Politics

US election results: America waits on knife-edge

The closer the competition is, the longer the wait for the results. Unlike in 2020, Republicans are fully prepared to legally contest the results if Trump doesn't win and violence cannot be ruled out.

Dave Murray

US election results: America waits on knife-edge

Robert Ford

last update on 05 Nov 2024

The closer the competition in an American election is, the longer the wait for the results. US President Joe Biden’s margin of victory in 2020 was 44,000 votes in Georgia, Wisconsin, and Arizona out of a total of 155 million votes nationwide. Then, Americans had to wait five days before television networks announced the winner.

According to opinion polls, the margin this year will also be slim. If neither Vice President Kamala Harris nor former US President Donald Trump wins by a wide margin, it will be another long wait. Counting votes from rural areas and smaller towns and cities finishes quickly, and those results will be known by late Tuesday.

Historically, votes from these areas favour the Republican candidate, whereas votes from bigger cities trickle in later and typically favour Democrats. Early Republican leads thus often shrink with time, as was the case in 2020.

We can expect Trump to be ahead late on Tuesday, 5 November, with early results, and then Democrats narrowing the gap in the early hours of 6 November as vote results arrive from cities. And just as he did in 2020, Trump will likely declare victory late 5 November before the wave of Democratic votes has been fully counted.

REUTERS/Emily Elconin — A woman casts her ballots for the upcoming presidential elections as early voting begins in Ann Arbor, Michigan, US, September 24, 2020.

Mail-in ballot delays

However, Trump knows there will be more votes to count even after city polling stations send their results. In 2020, nearly half (46%) of the ballots came by mail. Democratic voters have traditionally used mail-in ballots more than Republican voters. In 2020, for example, in the 18 states in America that checked party registration on mail-in ballots, the Democrats’ ballots were 18 million compared to 10 million for the Republicans. This difference delivered Biden the election victory.

This year, the Republican Party urged its supporters to use mail-in ballots despite criticising them in 2020. However, Trump showed his erratic behaviour by again criticising mail-in ballots this year despite his own party encouraging their use.

Votes are counted not at the state level but at the level of the over 3,000 counties in the United States. The workers in each county must verify the voters' signatures using mail-in ballots and check to confirm that these voters did not vote again at a polling station in the county. Then, the voting machines count the votes.

This time around, attacks on the credibility of the election results will most likely be the reason for delay. Trump insists that only Democrats' cheating with help from the deep state will block his victory. On 30 September, he told a rally in Pennsylvania that Democrat-majority cities are cheating— without giving evidence.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Republican party, including Vice President candidate JD Vance and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, warn that they will respect the election outcome only if it is “free and fair.” Johnson, who leads the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, said on 24 September that “if we have a free, fair and safe election, of course, we are going to follow the Constitution”, hinting that they will not follow the Constitution if they perceive the election is not clean. They do not define what clean is, but Trump defines any election he loses as fraudulent.

Recalling the 2000 election between Republican George W. Bush and Democratic candidate Al Gore shows how different Trump and his Republican Party are from what used to be considered "normal" American politics. That tight race came down Florida's electoral votes. In those days, neither candidate accused the other of cheating.

When the Republicans launched a legal case demanding a recount of Florida ballots, Bush and Gore supported the judicial process and urged supporters to be patient. When a Supreme Court ruling changed the results of 547 ballots, handing Bush the election, Gore acknowledged defeat and congratulated his opponent.

In 2020, Donald Trump claimed victory on election day before all the votes were counted and never publicly accepted the court decisions in November and December, which stopped his legal effort to change the election results. This, in turn, sparked the 6 January 2021 insurrection on the Capitol building.

Armies of lawyers

This time, the Republican Party has prepared a massive legal offensive after their failure in November and December 2020 to block Biden’s narrow victories in key states like Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Arizona. Their hasty court cases in 2020 claimed improper administration of the elections, including inadequate election monitoring, fraudulent treatment of ballots by mail and problems with the machines counting votes. Judges—including some Trump appointees—rejected 60 different cases because of Republicans’ improper legal procedures or lack of evidence.

