The fate of the United States happens today on Election Day and things may get confusing. Millions of Americans head to the polls today and will be expecting immediate results, but with so many states in play it will take to time to gauge who is winning the 2016 presidential election. We’ll highlight some key times that you can zone in on and expect to see some results.
Poll Closing Times In Battleground States:
7 pm
Last polls close in Virginia, New Hampshire
7 pm
Last polls close in North Carolina, Ohio
8 pm
Last polls close in Florida, Pennsylvania
9 pm
Last polls close in Michigan, Colorado, Wisconsin
10 pm
Last polls close in Nevada, Iowa
1 am
Adak, Alaska is the last county in the country to close polls
4 am
The Associated Press and other news outlets cease live coverage, to resume the following day.
Exit Polls
At 5 pm exit poll results from Edison Research of Somerville, New Jersey will become available. They have 933 interviewers posted at key precincts to assess the balloting and expect to interview 16,000 early or absentee voters and 85,000 voters in person.
For the last two decades and the last five presidential elections, the mainstream media surveyed voters leaving polls in all 50 states, but this year the exit polls will gauge voters in 31 states.
The biggest news outlets including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox, as well as radio stations, newspapers, wire services and websites pledged before Congress to avoid declaring a winner in each states until the polls close in that state.
If you want to drive yourself crazy over early polling results that will change a thousand times by the end of the polls tonight you can check out VoteCastr. The bipartisan organization collects data from thousands of precincts across 17 key battleground states to give citizens a glimpse into the election results. The site is in a partnership with Vice and Slate to publish up-to-date poll results every three hours throughout election day. But don’t allow these early results to influence and affect your vote because they are likely to change throughout the day.