It is very highly unlikely that we will have a projected winner when the clock strikes 10 on the east coast. Mathematically, it’s possible as by 10:01 p.m. polls will officially be closed in states with 450 electoral votes. But, practically speaking, it would take all of the toss-up states that have closed before then to have enough votes counted that the networks felt comfortable projecting them, and they would all have to go the same way. Even in years like 2008, enough of the Democratic vote is in states in which polls close at 10 or 11 p.m. EST, that it would take flipping states like Texas and Georgia to have a shot at reaching 270 before 11 p.m.
Looking at 2016, the first battleground state — Ohio — was called at 10:36 p.m. Depending on how things play out with mail-in ballots and early voting, some of the battleground states might get called faster, but others are likely to be called much later.
In this hour, we will have partial closures in Idaho, North Dakota, and Oregon. In North Dakota and Idaho, the majority of the population is in the part of the state that closes. As such, we will get a good idea about the state from the precincts that have closed. On the other hand, only a tiny part of Oregon will close at 10 p.m. and all of the key races will have to wait another hour. For North Dakota and Idaho, none of the races are expected to be particularly close. So those contests should be called shortly after 11.
There are four states that will fully close at 10 p.m. — Iowa, Montana, Nevada, and Utah. And all of them have races worth watching.
Iowa is probably the most significant of the four. In Iowa, a nonpartisan agency draws congressional district lines and is supposed to try to make the seats as competitive as possible. That means that three of the four districts are considered swing districts. While the Fourth District in western Iowa should be somewhat safe for the Republicans, their internal battles and the disaster that has been Trump’s China policy gives the Democrats outside hope of picking up even that seat. The Democrats control the other three seats. If the statewide poll numbers are correct in forecasting a very tight race, Democrats should hold at least two of their three seats, but none of them are sure things. And, of course, the presidential vote is essentially a toss-up. And, in what might be the most significant race in Iowa, Democrats are a slight favorite to win the Senate seat. If the rest of the evening has gone well and it looks likely that Democrats have gained Arizona, Colorado, Maine, and North Carolina, Iowa could be seat 51 (or 52 if we have managed to pull out South Carolina or the regular Senate seat in Georgia).
Montana is another big state as far as what is up for grabs. While Obama made Montana close in 2008, the last Democratic presidential candidate to win Montana was Bill Clinton in 1992. While Democratic presidential candidates have not faired to well in Montana, local Democrats have done better. This year, the incumbent Democratic governor is running for Senate, and the Republican who fills the sole House seat is running for Governor. That means that all three races — Senate, House, and Governor — could go either way.
Nevada is considered to be a toss-up in the presidential race. I am not sure that I believe that. Nevada — like Colorado and New Mexico — has been trending blue. On the other hand, the nature of the casino business with weird shifts makes it difficult to get out the Democratic vote. Besides the presidential race, the third and fourth districts (containing the suburbs of Las Vegas and a substantial amount of rural area) are considered to be swing districts. It is expected that the Democrats will hold both seats, but — if the election goes well for the Republicans — both seats could be at risk.
Finally, there is Utah. If Trump was a regular Republican, the Republicans would probably not have lost the Fourth District in 2018. The Republicans have a good candidate (a former NFL player) and the district — while the most Democratic district in the state — is still gerrymandered to make it difficult for the Democrat to win. (Even with perfectly fair districts, Utah is so Republican that the Salt Lake City area would still only be a toss-up.) But Trump has so damaged the Republican brand, that the incumbent Democrat might just barely be able to hold the district. (Both times that the Democrat has won this district with its current lines, the margin was less than 1,000 votes.
AS the hour comes to a close, we will be reaching the point where calls were starting to be made in the toss-up states in 2016. This part of the evening is also when all of the networks will start turning towards their numbers guru who will be honing in on state maps and showing what votes are still to be counted and why that is keeping them from projecting a state. For these purposes, there are three types of potential votes: early “in-person” votes, mail-in votes, and election day “in-person” votes. Many states will release the early votes either at the start of the evening or as the counties release their election day votes. But the mail-in votes are another issue entirely. While some states will have received all mail-in votes by election day and will have most of those ballots counted by early on election night, other states will allow ballots post-marked by election day to count even if they arrive a handful of days late or start counting on election day. While we hope that almost all of the mail-in ballots sent to voters will have been returned by election day and that the counties which can’t start counting until election day will hire the staff necessary to handle the flood of mail-in ballots with appropriate speed, there is no guarantee of that. And if we are still waiting for half of the mail-in ballots to be counted in a state in which they represent 40-50% of the vote, we might not get a projection. It also appears that some states are planning to cope with this problem by not releasing any results until Wednesday or Thursday or even later and other states will stop announcing partial results after the end of the evening forcing us to wait a week or two for the full results without any interim updates. (Enterprising reporters might be able to work around this by getting counts from the counties as they certify or release results.)
