Florida actually straddles two time zones, and it seems our Sec of State or whatever has to remind the news organizations every election not to call Florida until 8pm Eastern.
What you’re looking for is electoral votes. It takes 270 to win a presidential election, and each state has a different amount of electoral votes depending on population. California has a butt-load of electoral votes, so if the race is close, you may not get a winner until 3 hours in, when the polls in California close.
It’s not all that different from election results in Australia (where Punintentional seems to come from). If the election results are clear enough, the result will be known within a few hours of the close of the last polling stations. If they are close – and they have been pretty close in the last two elections – then it might take some weeks for the result to become clear. And currently the polls are showing the two main candidates as being close enough that it might come down to a few hundred votes in a state like Ohio or Virginia. These things are really not all that easy to predict.
Sounds pretty accurate to me.
Unofficial results of popular vote: 0-3 hours from when the final polls close (but remember that due to the different time zones of the U.S.A., the polls in the various states close at different times).
Official results of popular vote: 12+ hours from when the polls close. (Same caveat as above.)
Official results of the Electoral College vote: On January 6, 2009, when a Joint Session of Congress meets in the House, and the Elector votes are counted and declared.
Unless they’re too close to call, as they were in three states in 2000: Florida, New Mexico, and Oregon.
Even if some states are too close to call, the election as a whole might still be callable, depending on how many electoral votes those states have, and how all the other states go.
One issue that can keep people up late is that, when polling gets held up, it usually gets held up in the cities. And, in many states, the city vote is what’ll determine the state. For example, back in the Democratic primaries, it appeared that Clinton had won Missouri based on early returns until the votes finally started coming in from St. Louis (largest city in the state). At about 1am, the state was finally called for Obama. Polling snafus in Gary, Indiana kept the state of Indiana a nail-biter until the late hours as well, although eventually the state went to Clinton by a slim margin.
In a state such as Missouri where the “heartland” portion is generally Republican and the urban population generally Democratic, late returns from the urban centers can keep it a toss-up until late in the evening.
Just a caveat, since nobody else has posted it yet: Even when the press calls the election, they don’t always get it right. In case anyone isn’t familiar with that picture, the fellow holding the newpaper is Harry S Truman, the 33rd president of the United States.
That was before modern polling. From what I remember, there were no major polls taken in the last few days of the campaign, partly because polling was expensive, and partly because most people didn’t think there was a need, and partly because polling simply wasn’t a big deal back then as it is today.
It’s now known that a huge percent of people make up their minds at the last minute. I believe the figure in the 2004 election was 24% making up their minds in the last month.
Polling had largely been discredited since the infamous Liberty Digest poll of 1936 that called the election for Landon over Roosevelt. That 1948 election didn’t help public confidence, but it showed polling agencies what was wrong with their methods, allowing the enormous improvement in polling accuracy we’ve seen since.
You can’t compare 1948 to today any more than you can the 1916 election in which Wilson went to bed thinking he had lost California but turned out to have won the state and retained the presidency. (Which, BTW, the Liberty Digest poll had correctly forecast, along with the 1920, 1924, 1928, and 1932 elections.)
Today the press knows it can’t call elections that are extremely close. The press didn’t call the 2000 election until they thought the results were in, and quickly backed off when they found out that nobody knew the numbers for sure. Pollsters don’t call elections today either. They know that their results are snapshots in time and have uncertainties that swamp closeness. Calling elections, except for blowouts, is a artifact of the past.
Usually California isn’t in contention, and it’s taken for granted that for president (and I assume that’s your main interest) the Democrat will take the state.
I’d tune in at 8:00pm EST, and check various news networks that are monitoring exit polls. What they’ll do is “call” states as their polls close and they feel pretty sure about who won that state. They’ll focus on the “swing states.” In between “calls” they’ll also talk about their exit polling about Senate and House races, as well as governors.
