US is voting today, but when will we know who won the election?

Mail delays and a significantly higher number of ballots may delay a conclusive result by days or weeks, filling election watchers with trepidation

It's voting day in the United States today. In the past few elections, we’ve known who would be the next president hours after counting began. However, that may not be the case this year.

The voters have cast early ballots in record numbers this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. A day before the election, 96 million Americans had already voted either by mail or through early in-person voting, according to US Elections Project, a non-partisan organisation. This is more than twice the final count of early voting in 2016 and about 70% of all votes that year. Early turnout is especially high in the battleground states.

With the record numbers of mail-in ballots and early votes, it is likely to take much longer than usual to get the final election results. Officials would require more time to process the several million early ballots. Interestingly, most states begin counting these ballots upon receipt before election day, which means that these states should be able to push out the results more or less on time, with minor delays due to the Covid-19 restrictions.

However, four states start counting the mail-in-ballots only on Election Day. These states are Mississippi, Alabama, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The latter two are battleground states, which means that the votes from these particular states could be the votes that determine the next president, based on the direction that the preliminary results take. The results from these two states could take anywhere from several hours to a few days after the closing of the polls to be counted.

To complicate things further, Pennsylvania will accept mail-in-ballots up to Nov. 6, three days after Election Day. To be accepted, however, these ballots will need to be postmarked indicating that they were sent on or before Nov. 3. Taking all of these factors into account, the final results from Pennsylvania (the winner of this state could potentially move the needle to name a national winner) could come in only after Nov. 6. The state carries 20 Electoral College votes, which is a significant number in a tight election. The requisite number of Electoral College votes to win the presidential election is 270.

In the Pennsylvania result, many pundits prognosticate that Trump will appear to be ahead in the initial phase of Nov. 3 but as the mail-in ballots are counted, the result is likely to substantially shift in favour of Biden.

Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia will count votes that are postmarked on or before Nov. 3, even if the ballots arrive significantly later in some states. For example, if you are a voter in Washington state and send in your ballot postmarked on Nov. 3, the ballot could arrive only by Nov. 23 owing to postal delays caused by the pandemic.

The states that accept ballots and count them after Election Day account for 317 (59%) of the 538 Electoral College votes. This is one of the most significant reasons why a winner might not be announced as usual on Tuesday night.

The scenario that is likely, according to most opinion polls, is that the Democratic and Republican stronghold states will vote as expected but the fight will get close in the battleground states. In that case, the next president will only be declared when the final results emerge from these states.

Axios reported based on sources familiar with President Donald Trump’s private comments that the president told aides that he would declare victory on the night of Nov. 3 if it looks like he is "ahead". For this to happen, Trump would have to win massive leads in key battleground states like Ohio, Florida, Texas, Iowa, Georgia and Arizona. These are the states that would count early votes either upon receipt or before the Election Day.

Trump’s legal team is reportedly preparing to claim that mail-in ballots counted after Nov. 3 that favour Democrats are evidence of election fraud. This is most likely to happen in Pennsylvania as it is a key battleground state and most mail-in ballots there are expected to favour Biden.

In the past, the Senate, the House and even the Presidential Election ballots were counted days after Election Day and delays in counting and results aren't exactly a new issue in the US.

The declared counts emerging from the night-of could also be deceptive as it could be days or weeks before we know who has won Pennsylvania and other swing states, considering the unprecedented number of mail-in ballots this year. If the Nov. 3 election results become disputed in the courts of law, as Trump and his team have repeatedly threatened to do, it could well be weeks before a conclusion is brought to the US election saga and one of the two presidential candidates is declared the winner.