When will we know the results of the U.S. election?

Bangkok Post Group

The U.S. presidential election is shaping up to be extremely close, with potentially even tighter margins than Joe Biden’s narrow win in 2020. Reuters Correspondent Joseph Ax explains. - REUTER

Transcript

00:00In 2020, media outlets weren't able to declare the winner for four days after the election.

00:08And this year, we expect it's going to take even longer.

00:12Polls are showing that this is likely to be one of the closest elections in U.S. history

00:17between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

00:19There are seven states that are considered battlegrounds.

00:22Every single one of those states is essentially tied, according to the polls, with very small

00:26margins in one direction or the other.

00:29There are a lot of people who vote by mail.

00:31That's a trend that's accelerated since the pandemic.

00:33In Pennsylvania, the most important swing state by consensus, almost two million voters

00:40have requested mail ballots.

00:41And mail ballots take longer to count.

00:44In a couple of the swing states, particularly Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, state law doesn't

00:50allow election officials to touch those votes until Election Day.

00:56That's when they start checking the envelopes to make sure that they've been properly sealed,

01:01checking signatures to make sure that they match what's on file, making sure that the

01:04voter's name matches registration.

01:07And only after they've done all of those things, all of which takes time, can they then finally

01:11tabulate those ballots and add them to the count.

01:14Even in states like Arizona and Nevada, where workers are allowed to start processing and

01:19tabulating mail ballots before Election Day occurs, it still takes a really long time

01:25just because of the sheer volume.

01:26So in both those states, a majority of voters vote by mail.

01:30So because of a host of reasons, the historic closeness of the election, the number of mail

01:36ballots that voters are using to cast their votes, and the different procedures that these

01:41various battleground states use to tabulate those votes after Election Day, all of those

01:46are going to contribute to what's going to be a long time before we can actually say

01:50who won this election.

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