In exactly 24 hours from right now (6 pm EST), the polls will close in the easter-most parts of Indiana and Kentucky, followed at 7 pm EST by the rest of those states plus Georgia, South Carolina, Vermont, and Virginia. That means we are one day away from the beginning of the end of this long national nightmare that is the 2024 presidential election.
Yes, it may take days, weeks—months?—for the world to know the outcome. But we’re entering the final stretch, whatever that may look like.
The 7 pm EST hour will give us our first real glimpse of how the election is shaking out, with a particular focus on Virginia, where Kamala Harris has held a steady lead in the polls to win the state’s 13 electoral votes. We’ll also see the earliest results come in from Georgia—the first of the real swing states. At 7:30 pm EST, we’ll get a second wave of poll closings in North Carolina, Ohio, and West Virginia, which have a combined 37 electoral votes.
Thirty minutes later, at 8 pm EST, the first big wave of poll closings will commence—a whopping 171 electoral votes from 14 states, Washington, DC, and parts of Florida and New Hampshire. The 8 pm hour includes Pennsylvania, the crowned jewel of the electoral map, with its gridlocked opinion polls and 19 electoral votes.
After Arkansas polls close at 8:30 pm EST, the next major hour of Election Night comes at 9 pm EST, when polls close or begin to close in 15 states, including the battlegrounds of Arizona, Wisconsin, parts of Michigan, Minnesota, and New Mexico. (Iowa, which is only considered a potential battleground based on a single, “gold standard” poll, also closes at 9 pm EST.)
If the polls are right about a tight race, it’s not until this point in the night that we’ll start to see the shape the race is taking. From 10 pm EST until 1 am EST (parts of Alaska), the remaining states will close their polls. But all the swing states will be closed by this hour, which means attention will focus on those earlier results.
Happy voting!
Politico's West Wing Playbook titled their evening newsletter “Take a Xanax everybody,” which feels apt. But they also included this Programming note: West Wing Playbook will begin covering the transition of power on Wednesday, Nov. 6. We’ll deliver daily updates and analysis on the preparations, personnel decisions and policy deliberations that follow the 2024 elections.
It feels a little premature to be be saying we'll know by Wednesday, but…who knows! Maybe we will. Michigan, North Carolina, and Georgia are all saying they'll have results by tomorrow night.
In a call with reporters on Monday to discuss election security updates, US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director Jen Easterly told reporters that “our election infrastructure has never been more secure.” She also said that CISA, which coordinates with other US intelligence and law enforcement agencies before, during, and after US elections, has not seen any signs so far of threats that could “materially impact” the outcome of Election Day 2024.
“It’s important to remember that disruptions happen in every election, which is why election officials invest so much into incident response preparation and contingency plans,” she said. In particular, Easterly noted that officials have seen DDoS attacks and some physical attacks on ballot drop boxes, and expects to see ongoing threats against election officials as well as continuing nation state-backed disinformation campaigns.
“There is a firehose of disinformation that the American people have been subjected to and continue to be subjected to and the way that we are dealing with that is to ensure that as much as possible we can flood the zone with accurate information,” senior advisor to the director, Kate Connolly, said on the call. Additionally, as former President Donald Trump and his supporters promote disinformation about the validity of the 2020 US presidential vote, election officials around the country have faced a dramatic increase in physical security threats.
As a result, CISA says that since the beginning of 2023 it has conducted nearly 1,300 physical security assessments of election offices to help uncover gaps and recommend improvements.
An Oath Keeper Talks Civil War Over Pastrami and Rye
“I'm training people to survive a civil war, to get out of the way, to stay home, stay off the grid," says Oath Keeper Jim Arroyo, in an interview two days before the US presidential election.
New story from David Gilbert and Tess Owen: Read here
R: Jim and Janet Arroyo, leaders of the Yavapai County Preparedness Team, a corporate spin-off of the Oath Keepers militia, have dinner in Lucy's Bar and Grill in Chino Valley, AZ on November 3, 2024.Photo-Illustration: Wired Staff/Getty; David Gilbert
English (US)