
When are we going to know the results of the midterms? In 2020, due to slow vote counting in many states, it took days — until Saturday, Nov. 7 — for ABC News to declare Joe Biden the president-elect. We likely won’t have to wait that long this year, but it is again possible that we won’t know the winners of the 2022 election on election night. States like Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania that are key to Senate control could take multiple days to count all their votes.
The exact timing of the results depends on the state; each has different rules for when and how votes are counted. But we can make an educated guess based on when each state reported results in its primary election earlier this year.1 If every state reports its results at the same pace as in the primary, here is how election night (and the following day) will unfold. Use the slider to see what percentage of the vote would be reported in each state at various times.2