None of this is official, and they can make bad calls. For president, however, if it’s not really close and there aren’t any contested “results,” one of the two presidential candidates usually concedes sometime the next morning.
You should have something else to do from 8:00pm to 1:00am, because a lot of the reporting is repetitive and in effect, just filling in empty air time.
Then please don’t sound like an ass. Here’s a tip: Don’t boss the other posters around and act like you are in charge. You aren’t. These people are trying to help you out by offering what they believe is helpful information. If you have a follow-up question, then ask it. If you have a propblem with something someone has posted, report the post, but this sort of post isn’t appropriate here in General Questions. This is not a formal warning.
Gfactor
General Questions Moderator
There is no state whose polls close that early. Therefore, I have to presume that when you say “called”, you’re referring to a prediction based on the exit polls.
But I was under the (possibly mistaken) impression that all the major news organizations have adopted policies NOT to call any state until its polls have closed. They adopted this policy for the specific purpose of trying not to discourage last-minute voters. If a vote is called before the polls close, then all voters (regardless of who they support) will be tempted to stay home and not bother voting. And in actual fact, those missing votes might have been enough to tip the scales the other way.
Am I wrong? Are there any news organizations who are still willing to predict a winner before the polls close?
No, I don’t think so, not since the 2000 Florida fiasco.
Someone has already pointed out that Florida spans two time zones. (The “panhandle” is in Central Time)
When some TV networks called the state while the panhandle voting booths were still open, some voters claimed that the announcement discouraged them from voting. I don’t think the panhandle counties were that close in the tallies, but anywho, the major news networks decided that they will be more sensitive to the last minute voters in the future.
If the times in Expano’s cite are correct for 2008, that means the west coast polls will close at 11:00 p.m. EST. Those states account for 77 electoral votes (California alone is 55). Unless the election is a complete rout for either candidate, those 77 electoral votes will decide the winner.
Or a large eastern state which is still too close to call when the polls close in CA. CA is pretty much a write off as far as the GOP is concerned, and will likely be projected for Obama as soon as the polls close. A likely scenario for a close election is that we go into the wee hours waiting for returns from a large swing state like PA, OH or MI.
If I recall correctly, Oregon was close in 2000…
I can’t see how we will be waiting for votes from the West Coast to make a difference. AK is going for McCain. HI and CA are going for Obama. While Oregon may be close, McCain would already be in huge trouble if he is waiting for it to go his way. Same way with Colorado; if Obama wins there, I can’t imagine him losing enough states back east to lose the election.
I think it comes down to FL, OH, PA, and MI. McCain must win two of those states to win, and Obama must win three. Maybe Obama steals VA and CO, and only needs two, but I can’t see it shaking out that way.
How late in the night will you have to stay up? It depends on how close it is. If you are talking about 1,000 votes in any of these states, it will be days or weeks before it is settled.
In 2004, OH went Bush by 130,000 votes and it was the next day before Kerry conceded it, and people still dispute the result.
My attempt at a short version of the answer:
If the election results are in a normal unexciting results stage then if you’re watching TV between 6p.m. and 11p.m. Pacific time you’ll probably get to see everything of excitement that happens on election day.
Once it gets beyond we’re definitely in “who knows” category with too many variables to guess. Is it going slow because a county in a swing state is dragging or because Ohio is a statistical tie with the leader ahead by 12 votes so we’ll probably have a two week recount process?
But if it is a basic boring election result then 6p.m. to 11p.m. will almost certainly get you the final key results, a concession speech, and a grateful speech.
Even if California is a dead solid lock for Obama, he almost certainly wouldn’t get to 270 electoral votes without it. Therefore, the networks won’t call the election until the polls close in California. They may be saying “if these trends continue…” but they won’t call it before then, and neither candidate will concede until someone calls a winner.
Which wasn’t what I was saying. I was pointing out that if it’s close, when the CA polls close, and CA is projected for Obama, swing states like OH, PA or MI may still be undetermined, and those states will be the deciding factor.
