Today, the voters will have the final say on the 2026 election.
But as has so often been the case in recent years, we might not learn their verdict on election night.
To see why, check out my colleague Alicia Parlapiano’s great state-by-state guide on when all the polls close and when each state reported its results in 2024.
In particular, it won’t leave you optimistic about getting a quick answer on which party will control the Senate.
For one, none of the core Senate battleground states will be among the first states to close at 7 p.m. on Tuesday. Worse, Maine and Alaska won’t even be done counting their vote by midday on Wednesday. If either of those two states figures into the outcome of Senate control — which seems reasonably likely — we may not have a call for a while.
If the House is even modestly close, there’s another problem: Democrats depend on winning dozens of districts in states with extensive mail-in voting, like California. Many of those races won’t be called quickly, even if they’re not especially competitive. The Associated Press, which The New York Times relies on for most of its projections, won’t declare control of the House until one party has won the 218 needed seats. That might take a while.
Although it may be a long time before we know the final outcome, we ought to get an early sense of where the night is headed — albeit with one crucial caveat, as you’ll see below.
Here’s what we’ll know, and when, on election night.
7 to 8 p.m. Eastern time: Blue wave watch; blue mirage warning
None of this year’s top-tier Senate battleground states will be among the first polls to close at 7 p.m. Nonetheless, we’re going to learn a lot — and quickly.
In the Senate, there are several states on the periphery of the battleground where Democratic strength and Republican resilience will quickly be put to the test, like New Hampshire and Southern states like Florida, South Carolina, Georgia and, at 7:30, North Carolina. If it looks like a good night for the Democrats Annie Andrews in South Carolina or Angie Nixon in Florida, the Republicans are in some real trouble.
The region also contains many classic House battlegrounds — and an even longer list of plausibly competitive congressional districts that voted for President Trump by roughly eight to 15 percentage points. Those races will ultimately determine whether this election “feels” like a decisive Democratic victory. Many of these states — especially Florida — count their votes fast enough that we’ll have a sense of whether Democrats are breaking through by 8 or 9 p.m.
Kentucky and Indiana, where the polls close in parts of the state even earlier, at 6 p.m., deserve mention here as well. There are two heavily Republican districts — Kentucky’s Sixth and, to a lesser extent, Indiana’s Fifth — where Democrats are competitive in districts that voted for Mr. Trump by 15 and 17 points in 2024.
Kentucky’s Sixth, in particular, is considered a real tossup, despite its Republican lean. If either is close, it’s a sign of a very tough night for Republicans.
Here’s that one enormous caveat — not just for this section, but for the whole article: Be warned of the risk of a “blue mirage” in the early vote.
If you’ll recall, the 2020 election featured a “red mirage” in which Mr. Trump started out ahead in key states thanks to a big lead among Election Day voters, only for Joe Biden to overtake him once mail ballots were counted days later. (Republicans tend to vote more often on Election Day, and Democrats make more use of mail ballots and early voting.)
This year, there’s a real chance of a blue mirage. In most of this year’s key Senate states (Alaska is an exception), the early vote is counted first, and it is quite clear that the early vote has been very good for Democrats. The expected gap between Election Day and early votes looks much bigger than in 2024. You should not be surprised if Democrats lead early on, even in states where they are expected to eventually lose — like South Carolina and Florida. In North Carolina and Georgia, the Democrats Roy Cooper and Jon Ossoff could lead by 20 points in the early vote.
But you can follow our election night live model, the Needle, which is very cautious to respond to early data. In the states where the Needle has the results by method of voting, it will compare the results among early voters with our expectations for the results among early voters. If it does not have those results in detail, it will usually wait for counties to finish up their count before it swings one way.
Ohio also closes its polls at 7:30, but this is a blue mirage state and, unlike the others, it will take a while for it to count its Election Day vote.
8 to 9 p.m.: Texas early vote
One of the biggest moments of the night could come soon after 8 p.m. Eastern, when polls close in most of Texas and its largest counties report the early vote.
The early vote will be two-thirds of the vote in Texas, and historically, Texas is not a state where the early voting is all that much more Democratic than the Election Day vote. The results will get a lot of attention on television and on social media.
That said, the blue mirage warning is still in effect here. By our estimates, the early vote has been very favorable to Democrats in Texas. In 2024, Mr. Trump may have won this year’s early voters by only about six points, compared with his 14-point victory. If so, James Talarico would be expected to hold a considerable lead in the early vote.
