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State officials in Indiana and Kentucky are likely to report some of the first results of the 2022 midterm elections on Tuesday soon after polls close in parts of those states at 6 p.m. Eastern time. Within a few hours, results from most areas should be flooding in, but expect some states to count a lot faster than others.
In 2020, an influx of mail-in and early ballots due to the pandemic caused major slowdowns in vote counting and reporting election results. It took four days for enough votes to be counted for the major decision desks to call the presidency for Joe Biden. Vote counting isn’t expected to be nearly as slow as it was last time around, but there’s a chance we won’t know the outcomes of some key races — and possibly even control of Congress — on election night.
Texas
Polls close: 8 p.m./9 p.m. Eastern (7 p.m. local time). Two Texas counties are in Mountain time.
How long does counting usually take? Most of the votes are typically counted within 4-5 hours of polls closing statewide, with remaining votes verified over the following days. Unless a race is too close to call, most winners are determined by 2 a.m. Eastern. In fact, in the 2020 general election, more than half of all votes counted were released within 75 minutes of polls closing statewide. Texas can count quickly because so much of the state votes early, and counties with 100,000 people or more are allowed to start tallying early votes once the early voting period ends — this year that’s Nov. 4 — which gives them a head start. Counties with less than 100,000 can start counting when polls open on Election Day, but with the smaller populations, many still manage to count all early votes by the time polls close. (More from the AP)
