks, Chester, Delaware counties, those are places that have moved toward Democrats in the Trump era. And obviously, Harris will hope to continue that strength there. Of the three Midwestern states, they're all going to be kind of like medium paced in counting. And I think we're looking at like

early Wednesday for projections there, knock on wood. Again, this is all dependent on whether the race is even callable on election night or kind of that week as opposed to like later, weeks later because of a recount or something like that. But Pennsylvania is the one where I think there is some concern still that places like Philadelphia will be pretty slow to count. We may not be done counting until well into the day on Wednesday or on Thursday. So just to be aware of that, this is why Donald Trump,

complains about bad things happening in Philadelphia, they tend to be the last places to continue to add ballots. And of course, because it's Philadelphia, a lot of those ballots are for Democrats. There's nothing nefarious about this, folks. Don't worry. It's just it takes a long time to count ballots in what is one of the largest cities in the country.

In terms of bellwether areas to watch, I would say Erie County in the northwestern corner of the state where Erie, Pennsylvania is, and then also Northampton County on the New Jersey border. That's where Easton is, if folks are familiar with that. It's kind of near the Allentown area. Those are kind of two counties that I think a lot of people are watching to be like, ooh, if somebody, Harris wins these counties, then it's a good sign for her statewide.

Yeah, for what it's worth, my benchmark calculation in Erie is essentially a tie. A 50-50 race in Pennsylvania, you expect Erie County in the northwest corner of the state to be essentially tied. If somebody's ahead there, that could be a good sign. It has a reputation as a bellwether. Again, never go off of one county.

But it is something worth watching along with what's going on in the major metropolitan areas. So now we have reached nine o'clock Eastern, which is when polls close in Wisconsin. And that marks the last of the three northern battleground states to close their polls.

We expect the first batch of results in Wisconsin shortly after polls close and for most of the results to be reported by 1 a.m. Eastern. Getting the full results out of a place like Milwaukee could take longer. Officials there won't report the tally of absentee ballots until all of them are counted, and that likely won't be until after midnight. Yeah. Folks may remember 2020 staying up super late. It was like, what was it, 3 o'clock in the morning where we got that final batch and then all

And all of a sudden, the election became a lot clearer. I think it was like 5 a.m. Eastern in 2020 for Milwaukee. And yeah, just to tap people's expectations, I think we're looking at like 3 or 4 a.m. Eastern for Milwaukee absentees this year. So that is going to take a while. But the good news is that once we get that batch of votes, that'll...

tell us a lot because I think that'll be just about the last vote to be counted in Wisconsin. Obviously, there are provisional ballots and things that kind of need to be administratively sorted through afterward. But in terms of the bulk of things, we'll know hopefully by 4 a.m. Eastern. And as a former Wisconsin resident myself, I'll just say, I mean, part of what we're going to be watching

on election night tonight is margin. Also, what we're going to be watching is turnout numbers, just like how many voters are showing up in some of these redder or bluer parts of the country. And so, you know, in recent years, we've just seen like massive turnout and massive margins for Democrats in places like Dane County, which is the seat of Madison, Wisconsin, while we've seen Republicans really open up their

lead in more rural places and up or closer to Green Bay. Wisconsin is a very white state. The electorate will be more than 80 percent white. And so if some of the trends that we've seen about white voters shifting towards Democrats this cycle hold up, I think this is a place where we are definitely going to see it. If we're talking about some of those like college educated white voters who have shifted towards the left, I

We're looking at Ozaukee County in particular. I know everyone talks about Waukesha. That's more of a Republican stronghold, and that will be a good sort of indicator of how well Republicans are doing with their own sort of keeping up the margins, keeping up turnout. Ozaukee County has the highest percentage of white college educated voters in

in the state outside of Dane County. And while that used to be, like you mentioned, those Mitt Romney voters, they have become increasingly allergic to Trump. I was up there in August of last year around the Republican debate, and I can't tell you how many people I met who were supporting Nikki Haley. We're going to be watching Green Bay to see how Trump is doing. We're going to be watching Dane and Ozaki. Ozaki may still vote Republican, to be clear, in this election, but if it's getting anywhere close to

even that is a good sign for Harris. I want to move on, though, to Arizona because polls also close there at 9 p.m. Eastern, although we likely won't get any results until Tuesday.

Right, Nathaniel? So, yeah, according to Arizona law, you basically can't release election results until one hour after polls close. So that'll be 10 p.m. Eastern. Yes. And in fact, 10 p.m. Eastern is also when polls close in Nevada. So let's talk about Nevada and Arizona today.

together, how quickly should we be expecting results in both of those states? Yeah, I mean, Nevada is even worse because they don't allow any results to be released statewide until every voter in line has voted, which in a high turnout election can be multiple hours. So in 2022, we didn't see the first votes there until 1241 a.m. Eastern Time. So basically, we should be

plan to wait a long time in Nevada and in Arizona, not only on election night, but also kind of over the successive days. Because the other thing is that both of those states vote predominantly by mail. And as a result, mail ballots just take longer to count and to process than in-person votes. And so it is just going to take multiple days to count in these states. That's just kind of the way that it is. In both states, you are going to see hopefully regular updates, you know, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday,

And if the presidential election comes down to those states, which, you know, hopefully it won't, hopefully we will be able to get to 270 from the other five swing states. But if it does, then I think we are going to be in for another repeat of the 2020 situation where, of course, the race wasn't called until late in the week.

For what it's worth, neither of those states is particularly likely to be the tipping point state that gives somebody 270 electoral votes right now in our forecast. They have like a combined roughly one in 10 shot between the two of them combined. But of course, you know, it'll be our luck that we'll hit one of those cases. But crossing our fingers that they won't leave us hanging for too long.

