The United States general election is tomorrow, and the country will vote for its 47th president. Pennsylvania’s impact on the election has not been understated by the media, the candidates and political pundits across the commonwealth. But when will voters actually know the results of the election? 

The Associated Press typically calls the winners in the elections. They call the race based on facts like certified vote counts and how many votes are still uncounted. In 2020, voters placed their ballots in the box on Nov. 3, but the Associated Press didn’t call the race until Nov. 7. The long wait time was due to an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many states were simply unprepared for the number of ballots cast outside of the voting booth, which snowballed into uncertainty about the election results. 

Since then, many key swing states, including Pennsylvania, have seen legislation and court cases about their handling of mail-in ballots. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently issued a ruling that voters in the state must be given a chance to vote in-person at a polling place if their mail-in ballot was rejected because of a mistake. The Republican National Committee has asked the Supreme Court to put the decision on hold. 

Regardless of partisan policies around mail-in ballots, the important thing is that at the county level, election officials are more prepared to handle alternative voting measures than they were four years ago. This year, Pennsylvania’s State Department launched a new training program for county election directors. 

“Because the election administration landscape has changed so much since the last presidential election in 2020, and counties have seen an unprecedented amount of turnover among their top election officials during that time, the Department made it a priority this year to offer this additional training and support,” Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said in a press release in March. 

Schmidt said on Oct. 28 that Pennsylvania has already received around 2 million mail-in ballot applications, a lower volume than in 2020. The deadline for mail-in ballot applications was on Oct. 29. He also addressed fake social media videos spreading misinformation about mail-in ballots and about voter fraud, a touchy subject for both political parties. He highlighted the four years of experience in local elections that county offices have undergone in preparation for scrutiny on the national scale in this year’s general election.  

Pennsylvania still does not allow ballots to start processing until Election Day, even if the ballots were cast via mail-in, like some other key battleground states do. 

So when will voters know the final call of the election? 

Analysts are split. Many say that the work states have done to streamline the mail-in ballot processing will help the election be called in a shorter time span than the four days it took in 2020. Others say that it simply depends how close the election is, and it’s almost certainly not going to be a blowout victory for either party. 

Patience will be key this election.