I could have put this in Elections but this isn’t a question about politics etc but just a simple factual question. By about when is the result usually apparent? I guess if it’s extremely close it could take a while but assuming that whoever wins does so by a fair margin, about when has counting progressed far enough to call it? What day and hour?
I ask because my neighbors are having a US election celebration (or wake depending on who wins). But I’m wondering if it will be a long vigil or over by a reasonable hour, Brisbane time.
It depends on how close the election is. If it’s a landslide, the results should be known by midnight, Eastern time. If it’s very close, it could take until the middle of the next day before they’re known. The electoral college meets in December to cast their official ballots, but it’s a bit of an anticlimax.
It varies a lot. The general principle is that polls close at varying times in the various states, with the polls in the west closing later due to being in later time zones. The news organizations generally avoid “calling” states for a candidate until the polls in that state have closed. You can see when the various states close their polls at this link from the Green Papers; most of the states will have closed their polls by 11 PM on November 8 (1 PM on Nov. 9 in Brisbane.) The last time an election was sufficiently lopsided to be called before the polls closed in California was 1988, and I doubt that it will be decided before this time.
The last four elections have been called as follows:
[ul][li]2012: The election was called at 11:14 PM EST (1:14 PM in Brisbane), when Ohio was put into Obama’s column. [] 2008: The election was called for Obama immediately after the polls closed on the west coast.[]2004: In an extremely close election, counting dragged on in a few states well into the next day. Kerry finally conceded at 11 AM on Wednesday (this would have been 1 AM Thursday in Brisbane.)[*]2000: This was the infamous Bush v. Gore mess, which was not resolved until December.[/ul][/li]Given the state of the recent polling, my guess is that we’re somewhere between a 2004 and a 2012 election in terms of the margin of the eventual winner. But that’s part of the fun (?) of election nights: they’re not always predictable.
The 1960 election was not known until the next day. The 1964 election was really known before the polls closed.
Don’t pay any attention to Dixville Notch. They voted 9-0 for Nixon in 1960 and 8-1 for Goldwater in 1964. Then they voted 8-4 for Hubert Ho Hum over Nixon in 1968. Go figure. See Dixville Notch, New Hampshire - Wikipedia for the historical details.
The party starts at 6.30pm Brisbane time on the 9th which is 4.30 am on the 9th EST. So that means the result may well be completely clear before the party even starts, but there is some chance it will still be undecided.
I don’t think that will be the case this year. Let’s face facts; the results of this election will be challenged in court. This contest isn’t going to be over until December 19.
The tv networks might declare the election one minute after the polls close in the eastern time zone states. If one candidate has a heavy lead in their exit polls in all the swing states, it’s over. That’s how they do things nowadays. There isn’t even a law prohibiting them from declaring it at three oclock in the afternoon, when they see their exit polls, thanks to the First Amendment, but as a gesture of apparent fairness, they wait until the clock strikes.
Even if the exit polls are relatively close there may be some of the media that declare a winner. This happenedin the Bush v Gore race in 2000.
It should be noted that 7:50pm EST when NBC declared Florida for Gore the polls had not even closed in the western panhandle of that state. The guideline in use was they felt they could declare a winner for a state once 75% of the polls in that state had closed.
After Bush/Gore they wait now. For example, they waited until the west coast closed to call for Obama in 2008, even though it was clear he would win. No one wants to screw up anymore.
It depends on what you mean by “known”. If you mean that one candidate has enough to win entirely from states where voting has completely finished, that won’t be until the polls close in California, barring some unimaginable landslide scenario. But everyone knows that Clinton is going to win California. The real action is in a handful of swing states, which are mostly (but not all) out East. And how early it’ll be known depends on how those early states break.
If, for instance, Clinton wins North Carolina, it’s over: Theoretically, if she won North Carolina but lost all the rest of the swing states, she’d still lose, but that’d be extraordinarily unlikely, since most of them are polling bluer than North Carolina is, and any overall shift that resulted in her losing would almost certainly start with North Carolina.
