This Election Day, voters across America are going to the polls to cast their vote for the 47th president of the United States.
As election workers count the ballots and voting data is released, media outlets will begin to call states in favor of either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump this evening. While outlets will likely call the final result in the days or week(s) after November 5, their determination is only ever a projection. The election will be officially certified on January 6 by Congress.
Check back this evening for live election updates from The Independent as exit poll data is released and the final ballots are cast.
Both candidates are gunning for 270 electoral votes, the golden number needed to secure the White House.
Thanks to early voting data and exit polls, media outlets will likely begin to release information on the results at 5 p.m. ET. However, it will still be hours until meaningful information comes in. The first polling centers to close will shut their doors at 6 p.m. local time, while some polling centers will stay open until 8 p.m. local time — including many on the West Coast.
Experts previously told The Independent that the timeline for calling the race largely depends on two things: how close the election is in individual states and the specific laws of those states regarding counting votes and potential recounts, which all vary.
One tool that news outlets will use are exit polls. These give their audiences insight into how people may have voted and how a state’s electoral votes might lean.
Traditionally, exit polls are conducted via in-person interviews with voters outside of polling centers after they’ve cast their ballot. Pollsters are posted outside of voting centers ahead of and on Election Day. They also conduct phone and text surveys to reach voters who mailed in their ballots.