It’s on almost everyone’s mind this week: Who will win the 2024 presidential election, and when will we know?

There’s no clear answer to either question, but history — and insider information shared with the Daily Beast from Kamala Harris’ campaign — suggests we may not have a winner for days, or possibly weeks, after the polls close Tuesday night.

States will release unofficial results Tuesday evening that news networks and the Associated Press will use to project winners and call the race in most states. However, election officials in the seven swing states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona) are already pleading with voters for patience as vote counting will not be completed on Election Day.

Could we see a repeat of 2020?

Four years ago, the AP declared that Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump on Saturday, November 7 – four days after polls closed nationwide. The days-long delay in declaring a winner was largely due to Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada.

That trio of states will likely have the nation on edge again, says a chart compiled by the Harris campaign and shared with the Daily Beast. It says Virginia, Ohio, Colorado and Florida will have nearly complete election results by 10pm EST on election night, which could be a good barometer for how things look for both candidates – via the margin of victory – even if those states are. don’t expect it to be reversed.

Harris’ team’s chart then projects that the “most results” from Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan will be in before midnight on Election Day, and that Wisconsin will join that list at 6 a.m. EST on Wednesday morning. In the same time frame, the campaign projects that Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada will still only release “partial” results.

The campaign notes that “tens of thousands” of provisional ballots cannot be legally counted until Friday in Pennsylvania, which is overwhelmingly considered the key swing state for both Trump and Harris.

It is not just Harris’ campaign that warns of a long wait. Derek Tisler, an expert on election administration and security at the Brennan Center for Justice, told NPR this week that voters can expect at least “a similar timeline” through 2020.

Tisler also noted that with polls pointing to a tighter race than four years ago, it’s possible the winner of the election won’t be known for “weeks.” He suggested this could happen if the results are within a few thousand votes at a tipping point.

What factors could hold back the number of elections?

Why the long wait? Legal restrictions on when officials can begin processing mail-in ballots in key states were the main culprit in 2020. Tisler shares that — aside from Michigan — there have been no major shifts that would indicate drastic changes will take place at the speed at which the votes will be cast. this time in tabular form.

“So when we talk about processing ballots, we’re talking about voting by mail,” he told NPR. “And counting mail-in votes takes longer because there are all these steps that election workers have to do before they can actually count those ballots.”

These checks include the need to confirm a voter’s identity and eligibility, as occurs at an in-person voting booth. Those counting ballots will also have to check to see if the ballot is damaged before it can be inserted into a scanner and counted.

Michigan was proactive in changing state law that, like most states, allows it to process ballots before Election Day. However, that is still not the case in Pennsylvania and Nevada and delays should be expected.

Arizona state law allows mail-in votes to be processed before Election Day, but there are particularly long voting rounds this election that are expected to slow things down. The Washington Post reports that ballots in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous, are two pages long this year, requiring expanding vote tabulations and entering twice as many pages into voting machines, which is more laborious and could lead to an increase in the number of paper jams.

In Nevada, unpostmarked ballots that arrive on Friday will be counted, and postmarked ballots may arrive on Saturday and still count. That’s very different from most states, which require mail-in ballots to be received by Election Day, and could cause major delays if the election is as close as the polls suggest.

Dangers of a protracted election outcome

Tisler said this waiting game could become dangerous if both sides — whether voters, partisan media, the candidates or their proxies — try to fill that “information vacuum by making false claims” or prematurely declaring victory.

“Everyone is really desperate to learn more about something they are deeply passionate about,” he said. “But the problem is that until those votes are actually counted, there’s really no new information to provide to these people… I encourage everyone to be patient. And again, understand that the reason we are waiting for results is because election processes are designed to prioritize accuracy and security.