US election result: What time will we know who the winner is?

US election result: What time will we know who the winner is? by Jessica Haynes. AEDT = Australian eastern daylight time (Sydney time).

  • Tuesday, 10pm AEDT: Polls open in some states on the east coast.
  • Wednesday, 11am AEDT: Polling stations will start to close in eastern states.
  • Wednesday, noon AEDT: Polls close in 18 states, the most important being Pennsylvania.
  • Wednesday, 3pm AEDT: Voting closes in states on the west coast, including California.

When will the winner be named? The close of the polls on the west coast (i.e. 3pm in Sydney, or noon in Perth) will be the first opportunity for the election to be “called”. The US television networks and cable channels nowadays generally agree to wait until this time to declare a winner so as not to affect voting turnout in those states.

The new president and vice-president will be sworn in at noon on January 20, Washington DC time.

The White House

Exit polls: “The mainstream media will have exit poll results before the polls close. They are not supposed to reveal the results to the public, but if the smugness has been wiped off their faces we will know that the exit polls are good for Trump.”

The Day before the Election, by Lion of the Blogosphere.

I was just watching CNN, and we desperately need for Trump to win this in order to wipe the smugness off the faces of the mainstream media. …

The polls are based on expected turnout, which is based on past turnout patterns. This doesn’t account for the huge enthusiasm that prole whites have for Donald Trump. For example, if you drive around Staten Island, the most prole borough of New York City, you see Trump signs everywhere but not a Hillary sign in sight anywhere. Because Trump will attract people to vote who have often not voted in past elections, expect to see a larger than expected prole-white turnout, with that group leaning more heavily to Trump in exit polls than was predicted by pre-election polls …

The “shy Trump supporters” are mostly found among white “Republican-leaning” college graduates. These voters will secretly vote for Trump but not say so to pollsters because they don’t want to appear “racist” or like some stupid prole. Because they will also be shy when talking to exit pollsters, the exit polls will show a lower support for Trump among college graduates than actually happened.

I think that some of the unusually high support for the Libertarian Party candidate comes from shy Trump supporters. When has a libertarian ever gotten 4.9% of the vote? If Johnson actually comes in with a more likely 2% of the vote and Trump wins, we will know what happened to the people who supported him in pre-election polling.

hat-tip Joanne