This is when we’ll know whether it is Biden or Trump who has won the US Presidential election.
This week will see whether or not current President Trump will return for a second term in the White House, or if former Vice President Biden will replace him, as Americans turn out in their millions for the election. The big question is when will we know who has won the US Presidential election?
Due to coronavirus, there will be less voting booths open around America, which has meant many more voters have used the mail-in ballot service.
It is due to this service that the results of the election may not be known for several days.
While some states have allowed the counting of the mail-in ballots to begin already, others won’t allow the counting to begin until election day, which would be today, and due to the higher work load needed to properly check mail-in ballots, this could take several days to count correctly.
Additionally, over half of the states will accept mail-in ballots that arrive after election day, as long as the postmarked by today’s date (November 3), so they may not be counted until they arrive.
There is also expected to be a rise in provisional voting, which essentially means voters requested a mail-in ballot, but then didn’t fill it out and decided to vote in person instead. This will delay the process to make sure these voters haven’t voted twice.
Some states may declare a winner individually on election night, with the first polls closing around midnight in Ireland, and any states where a landslide of votes are found, a candidate may be announced early.
However, with more Republicans said to be voting at the polls, and more Democrats predicted to vote via mail-in, it could be perceived that Trump is ahead in the votes, if the mail-ins take a particularly long time to count.
During the 2016 election, Trump’s victory was announced at 2.30am in Washington DC (around 7.30am here), but as The Washington Post has reported on polls earlier this year taking an average of four days to provide almost complete results.
So, realistically, an actual result of the election may not clearly arrive until Friday or Saturday, and even then it could be contested, as per the 2000 election battle between Al Gore and George Bush, which resulted in a recount process that took over a month.
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