On November 5, voters across the United States will head to the polls to cast their ballots in the 2024 presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. But as in 2020, they may not know the results on election night.

That’s because counting votes takes time – record numbers were cast before Election Day. And in a race that is expected to be extraordinarily close, more votes will need to be counted before a winner can be declared.

Individual states set their own laws and deadlines for processing ballots, including those submitted during early voting and the mail-in period. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2020, 46% of voters chose to vote by mail during the COVID-19 pandemic. And the increase in mail-in voting, combined with ballot counting rules that vary from state to state, meant that people had to wait days for a result. Joe Biden was not officially declared the winner until Saturday, November 7, four days after Election Day. While the results were not announced, Trump and his supporters spread election fraud conspiracy theories – baseless claims that they continue to make.

For this election, some swing states, including Nevada and Michigan, have enacted new laws and policies to speed up the counting of ballots. But others, including battlegrounds Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, are still not allowing absentee and mail-in ballots to be counted until Election Day — which could lengthen the process of determining winners, especially in such a closely contested presidential election.

“We’re counting ballots faster than ever before,” David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, said in a call with reporters. “But as the margins tighten, more ballots will need to be counted before we can call a race.”

And even in states that have tried to speed things up, there are several factors that could leave Americans once again waiting to find out who won.

“I think it’s likely that by the end of the week – Thursday, maybe Friday – we’ll have an idea of ​​who won the presidency,” Becker said in response to a question from Yahoo News.

Here’s a quick guide to when battleground states were called in 2020, as well as changes to the vote counting process for 2024.

Battleground states

Pennsylvania

• Results 2020 (margin): Biden +1.2% (80,555 votes)

• As it was called by the AP: Saturday, November 7, 11:25 a.m. ET

Pennsylvania does not allow mail-in ballots to be counted until 7 a.m. on Election Day, a process that took several days in 2020. (This year, the Associated Press did not call Pennsylvania for Biden until Saturday, four days after Election Day. ) And election officials say it will likely take days again this year, especially since the state legislature has rejected changes that would would have accelerated the counting of votes.

Wisconsin

• Results 2020 (margin): Biden +0.6% (20,682 votes)

• As it was called by the AP: Wednesday, November 4, 2:16 p.m. ET

Like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin does not begin processing its mail-in ballots until Election Day. And the state legislature refused to change the law to allow poll workers to do so in advance, which in turn could lead to a delay in a vote being called.

Michigan

• Results 2020 (margin): Biden +2.8% (154,188 votes)

• As it was called by the AP: Wednesday, November 4, 5:56 p.m. ET

Four years ago, it took until Wednesday afternoon to determine that Biden had carried the middle state in the so-called blue wall, due in part to a law that did not allow the counting of mail-in ballots to begin until Election Day. Michigan now allows those ballots to be processed eight days before the election in communities with 5,000 or more residents — including Detroit.

Georgia

• Results 2020 (margin): Biden +0.2% (11,779 votes)

• As it was called by the AP: Thursday, November 19, 9:25 p.m. ET

In 2020, it took weeks for an official election call to be received from Georgia. During that time, Trump and his allies put pressure on state election officials to throw out the results. But the state made changes to the law in 2021 that allow mail-in ballots to be processed (but not tabulated) before Election Day while requiring all counties to tabulate their results by 5 p.m. the day after the election. And a court in the US state of Georgia recently blocked a new regulation that would have required election workers to count ballots by hand.

Arizona

• Results 2020 (margin): Biden +0.3% (10,457 votes)

• As it was called by the AP: Wednesday, November 4, 2:51 p.m. ET

In Arizona, most residents vote with ballots mailed to their homes, and many return them to mailboxes on Election Day. The process of verifying the signatures on these ballots takes time and could delay results, especially in such a close race. In 2020, Arizona was decided by an even smaller vote margin than Georgia. And in 2022, counting votes for the gubernatorial election took days after the state received a last-minute flood of mail-in ballots.

Meanwhile, a federal judge recently rejected a request for Arizona to verify the citizenship of about 42,000 voters registered only to vote in federal elections, which could have extended the count.

Nevada

• Results 2020 (margin): Biden +2.4% (33,596 votes)

• As it was called by the AP: Saturday, November 7, 12:13 p.m. ET

Nevada changed its election laws after 2020 to try to release its results earlier, allowing ballots cast during the early voting period to be counted on Election Day, when polls open — rather than when they close.

In a statement, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said the changes were made to “increase transparency, help us combat misinformation and reduce pressure on election officials.”

However, ballots postmarked before Election Day and arriving up to four days afterward will also be counted, potentially invalidating the changes.

North Carolina

• Results 2020 (margin): Trump +1.3% (74,483 votes)

• As it was called by the AP: Friday, November 13, 4:35 p.m. ET

In North Carolina, a new law requires county offices to wait until polls close on Election Day to begin counting and releasing early voting results, potentially delaying the count by hours or more.

“It’s getting late at night,” Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the state Board of Elections, said at a news conference earlier this month.

And even in states that allow early counting of early votes, there’s a good chance they won’t be fully counted by the time in-person voting begins. New laws in some states require additional verification and opportunities for voters to correct or “cure” errors on ballots, which can also take a lot of time in processing.

How Helene could influence voting in swing states

However, there is also some good news regarding Hurricane Helene’s impact on voting rights in North Carolina and Georgia.

In North Carolina, devastated by Helene, the state’s election board unanimously approved a list of emergency measures that will allow officials in the 13 hardest-hit counties to change times and locations for early voting sites, restrictions on mail-in ballots to relax and give them more freedom to hire poll workers. And in those counties, 75 of 80 early voting sites were able to open as planned.

In Georgia, which was also hit hard by Helene, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger reported shortly after the storm that election offices across the state “were spared significant, long-term damage.”

And on October 15, Georgia set a new record for the most votes cast on the first day of early voting, with more than 305,000 votes cast, breaking the previous record of 136,000 in 2020.

Delays do not mean fraud

Even if, like in 2020, it takes days to announce a winner, that doesn’t mean something nefarious is afoot. It just means the election was as close as expected.

“It is normal for it to take several days for results to be available,” said Becker. “That’s how it should be.”

“We want them to be executed precisely,” he added. “And anyone who has doubts about this process while this process is going on probably thinks they have lost.”