Only 27 hours remain until polls close in parts of Indiana and Kentucky. Which means we're less than 27 hours away from the XPOTUS claiming he won, because that's how he operates. Even if he loses by 10 million votes, he'll still claim he won all the way until January 20th, and possibly even longer.
Of course, no one will know anything interesting until at least 7pm Eastern when polls close in Georgia and 7:30pm Eastern when they close in North Carolina. Arizona's polls close at 7pm Mountain, which is 8pm here in Chicago. And even though we know who will win California's 54 electoral votes—a fifth of the required 270 to win—no one can call the state officially until 8pm Pacific (10pm here in Chicago).
Other things to keep in mind:
- If the election is close, it will take longer to know the results than if it's a blowout for either candidate.
- Rural areas, which tend to vote Republican, have orders of magnitude fewer voters than urban areas, which tend to vote Democratic. This means that early returns always look better for Republicans than later returns. Expect the XPOTUS to harp on early returns and discount later ones for this reason.
- Pennsylvania can't even begin tabulating absentee ballots until tomorrow, and it will take them days to get through all of them.
- Arizona has super-long ballots this year, especially in Maricopa County (Phoenix), so counting will take a lot longer than usual.
- Georgia plans to release official numbers as early as 8pm Eastern tomorrow night, but Fulton County, which contains Atlanta, will take a lot longer.
- Milwaukee hopes to have provisional results around midnight, but again, counting could take days. And absentee ballots can continue arriving for a week.
Bottom line: until Wednesday lunchtime at the earliest, no one will really know anything if the election is close. So let's hope for a repeat (and a reversal) of 1980 and get a huge Harris victory tomorrow.