When will the 2024 presidential election be called? Here’s what to expect on Election Day and after

Americans have two big questions as they head into another election with a deeply divided electorate: It’s not just who will win the presidency, but when will we know who has won the presidency.

In 2020, election week replaced election night: Joe Biden was only declared the winner on Saturday. This year it could go either way. It can take as long as a week for the NBC News Decision Desk to project a presidential winner, or it can happen as early as Wednesday, even Wednesday morning.

The truth is that the Decision Desk cannot know until election night which scenario will play out, no matter how carefully we have analyzed the polls, early voting and other election-related data. The answer depends not only on how states count their votes, but on the unknown factor of how close the margins will be.

One thing is clear: the days of projecting a winner on election night are almost certainly over.

Projecting a presidential winner as early as Wednesday would require key battleground states, particularly Pennsylvania, to be untied. There had to be a sufficiently large spread between first and second place to be able to predict a winner.

Races that are nearly tied, like the 2020 presidential elections in Georgia and Arizona (Joe Biden’s margins of victory in those states were 11,779 and 10,457 votes, respectively), require virtually all votes to be counted before NBC News’ Decision Desk can project a winner . This may take days.

But let’s review the battleground states where Wednesday calls are at least possible.

How critical “blue wall” states are counting their votes – and how it’s different from 2020

Any path to winning the White House is likely to go through the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. In 2020, Pennsylvania was the key Electoral College state to call the presidency, and there’s a decent chance it will play that role again. But in 2020, it took four days after Election Day for the NBC News Decision Desk to declare a winner.

It may very well happen much earlier this year. This is because 98% to 99% of the votes in Pennsylvania are likely to be counted by Wednesday morning.

How Pennsylvania counts its votes is largely unchanged since 2020, but the process should be more efficient this year. Key counties like Allegheny (home to Pittsburgh) and Philadelphia have invested heavily in new voting machines and have added more staff to help process ballots. Also, keep in mind that this election is not being administered in the midst of a global pandemic that required strict social distancing between election officials, slowing counting.

We expect several Pennsylvania counties to release large numbers of early votes shortly after the polls close, followed by in-person voting on Election Day. That would let early votes received on Election Day, along with provisional ballots, still count on Wednesday.

If 99% of the total vote is counted quickly, a Wednesday projection is very possible in Pennsylvania unless the race is close. In 2022, we had about 90% of the vote counted in Pennsylvania when the NBC News Decision Desk predicted Democrat John Fetterman as the winner of the state Senate race at 12:51 PM ET.

In Wisconsin and Michigan, the majority of votes could also be counted by Wednesday if past reporting patterns hold.

Based on these patterns, in Wisconsin, the Wednesday morning count should be over 99%. In Michigan, it should be more than 95%. An important note in Michigan: For the first time, municipalities with more than 5,000 residents can begin pre-processing absentee ballots — opening envelopes, verifying voters’ signatures and so on — several days before the election, which could lead to more efficient counting on election night.

On the other hand, the introduction of early in-person voting in Michigan could add some difficulty in quickly counting the vote. Regardless of these changes, both Michigan and Wisconsin count almost all of their votes quickly. So unless the races are extremely close, there’s a decent chance the NBC News Decision Desk would be able to make a projection sometime Wednesday.

If the races are that close, however, it could take days or maybe even a week, depending on the margins.

How Sun Belt battlegrounds count their votes

Outside the blue wall, the critical swing states of Georgia and North Carolina are among the best in the country when it comes to efficiently processing and counting their votes.

These two states are also extremely good at making their data available to the public electronically. In Georgia, over 99% of the votes will be counted on election night. In fact, almost all votes have been counted in recent past elections at 1 a.m. ET. However, Georgia was so close in 2020 that it took days to call the race.

North Carolina has a similar pattern in how it reports the vote, with 99% of votes counted by midnight in previous elections. Still, any chance of an election night projection in one of these closely divided states depends on a sufficiently wide spread between the two candidates.

The one electoral vote awarded to the winner of Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district could also be decisive in the path to 270. Without significant changes to how votes are counted in Nebraska, about 90% of the votes can be expected to be counted by Wednesday morning, which in turn could lead to for a projection if there is sufficient spread between the candidates.

The final two battleground states, Arizona and Nevada, almost certainly won’t be called quickly. If the presidency comes down to one of these states, forget all thoughts of a Wednesday decision.

In 2020, NBC News did not expect a winner in Arizona until Nov. 12, nine days after Election Day. And unlike some other close states, it wasn’t just because the margin was so thin.

Typically, Arizona has as much as 20% of its votes still to be counted after election night — primarily late-arriving mail-in ballots. And there are very significant differences between Republicans and Democrats in terms of who votes when (early versus on Election Day). This makes it nearly impossible to project a winner in Arizona on election night.

Nevada is a state that has a large amount of early voting, both absentee and in-person, that is not counted on election night. Previously, almost a quarter of the votes were still not counted on Wednesday morning after election day.

Given that the state has been historically close in presidential elections, the likelihood of calling a close race with a large number of uncounted votes is very low.

The bottom line: In Arizona and Nevada, it will likely take a few days, maybe longer, to know the winner.