US midterms 2022: When will we know results?

The most crucial thing on November 9, the day after the election day is to be prepared for the possibility that the general result, or which party will control the House and Senate, may not be known for days or weeks.

Why the delay

Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election was not predicted by CNN until four days after Election Day.

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It wasn’t until January 6, 2021, when Jon Ossoff was predicted to win the second of two runoff elections in Georgia, that it became apparent that Democrats would hold the majority in the Senate.

Before it is certain if Republicans or President Joe Biden’s Democrats will control Congress, there may be a long night and possibly even days of waiting.

The 435 seats in the US House of Representatives, 35 in the US Senate, and 36 governorships are all up for election.

In order to take control of the House and the Senate, Republicans would only need to gain one seat and five seats, respectively. Republicans have a very good chance of winning a House majority, according to nonpartisan election forecasters and polls, and the outcome may be known by Tuesday night. However, the race for control of the Senate is expected to be more closely contested and take longer to determine.

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Even hours after the votes close, there could be victory announcements due to a strong wave of Republican support.

However, experts say there’s a real potential that America will go to bed on election night without knowing the results because dozens of contests are anticipated to be close and important states like Pennsylvania have already issued warnings that it might take days to tally every ballot.

Nathan Gonzales, the editor of the nonpartisan newspaper Inside Elections said, “When it comes to knowing the results, we should move away from talking about Election Day and think instead about election week.”

How fast states count mail-in votes will bias the earliest vote tallies.

Democrats are more likely than Republicans to vote by mail, thus states that allow officials to begin counting mail ballots early may declare significant Democratic leads that disappear as vote counters sort through mountains of Republican-leaning ballots that were cast on election day.

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Election officials are permitted to remove mail votes from their envelopes before Election Day and load them into vote counting machines in certain “blue mirage” states, which include Florida and North Carolina. This facilitates quick tallying.

States like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin forbid authorities from opening the envelopes before Election Day, which might result in a “red mirage” in which many Democratic-leaning mail-in ballots are counted later while Republican-leaning Election Day ballots are reported earlier.

Experts will monitor the variety of different ballot types each state is counting throughout the night, including Joe Lenski, co-founder of Edison Research, who will be monitoring hundreds of contests on Tuesday and providing data to several media outlets.

“Blue mirage, red mirage, whatever. You just have to look at what types of votes are getting reported to know where you are in that state,” Lenski said.

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When will we know?

On the East Coast, the initial round of vote tallies is anticipated between 7 and 8 pm ET (0000-0100 GMT Wednesday, November 9). If contests that were predicted to be tight, such as Virginia’s 7th congressional district or a U.S. Senate seat in North Carolina, turn out to be Democratic routs, it might be a sign of Republican victory early on.

According to Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, Republicans may have enough momentum by 10 pm or 11 pm ET, when Midwest polls will be closed for an hour or longer, to forecast control of the House.

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It could be days before it is known who will control the House if the race still appears to be close as vote counts come in from the West Coast, where there may be more than a dozen close House races.

Because California considers ballots that are postmarked by Election Day even if they arrive days later, it generally takes weeks to count all of the votes cast there. Nevada and Washington also permit postmarking by November 8 late ballots, dragging down the march to the end outcome.

“If the House is really on the edge, that would matter,” Kondik said.

The outcome of close races in Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia is likely to determine final control; it may take longer, possibly weeks longer.

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A run-off election would be planned for December 6 if Georgia’s Senate race is as close as predicted and no candidate obtains more than 50% of the vote. This might imply that until then, it will be uncertain who will have the majority in the chamber. On January 3, 2023, the new Congress is scheduled to take office.