What will happen, hour by hour
With a massive turnout expected, an avalanche of mail-in ballots to process, differing state policies on counting them and an army of election lawyers ready to pounce, election night has the potential to end in anything from an early landslide to a drawn
7 p.m. POLLS CLOSE IN THESE STATES
Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Virginia, Vermont
WORTH WATCHING
Television networks and The Associated Press start making unofficial declarations of who won where, and how many electoral votes Trump and Biden have locked up. The winner is the one who reaches 270. An early measure of Trump’s vulnerability is whether Georgia is competitive. The state has gone Democratic in just three presidential elections since 1960 — and two of those were for Jimmy Carter.
WHAT WILL BE GOOD FOR TRUMP
If Virginia takes a while to be called. In 2016, an early hint that Trump was doing well was that Republican Virginia — recently gone Democrat — was too close to call for Hillary Clinton for hours after polls closed.
GOOD FOR BIDEN
A win in Georgia would hint at a very strong night.
SENATE STATUS
Democrats would be downright giddy if they could oust Kentucky’s Mitch Mcconnell, the Senate majority leader since 2015, or South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s most stalwart defenders. Neither is likely, but not out of the question. A better chance for an early Democratic Senate pickup is in Georgia, where, unusually, both incumbent Republican senators are on the ballot and a run-off election (or two) would be held in January if no candidate wins an outright majority.
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❚ Georgia is set to elect a congressional candidate who has embraced the Qanon conspiracy theory, which asserts in part that Democrats are running pedophilia rings. Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene is running unopposed to fill a vacant seat.
7:30 p.m. POLLS CLOSE IN
North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia
WORTH WATCHING
Counting of mail-in ballots began two weeks ago in North Carolina, so its results may come swiftly. Appalachia was Trump country in 2016. It’s home to many of the non-college-educated white voters who form his base as well as the coal industry he’s tried to revive.
GOOD FOR TRUMP
He needs to keep all three of these states, and only West Virginia is assured.
GOOD FOR BIDEN
A win in North Carolina or Ohio. North Carolina has voted for the Democratic presidential candidate only once in the past 10 elections when it went for Barack Obama in 2008, but changing demographics have turned it into a toss-up.
SENATE STATUS
North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis tested positive for COVID-19 after attending the mostly mask-free White House introduction of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett on Sept. 26. His Democratic challenger, Cal Cunningham, acknowledged an extramarital affair that had left a trail of flirtatious text messages.
ALSO WATCH FOR
❚ No Republican has won the presidency without Ohio. Trump probably can’t, either. The state went big for him in 2016, but Democrats did well in the 2018 midterm congressional elections. Biden is counting on support in and around Columbus, Cincinnati and Cleveland.
8 p.m. POLLS CLOSE IN
Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, District of Columbia
WORTH WATCHING
Pennsylvania may be key not just to who wins, but when a winner is known.
GOOD FOR TRUMP
Trump must carry the state, as he did in 2016. A brightening economic picture there could help.
GOOD FOR BIDEN
“We win Florida, and it’s all over,” Biden has said, and that’s probably true. In 2016, people 65 and older accounted for 30 per cent of Florida’s vote and supported Trump by a 17-point margin. Biden has made inroads by telling seniors that Trump’s virus response left them vulnerable.
TIMING ALERT
Florida permitted counting of mailin ballots to begin 22 days early, so it may give a result rapidly. But the opposite is possible in Pennsylvania, where ballot counting was not permitted to begin until 7 a.m. today.
SENATE STATUS
Alabama’s Doug Jones, a Democrat in a very conservative state, represents the Republicans’ best chance to flip a seat. The Republican candidate is former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville.
Longtime Maine Senator Susan Collins has found her centrist Republicanism a tough fit in the
Trump era. Democratic challenger Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon says Collins “made the choice not to stand up to this president.”
ALSO WATCH FOR
❚ At this point, the electoral maps on news networks may look good for the Republicans, but there’s often a “blue shift” when mail-in votes and provisional ballots are added later.
❚ Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, wants voters to approve replacing the state’s 4.95 per cent flat tax on income with a graduated tax starting at 4.75 per cent and reaching 7.99 per cent for single filers earning more than US$750,000 and joint filers with income of more than US$1 million. Illinois has a US$4.1 billion budget deficit, and a credit rating a step above junk.
❚ Mississippi votes on a new state flag to replace one that included the Confederate battle emblem.
❚ New Jersey Representative Jeff Van Drew was a Democrat, but pledged “undying support” for Trump after breaking with his party on impeachment. His challenger is Democrat Amy Kennedy, whose husband, Patrick J. Kennedy, is a former congressman.
8:30 p.m. POLLS CLOSE IN Arkansas WORTH WATCHING
This is a Republican lock. Go get a snack.
