After four years of politicking, advertisements, and raucous debates, Americans will soon tune in to find out the next president of the United States: President Donald Trump or Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
But despite the desires of some impatient followers of American politics, there is no one specific time that each state reports its election results.
Instead, each state will begin to report its results once all of its polling sites are closed. Most states have their polling locations open for at least 12 hours, but each state's hours are different and start and finish at different times. If a state is split into multiple time zones, then it will only begin reporting once its last polling site is finished.
In swing states, polls first close in Florida and Georgia in 7:00 p.m. ET, in North Carolina and Ohio at 7:30 p.m. ET, in most of Michigan and Texas at 8 p.m., in Wisconsin and Arizona at 9 p.m. ET (although Arizona embargoes the release of election results until an hour afterward), and in Iowa at 10 p.m. ET.
But voters in every state are legally allowed to cast their ballot if they're still in line at the time when the polls close, meaning that long lines in some places could extend after polls legally close.
