election day is November 5th but we might not know who won the election until days or weeks after that here’s why the US election is really 51 smaller ones in each state in the District of Columbia which effectively have their own to determine which candidate gets that State’s Electoral College votes each state has different poll closing times depending on geographic location and different rules for how and when each vote is counted including four methods that take additional processing time like provisional ballots or mailin absentee ballots in some states those could be counted even after election day as long as they’re postmarked by the time the polls close that could create a delay in the tally and a mirage effect where one candidate could be leading early based on an unrepresentative tally of the first votes counted and then things swing the other way once more come in take Pennsylvania for example a state with 19 Electoral College votes and state laws that say mail and ballots cannot be counted until the morning of election day that’s part of why in 2020 Trump was leading in the state early only for Biden to ultimately win it and partly why it took days to figure that out remember the presidential race wasn’t called for Biden in 2020 until the Saturday after the Tuesday vote and if the 2024 race has tight margins it could take even longer than that and that’s just for the race to be called by the Associated Press or other networks results won’t be official until they’re certified by election officials a process that could take up to 5 weeks or even longer if there’s Court challenges and the results won’t be final until Congress certifies them on January 6th