It’s entirely possible that this turnout advantage for Democrats will carry through to the Election Day vote. But it’s also possible that this year will prove to be the exception, since there are so many more regular Republican voters left to vote.
Unfortunately, the state can be slow to count its Election Day vote. It could be a while before we know whether Republicans will come back.
9 p.m. to 1 a.m.: Decision time?
This is when all eyes will turn to the Senate. Maine’s polls close at 8 p.m., and by 9 p.m. the pace of reporting should begin to pick up. Ohio should begin to report a significant amount of the Election Day vote by this time as well.
Also at 9 p.m. Eastern, most of the remaining key Senate battlegrounds will have closed all of their polls, including Iowa, Kansas, Michigan and Nebraska (and the rest of Texas).
Over the next three hours, we should get a pretty good idea of where the Senate is headed, even if there are scenarios where it will take a lot longer to know which party won the chamber.
Maine is a particularly extreme example. There’s no blue mirage here, so we should understand the direction things are headed pretty quickly. On the other hand, the state is very slow to finish counting (you’ll have to make it to the section titled “Wednesday and beyond” to learn more), so if it’s close it will take a long time to get a final answer.
In the other states, we won’t have to wait so long. You can expect a blue mirage in each of Iowa, Ohio and Kansas, but all should reach 90-plus percent of their vote counted around midnight or soon after. Texas can be a little further behind, but it should finish counting on election night as well.
Michigan follows its own story line. It usually starts with a blue mirage of early votes, but then the state’s relatively Republican counties tend to be first to count the Election Day vote, giving Republicans a potential edge at that point. Then Democrats usually come back once Wayne County, home to Detroit, catches up.
This story plays out slowly: Only half of the vote in Michigan was counted by midnight in 2024. If the race is close, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed could trail late into the night.
After midnight: Times Voter Trends
Sometime after midnight, we will publish our preliminary Times Voter Trends estimates for the results among demographic groups across the entire midterms — how Americans voted by age, gender, race, education and prior election turnout.
Today, our interviewers are texting and calling the nearly 30,000 voters whom we spoke with in Times/Siena polls this campaign season, to learn whether they voted and for whom.
We’ll look at their responses, our prior polls, detailed election results by precinct, voter file data from the data firm L2 and estimates from the Needle. From that, we’ll estimate the demographic results for the Senate and House vote (statewide) in every state in the country.
This is the first time we’ve done this, but we’ve retroactively published estimates from 2020 and 2024 for comparison. You can read them here.
Wednesday and beyond: Maine and Alaska
If Maine and Alaska are the states that decide Senate control and either is reasonably close, we’re not going to have a decision for a while.
For each state, there’s a two-part explanation.
The first part is that it simply takes a long time for these states to count their votes.
Many of Maine’s rural townships still count ballots by hand, and many do not seem to do it quickly. In 2024, only 80 percent of the vote was counted by noon the next day.
In Alaska, the issue is the early and mail vote. It can take a week to count it. This vote tends to be a bit Democratic-leaning, so there’s a chance of a 2020-style red mirage. Realistically, I don’t think any news organization will call Alaska based on the preliminary returns on election night.
The second part of the explanation is ranked-choice voting. Even once all of the vote is counted, the race will go to ranked-choice voting if no candidate receives 50 percent of the vote. There aren’t any third-party candidates on the ballot in Maine except for the registered write-in candidates, so the risk there is pretty low unless the race is essentially tied. But in Alaska, Senator Dan S. Sullivan shares the ballot with another Republican, Gerald Heikes, and, yes, Daniel J. Sullivan, the “decoy Dan” whom Democrats recruited to enter the race.
I don’t think anyone can be terribly confident about how these ballots will break. Many people voting for the “decoy Dan” might leave their second choice blank, perhaps especially if they meant to vote for the “real” Mr. Sullivan. Or they could rank both Sullivans. Or for all we know, the “decoy Dan” vote will mostly go to the Democrat Mary Peltola on the second ballot. Maybe these voters are trolls, or people doing the equivalent of casting a minor-party protest vote. We just don’t know.
If control of the Senate comes down to these ballots, we won’t know the outcome until Alaska reveals the ranked-choice result on Nov. 18.
The post A Guide to What We’ll Know on Election Night, Hour by Hour appeared first on New York Times.
