If the polls just closed, how can AP already declare a winner? How the process works

While the presidential contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris still remains too close to call, some winners in down-ballot races have already been declared – just as the polls close in those states.

FOX Television Stations relies on the Associated Press’ race-calling for elections. The AP has delivered the results of U.S. elections long before the internet, smartphones or social media. It first did so in 1848, when it called the White House for Zachary Taylor, and continues to do so in 2024.

How does the process work?

The AP says determining a winner before any votes have been counted may seem counterintuitive, but race calls at poll closing time in uncontested or landslide races have been a routine part of election nights for decades.

The hotly contested races are the ones that can take hours, days or even weeks to decide – and therefore tend to be the most memorable and attract the most attention.

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Before determining whether a winner can be declared when polls close in a given state, the AP said it considers multiple factors and analyzes all the available data.

Importantly, the organization says it will never declare the outcome in a competitive race before enough votes are counted to make the winner clear.

Many races called as polls close are uncontested races

Many of the races that are called just as the polls close are uncontested elections, where only one candidate appears on the ballot and is therefore the only possible winner of the race.

In the 2024 general election, the AP previously said it will declare winners in nearly 2,000 uncontested races, compared with about 4,500 contested races.

Voters in some parts of the country live in multimember districts for offices such as state legislature, where more than one candidate is elected in a district. In those districts, an uncontested race is one where the number of candidates on the ballot is equal to or less than the number of seats available in that district.

How AP calls noncompetitive contests

Sometimes it’s possible to declare winners at poll closing time in noncompetitive races with multiple candidates in areas where one political party has an established history of lopsided victories, according to the AP.

In these cases, the organization analyzes multiple sources of available data, including the results of AP VoteCast, a comprehensive survey of both voters and nonvoters that determines who voted, how they voted and why, to confirm the outcome.

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The AP will not call a race when polls close if AP VoteCast’s results indicate a deviation from the state’s long-standing political trends and voting history. AP VoteCast results are available for all 50 states, though only a small number are being considered as potential poll close calls.

There is no AP VoteCast survey in the District of Columbia, so no contest there is being called when polls close even though the nation’s capital has a long history of overwhelming victories for Democratic candidates.

For example, the AP’s poll close calls in the 2020 presidential election included Wyoming, a state that last voted for a Democrat in 1968 and that Donald Trump won over Joe Biden by 44 points; and Massachusetts, which last voted for a Republican in 1984 and that Biden won by 34 points over Trump.

What happens if a state has multiple time zones?

A handful of states and districts have multiple poll closing times because they are in more than one time zone. In these cases, the AP is not declaring a winner before the final poll closing time in that state or district.

Florida, Texas and some others begin to release vote results from most of the state shortly after polls close in the earlier time zone. Votes that are already counted from areas in the earlier time zones will also be considered in determining whether a winner can be declared at the moment when the last polls close.

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Other election data the AP takes into account include an area’s voting history from recent elections, voter registration statistics and pre-Election Day polling.

When the above data points confirm the expected result in a state where either major party has a history of dominating elections, the AP says it may call the race as soon as voting ends.

When will we know who won the 2024 presidential election?

With a razor-thin race between Harris and Trump, it’s been stated for weeks that it’s very possible we won’t know who won the presidential contest on election night.

Different states have different counting rules, and with early voting and mail-in voting now a regular part of the process, the returns in pivotal swing states could take longer.

"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 previously told FOX 5 DC.