2024 election results could be delayed days or weeks in these states

While Election Day is underway across the US, the results of the election may not be known until further in the week due to the speed in which results are cast in several key states across the nation.

In Alaska, polls close at 12 am Eastern on Wednesday for most of the state, and 1 am Wednesday in parts of the Aleutian Islands that extend out into the Bering Sea. While having the third-smallest population out of any state, Alaska, with it’s mostly scattered, rural population, is known for being one of the last to get its ballots counted, the New York Post reported.

Early votes are required by state law to be turned in to regional election offices by the Thursday before the election so they can be counted on election night, but absentee ballots and early votes that are cast after Thursday must be counted by one week after the election. 

One race being watched in Alaska is that of incumbent Dem Rep Mary Peltola and GOP challenger Nick Begich III. The House race could be one of the last ones called.

In Arizona, polls are set to close at 9 pm Eastern. Officials are allowed to begin processing mail-in ballots after early voting ends in the state, but aren’t allowed to start counting until polls close. 

In the midterm election, around 20 percent of mail-in ballots were dropped off on Election Day. The largest bulk of ballots in 2024 will come out of Maricopa County, in which around three-fifths of the state’s population lives, and it took officials in the county until the Sunday after the election during the midterms to complete processing ballots.

California’s polls are set to close at 11 pm Eastern, however, the majority of the state votes by mail, which could lead to delays. In the 2024 primary, 89 percent of ballots were cast through mail-in ballots, according to the California Department of State. The state allows precincts up to 30 days to count ballots, a process that includes an in-depth signature verification process.

Polls in Nevada are set to close at 10 pm Eastern, but in the 2020 election the Silver State was the third-to-last to be called for Biden. The state allows for mail-in ballots, postmarked on or before Election Day, to be counted up to four days after the election. Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar told officials earlier in the year that they can begin counting in-person early votes on Election Day, rather than after polls close. 

NBC News said that Nevada "will take a week to count all their votes," saying that lawyers will be "litigating which ballots can get fixed, or cured is the language you’ll start to see."

North Carolina’s polls are set to close at 7:30 pm est, however, in 2020 the state was the second to last to be called for Trump, coming 10 days after the election. The Post said a new policy in the state could make counting ballots take longer, as officials are no longer allowed to count early votes before polls close. 

Pennsylvania, the most closely-watched battleground state in the 2024 election, is set to close polls at 8 pm Eastern. The state does not allow ballots to be counted before Election Day, and in 2020, most outlets called the race for Biden two days after the election. 

Polls in Wisconsin are scheduled to close at 9 pm Eastern, and ballots aren’t allowed to be counted until Election Day. The state reportedly is one of a few states where early and absentee voting remains high even after the pandemic subsided, which caused delays and overwhelmed the statewide voter registration system on the first day of early in-person voting, the Post reported.

Also being closely watched for when results drop is Georgia, which was the last state to be called in 2020. Polls in the state are set to close at 7 pm Eastern, and lawmakers in the state have passed laws in the wake of the last presidential election in hopes of speeding up results. The Election Integrity Act of 2021 was one of those laws passed, which Democrats, including Joe Biden, claimed was "Jim Crow 2.0."

Early vote turnout records have been set in 2024 in the state, with over 2.1 million votes being cast ahead of Election Day and another 320,000 absentee ballots being requested. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told Face the Nation in October, "all early votes and all early accepted ballots, they all will have to have their results reported by 8pm. That's 70, maybe even 75% of all the vote totals will be reported no later than 8pm on election night." In October, a judge paused a ruling that would have required officials to hand-count ballots in the state.