Yeah. And what's also sort of notable about Arizona and Nevada is they are highly urbanized. So by far, most of the population lives in, you know, either the Las Vegas or Phoenix area in Nevada. Also, of course, Reno. The question of which counties are we watching is, I guess, a straightforward one because it's the all encompassed ones almost. But are there just any trends that you're looking for either in the Las Vegas or Phoenix area?

Yeah. So, I mean, if you're thinking about Arizona, a little over 60 percent of the vote is going to come from Maricopa County, which is where Phoenix and most of its suburbs and exurbs are. About 15 percent of the vote will probably come from Pima County, which is where Tucson is. So right there, you're talking about three fourths of the vote in the state. Maricopa.

tends to be a bellwether because there's just so many votes there. If you narrowly carry it, you tend to narrowly carry the state. And that's what happened for Biden in 2020. Trump narrowly carried it in 2016 and carried the state.

In Nevada, it's actually even more extreme. Clark County is nearly 70 percent. That's where Vegas and its environments are. And then Wash U County, which is where Reno is, is about 17, 18 percent of the vote, probably. You know, between those two, you're talking about you're getting up close to 90 percent of the vote between those two. So those are obviously the big places to watch in those states.

All right. So as we've been talking, the clock has been ticking and we've now reached 11 o'clock and there are no more battleground state polls left to close. We are at this point just going to be watching the results come in across the country. Although I should be fair to the West Coast at 11 o'clock, polls along the West Coast will close. If passed as prologue, we could be counting ballots in California for a week, if not

weeks after election day. So we'll have to hold our horses there. And then at midnight, polls will close in Alaska and Hawaii. And Alaska could be interesting. Who knows? But I do want to take stock for a second and just talk about where we might be in the 11 o'clock hour.

Folks, remember that in 2020, it took four days to call this race. In 2016, it took until half past two in the morning on election night, so early Wednesday morning. But before that...

In both 2012 and 2008, the race was over in the 11 o'clock hour. We got an AP call in 2012 at 11.38 p.m., and in 2008, it was just about 11 p.m. So what are we thinking about as we are in this 11 o'clock hour? Look, the 2020 experience looms so large for all of us because it was such an extended election week. It truly was.

But I think there is a better chance that we will be a lot closer to being able to say something

affirmative, even if we don't really know for sure and nothing is finalized or obviously I just also want to make it clear election results are not certified and final until roughly a month after the election in all states. So like when we're talking about calling or projecting, this is based on the results that we're seeing. But none of this is certified and final in states until sometime later. So it's just, you know, what we know on election night and the immediate aftermath of the election is

But nonetheless, I do think there is a much better chance this time around of of maybe knowing by some time on Wednesday. Can't rule out Tuesday late either, just depending on how things are going. We've we've talked about how there's a polling error in one direction of some significance. I mean, it doesn't even have to be that significant. It'd be just a couple of points in one direction or the other. It might be enough.

to provide a bit more clarity based on the results we're seeing. I'm cautiously optimistic that it is not going to be a repeat of 2020 and that we are going to have

clarity a bit sooner, but it may still be Wednesday or even Thursday. People should be prepared for that. And if you have people making claims otherwise in the face of data that shows that we don't know what's happening, those people may not be acting in good faith. In fact, there's a very good chance they're not acting in good faith when they make those claims. So to keep that in mind as well.

Yeah. So I really recommend we have an interactive on our website showing basically when to expect the results to come in in every state and also how much of the vote was reporting at X point in the night in 2022. And if you look at 11 p.m. Eastern in 2022, you see that most of the votes were counted in North Carolina and Georgia. I think that'll be the case again. But a healthy chunk of the votes in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were not

counted, but also a healthy chunk were. So I think we'll have a general sense of those states by 11 o'clock. But if they're close, as they're expected to be, I don't think we'll be able to make a projection. And then in Arizona and Nevada, there's still a lot that we'll be missing at that point. I recommend that people take a look at that interactive that we have in order to really internalize the idea that we could be waiting a while. And also, it's worth noting, we're talking about the presidential race naturally because it gets the most attention. But

With the lengthy counts in places like California, Washington State, Alaska being so late in potentially using ranked choice voting to determine the outcome for its lone House seat.

Things like the race for the U.S. House of Representatives, that could take actually a lot longer to figure out than the presidential race, just because California is not competitive for the presidency. But it has a bunch of competitive House races, for instance, that could come down to the wire and take a while to figure out. So that's another thing worth keeping in mind.

Yeah, I should say here that at some point in this TikTok of the evening, we will all sit down and record a podcast and we will have so much more to say about the election at that point in time. Lessons learned, trends that were we thought would happen and then didn't or ones that came out of the blue, how turnout affected elections.

all of that, you know, it seems like so much of the trends that we're seeing in the data also depend on turnout. Are these low propensity voters who seem to be shifting towards Trump actually turning out on election day? So we're going to have a lot to go through once we have all of that real data. But before we say goodbye until late night Tuesday, do you have any closing thoughts?

I would just encourage everybody to tune in with our live blog. It is already going by the time this podcast comes out. We launched at 6 a.m. bright and early on Tuesday, and it will continue in all likelihood for days, regardless of whether we get a winner or not. So yeah, please check us out there. We will be following the returns blow by blow. All right. We will be back with you soon enough. We're going to leave it there for now. Thank you, Nathaniel and Jeff.

Thanks so much, Galen. Thanks, Galen. My name is Galen Druk. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Chertavian, and our intern is Jayla Everett. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening, and we will see you soon.