November 5, 2024 – As the United States (US) gets ready to elect their 47th President in a few hours from now, the question being asked in India is when are we going to know who the winner is. The results of US elections have occasionally been announced within hours after the polls close, but given the tight contest this year, the wait could be longer.

The challenges of vote counting in the US are much greater than what we see here in India. The voting process might take several days with multiple methods of casting the vote. Every declaration and count is carried out at the State level. As a result of this, the official findings are not released for a long period. In fact, it may take several weeks to determine the final and official result, which is based on the Electoral College majority.

In some Presidential races, the winner has been named late on election night or early the next morning. This time, the close race in many States could mean the media will have to wait longer before projecting who has won. For weeks, Republican former president Donald Trump and Democrat current vice president Kamala Harris have been in a tight race thus keeping everyone guessing about who the winner will be. 

And in the meantime, political parties are free to make claims of victory, as was the case in the 2020 election when Trump refused to accept the Joe Biden’s victory until the very end.

The US has developed a sophisticated and systematic exit polling approach to better predict the winner. There are two primary exit polling methods and they involve media outlet participation.

In the first one, a coordinated survey is conducted by media groups such as ABC News, CBS News, CNN and NBC News. These bodies have appointed Edison Research to conduct exit polls.

The second major survey is APVoteCast, which is carried out for the Associated Press (AP) by the University of Chicago and also used by Fox News. These survey agencies begin collecting data months in advance.

By this evening, names of the winner will start to be projected through these exit polls. Although these will be mere analysis, historical data indicate that these projections usually closely resemble the actual outcome.