46% of Republicans will not accept a Democratic victor in November, and 14% said they "will take action"

'The Hill' poll

In 2024, the Republican national election campaign—coordinating with key states' Republican Party activists—set up new "election integrity task forces" with teams of lawyers and tens of thousands of election monitors to collect information. These task forces have already launched 126 cases alleging improper election procedures in 26 states. For example, in the critical state of Georgia, there are challenges to over 7,000 names on voter lists. (Biden beat Trump by only 11,779 votes out of 4.6 million votes in the state in 2020.)

Similarly, the Republican Party has filed a case about improper identification of voters who send mail-in ballots in the key state of North Carolina, claiming that the county election offices haven't confirmed these voters are American citizens. Biden had 1.5% more votes in North Carolina than Trump in 2020, and in that election, 20% of North Carolina votes came by mail. If the Republicans win this court case in 2024, mail-in ballots could be at risk.

For its part, the Democratic Party has assembled legal teams to counter Republicans in the courts, and hundreds of cases are likely in November. Some could even be taken to the Supreme Court, where most judges are believed to be more sympathetic to the Republican Party (Trump appointed three of the nine judges).

Beyond these legal challenges, the Republican Party is also preparing to delay vote certification. The process is for counties to certify results and then for states to collect all their county counts and confirm the final count at the state level, thus also deciding the state's electors—Republican or Democrat—for the Electoral College election of the president on 17 December. During the 2022 legislative elections, Republican Party officials in Arizona, Michigan, and New Mexico tried to block certification until courts finally ordered them to do so.

Already, Republicans in the key state of Georgia are preparing to block certification if Harris wins. The state's Republican-dominated election commission gave county election officials permission to conduct "reasonable inquiries" before they certify vote counts from polling stations. The commission did not define how much time would be allotted for said investigations or what they could examine. There will likely be other states where Republicans will try to delay certifying results if Harris is seen to have the edge.

REUTERS/Mike Segar — A voter carries his ballot from a voting booth while voting in the New Hampshire US presidential primary election in Manchester, New Hampshire, US, February 11, 2020.

Some law experts cast doubt on whether the Republicans can actually block Harris's election by delaying vote count certification. Derek Muller, a law professor at the prestigious Notre Dame Law School, told AP in October that the idea that the courts would not intervene to force local officials to certify results is "a crazy fantasy."

For their part, two legal experts at New York University law penned an article in the prestigious Stanford University Law School Journal in February 2024, noting that, historically, existing laws have blocked Republican threats to block vote count certification in 2024. Like Mueller, they don't see such attempts seriously threatening the vote count.

A second risk could be the Republican-controlled House of Representatives refusing to certify the results on 6 January as Trump had hoped in 2021. In 2022, Congress passed a law to reinforce the requirement that governors certify results and name electors by 11 December, making it harder for Speaker Johnson and his Republican Party allies to disrupt the final confirmation of the Electoral College vote in January if they do not like the election result.

Real risk of violence

While the legal framework appears strong, there are still worries about violence. The Hill news site published a poll in September that showed 46% of Republicans would not accept a Democratic victor in November, and 14% said they "would take action." In August, the Democratic Party had to close its office in Tempe, Arizona, after it was attacked three times by gunmen. Some workers at local election offices also received death threats, and, of course, there were two assassination attempts on Trump himself.

WIN MCNAMEE/AFP — A pro-Trump mob confronts US Capitol police outside the Senate chamber of the US Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC.

Given this tense political climate, it is not difficult to imagine protests and even attacks at some county election offices when they announce vote count certifications. After the 6 January 2021 attack on the Capitol building that tried to stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote for Biden, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice pursued those attackers in the courts.

The federal attorney in the District of Columbia told CBS News in September that 1,000 Americans were convicted of crimes committed on 6 January in 350 trials. More accused still await trial. This strong government response to the 2021 attack should help deter new attacks. Notably, only a few attackers were defiant in court; most pleaded for mercy from the judges.

However, with so many gun-toting Americans, isolated attacks by individuals or small groups could very well occur. On 3 October, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security warned that domestic extremists could attack political candidates, court workers, election administrators and journalists. Such attacks would grab news headlines but not seriously affect government institutions.

By contrast, if Trump wins and implements the measures he and his allies promise, there could be pervasive changes in government institutions and future election procedures. In the meantime, millions of Americans will be anxiously awaiting the results from the seven swing states where opinion polls still cannot reliably predict a winner: Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona.

+ / -