Results in three states that are holding primaries on Tuesday will begin showing up online Tuesday night, but the winners might not all be known quickly.
Election officials in Texas, North Carolina and Arkansas could be counting ballots late into the night on Tuesday. Depending on margins and other variables, the process — and the competition itself — might continue into Wednesday or beyond.
All three states will hold runoffs later in the year for the top two finishers if candidates don’t clear certain thresholds.
Here’s what to know about each state.
Texas
Texas polls will close at 7 p.m. local time. But Texas straddles two time zones — Central, which most of the state falls under, and Mountain, which covers El Paso and part of western Texas — so voting will continue in some parts of the state for an hour after the first polls close.
And different counties have different ways of tabulating ballots, so some will take longer. In Harris County, the most populous in Texas, election officials predict votes will come in on the later side because of the number of poll locations reporting results.
In Texas, a runoff takes place if no candidate receives a majority. That could happen in the Republican Senate primary, in which several top candidates are competing. They are John Cornyn, the incumbent; Ken Paxton, the state attorney general; and Representative Wesley Hunt.
If there is a runoff, it will be on May 26.
Read the answers to your Texas primary voting questions here.
North Carolina
North Carolina’s state election board has a result dashboard that voters can check for updates. Polls are normally scheduled to close at 7:30 p.m. Eastern, but the board extended voting by an hour at a precinct in Halifax County that opened late, and said it would not publish any results in the state until all polls are closed at 8:30 p.m.
A second primary, as a runoff is known in North Carolina, can be requested if no candidate receives more than 30 percent of the vote. If there is a second primary, it will be on May 12.
Here are answers to your questions about voting in the North Carolina primary.
Arkansas
In Arkansas, polls will be open until 7:30 p.m. Central. Voters opting to vote early in person had until Monday night to cast their ballots.
You can check Arkansas’s election results on the secretary of state’s result portal here. You can also visit the website of your county election clerk; a full list of contact information for county clerks is here.
Arkansas requires a candidate to receive a majority of votes in order to win a primary. If that doesn’t happen, a runoff will be held on March 31.
Here are answers to some frequently asked questions about voting in the Arkansas primary.
Taylor Robinson is a Times reporter covering the New York City metro area.
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