America on Edge: Swing States Set the Stage for an Election Night Cliffhanger

Polling shows Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump deadlocked in nearly all of the seven swing states. So the first thing we’ll glean from the returns on Tuesday night is not who will win — but just how close the battle is shaping up to be, and how long it might take to determine the winner.

The first battleground state where the polls will close is Georgia, at 7 p.m. Eastern time, followed closely by North Carolina, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern. A majority of voters cast ballots early in both states, and those results are expected to be reported early in the night. The vast majority of ballots in both states are likely to be tallied and reported by midnight. They will give us an early sense of whether the night is shaping up to be a battle of inches, or something more decisive. (See a full list of when polls close.)

If Ms. Harris opens up a lead in either or both states, she will have multiple paths to the 270 electoral votes needed to win, and Mr. Trump’s chances of victory will appear to narrow. If Mr. Trump has a lead, or if the states appear to be close, it could all come down to the returns from the three so-called Blue Wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

In Pennsylvania, which both campaigns view as a must-win state, polls close at 8 p.m. Eastern time. But because election workers aren’t allowed to start processing mail ballots until Election Day, counting is expected to stretch past Tuesday night. In Michigan, where the last polls close at 9 p.m. Eastern, only about half the ballots were counted by midnight in 2020 and 2022, although recent reform…  Read mores could speed things up. In Wisconsin, where polls close at 9 p.m. Eastern, counting could stretch late into the night.