Election Night Guide

Sources

County targets

2024 presidential results by county (3,112 counties in the site’s county files, whose state sums match the FEC’s official totals), and the county pattern in our forecast’s precinct file. To tie is each county's expected margin if the state ends exactly even, taken from the county-by-county pattern in our own forecast and weighted by 2024 turnout; where we have no pattern for a race, the table says it moves every county by the same amount instead. 19 of the 19 county tables use the forecast pattern; where a state has a Senate and a governor race, the Senate race sets the column and the governor race's pattern differs from it by up to 4 points in the printed counties. Alaska reports by state House district, so it has no county table: 19 of 20 states have one.

House lean

The 2024 presidential result on the 2026 district lines (Dave’s Redistricting, The Downballot, Texas Legislative Council).

Races

Every race we rate Toss-up, Tilt or Lean for the Senate, governor and the House, plus, as early signals, the races we rate Likely in states whose first polls close by 7:30 PM ET. “Our forecast” is Call the Map’s edition ctm-2.2-20261031-f17cb06f835b, as of October 31, 2026.

Poll closing

State election offices and statutes.

Legislatures, measures

Ballotpedia, checked against NCSL; Ballotpedia’s 2026 measures. We forecast neither.

Rules that decide a race

Georgia: Georgia.gov: Election Day, General Election Runoff (read October 31, 2026); Georgia: Georgia.gov: Vote in Runoff Elections (read October 31, 2026); Maine: Maine Secretary of State: How does the RCV tabulation process work? (read October 31, 2026); Maine: Maine Secretary of State: Ranked Choice Voting Resources (updated Oct. 6, 2026) (read October 31, 2026); Florida: 2026 Florida Statutes, s. 102.141(7) (read October 31, 2026).

Early and late counties

The early and late tags and the “Count order (2024)” lines describe the 2024 election night only, and say nothing about 2026. They are read from the same AP count as the count by hour and the “In by” column (see Count timing), so they cannot disagree with them. Early: the county was 90% counted by 9 PM ET. Late: not yet 90% counted at 11 PM ET. Times are Eastern and are the hours of the archived copies, so a county’s time can be up to an hour later than the moment it passed 90%. For Wisconsin and Nebraska the lines come from dated news reports, listed here, and a county is tagged late only where the AP count agrees.

• Nebraska. Published reports about the 2024 count: North Platte Post (Nebraska Examiner) (published Nov 6 2024 3:00 PM).
• Wisconsin. Published reports about the 2024 count: PolitiFact (published Nov 14 2024); Civic Media (published Oct 22 2024 (pre-election plan)).

Count timing

The “Count by hour” strips, the “In by” column and the table on the last pages describe the 2024 presidential count only and are a guide to 2026, not a promise: 2024 was a presidential year with more early and mail voting than a midterm, so times can differ. The figures are the AP count behind the New York Times results feed, read from copies the Internet Archive took during and after the night (Eastern time). Each figure is the share of that state’s or county’s own final count already in at the latest copy at or before the hour; the final count is the feed’s last count (the certified totals for some states, named in the data file), not a vote total. “In by” is the first hour a county had passed 90% of its final count; Wed, Thu and Fri use the last copy before that morning or evening. Copies are a minute or two apart and some hours have no copy within an hour: those figures are left out, not filled in. Minnesota’s and Iowa’s statewide totals overnight, and Anoka County MN and Story County IA, are marked n/a: the feed had no data for them until the next day. Virginia’s shares run 2 to 5 points high against the state’s own totals. A copy's address is https://web.archive.org/web/<time>id_/<feed>. Where exact is false the time is given to the minute and the address resolves to the copy nearest that minute.

• Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia. 7 copies, from Nov 5, 7:59 PM ET to Nov 6, 1:57 AM ET.
  Every copy and its address

  8 PM: Nov 5, 7:59 PM ET; 9 PM: Nov 5, 9:00 PM ET; 10 PM: Nov 5, 10:00 PM ET; 11 PM: Nov 5, 10:59 PM ET; 12 AM: Nov 5, 11:51 PM ET; 1 AM: Nov 6, 1:00 AM ET; 2 AM: Nov 6, 1:57 AM ET.
• Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin. 12 copies, from Nov 5, 7:59 PM ET to Nov 14, 10:20 PM ET.
  Every copy and its address

  8 PM: Nov 5, 7:59 PM ET; 9 PM: Nov 5, 8:59 PM ET; 10 PM: Nov 5, 9:55 PM ET; 11 PM: Nov 5, 10:59 PM ET; 12 AM: Nov 5, 11:51 PM ET; 1 AM: Nov 6, 12:59 AM ET; 2 AM: Nov 6, 1:57 AM ET; Wed 9 PM: Nov 6, 6:33 PM ET; Thu 9 AM: Nov 7, 5:15 AM ET; Fri 9 AM: Nov 7, 7:13 PM ET; Mon Nov 11: Nov 11, 12:00 AM ET; Nov 15: Nov 14, 10:20 PM ET.

Count order

AP Decision Notes, MIT Election Data + Science Lab, AP via PBS NewsHour, AP (Askarinam) via NBC4 Washington, Protect Democracy, Newsweek, Anchorage Daily News, Charles Stewart III, Election Updates.

Not results: Call the Map never reports or fills in a result.