By the time we woke up the morning after Election Day in 2016, the world knew that Donald J. Trump had won the presidency. In 2020, Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign was not called until next Saturday.
Either timeline is possible this year, depending on how close the race is. If the results are by a few thousand votes in a few states, we could face wait times similar to 2020. But results could become clearer sooner if one candidate emerges ahead in the current polls, the closest in years.
What happened in 2020?
The 2020 election was held on Tuesday, November 3, but votes were not counted in seven crucial states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) until the following morning.
The Associated Press called Biden in Michigan and Wisconsin on Wednesday, bringing him to the brink of an electoral majority but not exceeding the threshold. The nation then watched results trickle in for three days before more states were called, as more mail-in ballots cast than ever before thanks to the pandemic took longer to count. .
It was on Saturday, November 7, that news outlets confirmed that Mr. Biden was the winner of Pennsylvania and, with that, assumed the presidency. (Nevada, Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina were decided later, but the overall verdict was handed down just before noon Saturday.)
Understanding how states are leaning on election night can be complicated by red and blue “mirages.” This is a phenomenon in which some states count mail-in ballots before in-person voting, and some do the opposite. Democrats were disproportionately likely to vote by mail and Republicans were disproportionately likely to vote in person, so in some cases even when one candidate appeared to have a much larger lead. , only for the other candidate to soar later.
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