Will we know who the next president of the United States will be on Election Day? Experts say it's unlikely.
While it's not clear when the highly watched race will officially be called, experts say a decision might not be known for hours or even days.
The answer hinges largely on how close the results end up being.
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While an official tally will undoubtedly take time as votes are meticulously counted, races are often "called" for a winner well in advance.
"The final results are going to be months, because they have to be audited and they have to be canvassed and they have to be signed off on. But when will the American public know who they can confidently think is going to be our next president? That all depends on the margin, right?" Noah Praetz, president of The Elections Group and previous director of elections for Cook County, told NBC Chicago.
For this election, all eyes will be on a set of "swing states" in the U.S., which include some of Illinois' closest neighbors.
"I'll tell you this, my sense is that most of the swing states are going to be able to have counted preliminarily at least all of their ballots, certainly by midday Wednesday," Praetz said. "Arizona is a bit of an outlier, but they rely a lot more on mail balloting and those things just take a little bit longer than doing volume. So I think Wednesday would be a good time to have a sense of things."
How close the results are will also play a role in the legal fallout following Election Day.
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"I think the problem really in 2020 in the litigation was that they couldn't show that even if they could prove their allegations that it would change the election result ... They didn't affect enough votes to change the election result and that has to do with the size of the margin of victory for [President Joe Biden] in 2020," said Professor Michael Kang of the Northwestern University School of Law. "So I think looking forward to this election one really important variable is the margin of difference between the candidates. If we have a reasonable size margin between the candidates it's really hard for the losing candidate to challenge that result."
Still, Kang said what happens on election night could play a role in the days that follow.
"This is going to take a few days, but if Trump declares himself the winner on election night it puts a ton of pressure on the process," he said.
While it is not unusual for results to take time in a presidential race, 2024 will see some changes that could delay answers for voters.
"This is going to be Election Week, not Election Day," said Democratic strategist Peter Giangreco.
Changes to voter ID laws and the early voting process in North Carolina could slow vote counts.
Meanwhile, laws in key swing states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania mean clerks are unable to process mail-in ballots prior to Election Day. In 2020, those states were decided by approximately 20,000 and 80,000 votes, respectively.
“In other states, they can open them up, they can verify them. They can flatten them out, so all they have to do is run them through the scanners. In Pennsylvania, they can't even touch them," Giangreco said. "So, we're probably looking at Friday or Saturday before we know Pennsylvania.”
According to Dr. Kevin Boyle, chair of the history department for Northwestern University, if the race isn't called on Election Day it certainly wouldn't be a first for presidential election history.
“There are a lot of stories of presidential candidates just going to bed not knowing whether they had won the presidency or not," Boyle said.
In 2020, it took four days before President Joe Biden was officially called the winner. In 2000, results hinged on just 537 votes in Florida, with networks calling the state for Al Gore, then George Bush before ruling the race "too close to call."
"I do want people to not freak out about the election because actually we've gotten better at running these elections than we did in 2000," Kang said. "There's no comparison to how efficiently elections are run today and how professionally they're run today as compared to 25 years ago."
Beyond delays in vote counts, experts also say legal challenges are likely.
Sharon McMahon, a podcast host and former educator known as “America’s Government Teacher," said there are a "very, very large myriad of lawsuits that are already in process and are going to be filed."
"There are already over 100 lawsuits in the works related to the election, and there is absolutely more that are on the desks of lawyers. They're just waiting to plug in the right details and waiting to file those," McMahon said. "If we think there were 60-plus lawsuits in the post-2020 election, there's probably going to be double that in this election.”
So what would it take to find out results sooner? It all comes down to the Midwest, Giangreco said.
“Only if [Donald] Trump wins Wisconsin or Michigan," Giangreco said. "If he wins either those states, it's probably over with. And if we know those states on Wednesday, that'll probably be it. I think the most likely path for Kamala Harris to the presidency is the blue wall states: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania.”
Whether that will happen is unclear.
“This is what it comes down to: If the polls are right and things are even, there's a massive advantage for Harris on the ground, especially in the blue wall states, and I think that's her ticket to win. If there's the response bias that we did see in 2016 and we did see 2020, where the polls undercount Trump voters, then you could be looking that Trump's really up four or five points in all these states, and it'll be an electoral landslide for Trump, and maybe even a popular vote win. So either the polls are right and Harris's field operation is going to win it or the polls are wrong, and it's going to be a good night for Trump.”
To track live Illinois election results Tuesday -- and beyond -- from around the state, bookmark this page on NBCChicago.com and the NBC Chicago app.