On the other hand, even if Clinton loses North Carolina, the odds are still in her favor. So we’d need to wait for Ohio, and Florida, and maybe even for Colorado and Nevada.
And then, of course, there’s the possibility that some key states are so close that they can’t be called right away, like Florida in 2000. Clinton’s apparent lead is strong enough that the race can probably be decided even with any one state up in the air, but it’s not a given.
Assuming that all states can be called as soon as voting closes in them, it’s going to be de facto known when all of the Mountain Time (Greenwich +7) states close, at the latest. All of the Pacific Time states and Hawaii are safe Clinton, and while Alaska might conceivably go Clinton, there’s no way it’s the one that’ll put her over the top (i.e., the only scenarios where she wins Alaska are the sorts of scenarios where she’s already run the list of the conventional swing states).
It may be “known” but it won’t be announced until the polls on the West Coast close at 7:00 p.m. local time, 10:00 p.m. Eastern time (Noon in Brisbane, I guess.) The networks caught so much grief in the past for calling the Presidential election before polls had closed in the west that they will stall even if the result is clear.
However, if the networks start calling the eastern battleground states (Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania) as soon as their polls close (starting at 7:00 p.m. Eastern) we can probably expect an early night.
Mitt Romney had the decency to concede when it was clear it was a loss. Trump is not going to do that. Every last absentee ballot in every West coast state is going to be counted. He still won’t concede, and he may challenge in court, but the courts can refuse to hear the case. He can be told that refusals to concede mean nothing, he lost, get over it.
However, it may depend on how close some states are. If, for example, it’s a very close election, and the votes of one state could change the outcome, and that state was very close, he may ask for a recount. If it’s close, but there is no single state that could change things, and also happens to be very close, it may be tough to decide where to go for a recount. Of course, Clinton could always retaliate with a call for a recount in a state that was 50% Trump, 49% Clinton, 1% Other.
If it would take a recount in six different states, and all those recounts to overturn the results, I’m not really sure what would happen. State laws vary on denying recounts. But that’s wild speculation. I doubt that could possibly happen-- that there would be six close but Democratic states with the cumulative electoral votes to change the outcome.
The networks caught a lot of flak for declaring early also because it tends to depress voter turn-out in the West. If they’ve already called it before someone votes after work in California, they often just skip voting altogether. This can have a large impact on local and state elections, so early calling is discouraged.
North Carolina closes its polls at 0030. If it goes for Hillary — as is likely given current polling — pop the champagne! Everything is probably going to be all right. Ohio also closes at 0030. If she gets it too, we’re looking at near-Landslide.
(Or as “all-right” as can be expected, given that Hillary will be mistreated from the beginning by a GOP House and about 50 GOP Senators. If you think the vile treatment of Obama was bad, you’ve seen nothing yet. Health care reform?? I think Hillary may spend most of her time being deposed at impeachment hearings.)
When will Florida results be announced? Most of the state closes its polls at 0000 UTC. Again, if Hillary takes this state pop the champagne.
If Trump wins NC, OH and FL, the big event will come at 0100 UTC when results are announced for Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. If Trump gets PA it’s all over but there’s still some hope if he gets just NH. If Hillary wins both with respectable margins of victory, pop the champagne.
If Hillary loses NH or if PA is close, we’re in for a grueling night. Put the champagne back in the cellar. Open a bottle of the hard stuff.
Polls in CA, OR, and WA close at 8 PM local time — take a look at the link to the “Green Papers” website I posted above. So it’d be an hour later than this.
At 0000 UTC Virginia will present. If Trump actually wins Virginia you can just go slit your wrists, but otherwise the vote percentages in Virginia might provide a barometer for states like Wisconsin and Colorado. I suppose Nate Silver or one of those guys have it calibrated well enough to predict the electoral college from just Virginia’s early results.