When will we know who won the election? Experts weigh in
WASHINGTON - We're just a day out from the election but how many days will it be before we know who won? Opinions from experts vary on when voters will know who the next president will be. Right now, there are a lot of different answers when you ask political experts when they think we’ll know the results of the presidential race.
While there’s general consensus that it won’t take as long as the 2000 race between George W. Bush and Al Gore, which dragged on for six weeks after Election Day, it’s also not quite clear if we’d know on election night.
"My only prediction about election night has been that we’re not going to know on election night who won this race," Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha said.
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FOX 5 also spoke with veteran elections expert Arnon Mishkin, who heads up the Decision Desk for Fox News. He says voters shouldn’t be surprised if there’s no clear-cut winner on election night. In fact, he says it could take days.
"I think that the most likely is that we’ll know before Saturday and that’s merely a function of how close this election is and the reason for the Saturday as the over/under is that’s when Pennsylvania is likely to get out something that we can call," Mishkin said.
Mishkin says different states have different counting rules and with early voting and mail-in voting now a regular part of the mix, the returns in battleground states could take longer.
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Mileah Kromer of UMBC’s Institute of Politics and David Ramadan at George Mason University’s Schar Center for Politics both agree, saying it will likely take two to three days to find out who won.
"We’re probably not going to know for at least 48 or 72 hours afterward and that is if we’re lucky," Ramadan said.
"I think it’s the margin — the closer it is, the less likely it will be that we’re going to find out on election night the actual night itself. We’ll have to wait for a couple of days," Kromer said.
But not everyone thinks it will take days. Veteran Republican Strategist Keith Nahiggian, who’s worked in Republican presidential administrations joined On The Hill Sunday, telling FOX 5 he expects a quick decision on election night.