9 p.m. POLLS CLOSE IN
Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin, Wyoming
WORTH WATCHING
If Trump can retain all the states he won by at least one percentage point in 2016 — giving him 260 electoral votes, 10 shy of victory — he’d need to win just one of Pennsylvania/michigan/wisconsin.
GOOD FOR TRUMP
Keeping Michigan is a must. He won there by 0.21 per cent in 2016, fewer than 11,000 votes.
Flipping Minnesota, a Rust Belt-adjacent state where he lost by less than two percentage points in 2016, would give him wiggle room. But Minnesota has gone Democrat in every presidential election since 1976.
GOOD FOR BIDEN
Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin are three electoral bounties Biden could steal. Even more ambitious would be Texas, which would signal a Biden landslide and leave Trump with little room to contest results.
TIMING ALERT
In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, processing and counting mail-in ballots couldn’t begin until election day, and Michigan couldn’t start processing them — opening envelopes and preparing ballots for scanning — until Nov. 2. These states could need overtime to declare a winner.
SENATE STATUS
If retired astronaut Mark Kelly unseats Republican Senator Martha Mcsally, Arizona would have two Democratic U.S. senators for the first time since the 1950s. Republican Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado, seeking a second term, is another target of Democrats, whose candidate is unsuccessful 2020 presidential candidate John Hickenlooper. In 2016, Gardner said he wouldn’t vote for Trump because he “cannot and will not support someone who brags about degrading and assaulting women.” Since then, the two have had a rapprochement.
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❚ One wrinkle in Minnesota is musician Kanye West, whose fitful attempt at a presidential campaign largely fizzled but who succeeded in getting his name on the ballot there and in 11 other states.
❚ With a young, diverse, growing population and 38 electors, Texas presented an intriguing target for Biden, who had to weigh how much money to spend there. Texas hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Carter in 1976.
❚ Trump lost New York, his home for 73 of his 74 years, by more than 22 percentage points in 2016. Only Mitt Romney’s 2012 loss in Massachusetts (23 points) was a worse home-state drubbing.
❚ If approved by voters, Colorado’s Proposition 115 would prohibit abortions after 22 weeks of pregnancy, unless the woman’s life is in jeopardy. And Louisiana Amendment 1 would declare that the state constitution doesn’t protect the right to have an abortion — which would matter should Roe vs. Wade, the federal ruling legalizing abortion, be struck down by the Supreme Court.
❚ Arizona Democrats believe they can end one-party domination of the state legislature after decades of Republican control.
10 p.m. POLLS CLOSE IN Iowa, Montana, Nevada, Utah WORTH WATCHING
Trump is sending record subsidies to farmers, a key segment of his rural base. Trump won Iowa by 9.4 percentage points in 2016 but his polling lead has been much narrower. Iowa, the U.S.’S largest producer of hogs and second-largest producer of soybeans, has been hit by Trump’s trade war with China.
GOOD FOR TRUMP
Holding Iowa, winning Nevada.
GOOD FOR BIDEN
Winning Iowa and especially holding Nevada, where record unemployment from the crash of the hospitality/gambling industry threatened the traditionally formidable, get-out-the-vote operations by Democratic labour groups.
SENATE STATUS
Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa is a first-termer who is part of the Senate Republican leadership team.
Montana’s first-term Senator Steve Daines’s Democratic challenger is outgoing Governor Steve Bullock, who — like Hickenlooper in Colorado — ran for Senate only after failing to become the party’s nominee to challenge Trump.
ALSO WATCH FOR
❚ The most competitive governor’s race is the one to succeed the term-limited Bullock in Montana. Republican U.S. Representative Greg Gianforte, who was sentenced to 40 hours of community service and 20 hours of anger management classes for assaulting a reporter in 2017, faces Mike Cooney, who has served as Bullock’s lieutenant-governor.
11 p.m. POLLS CLOSE IN
California, Idaho, Oregon, Washington
WORTH WATCHING
With only Alaskans and Hawaiians still voting, this is when the TV networks and the AP could call the race. Obama was declared victorious at 11 p. m. sharp in 2008, as the reliably blue West Coast put him over the 270 mark. This year, there’s the additional challenge of factoring in mailed ballots.
ALSO WATCH FOR
❚ In California, Proposition 16 asks voters to end their state’s prohibition on affirmative action. Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington also restrict using gender and race criteria.
1 a.m. on Nov. 4
Voting ends as polls close in Adak, Alaska.
Nov. 4 & beyond
Even in normal years, the counting of ballots — particularly absentee and provisional — continues for days, even weeks, after an election. Sometimes, as in 2000, a presidential race is close enough for those revised counts to matter. Rules vary by state about what outcome triggers challenges and recounts.