U.S. midterm election results may not be clear for days
The growing popularity of early voting, long a reality in the U.S. but never more so than since the COVID-19 pandemic, has complicated the counting process.
Last-minute voters are headed to the polls across the United States on Nov. 8 — but the results of the 2022 midterm elections may not be clear for days.
Campaign officials and political observers are warning Americans that they likely won’t know the final outcome before the end of the week.
The growing popularity of early voting, long a reality in the U.S. but never more so than since the COVID-19 pandemic, has complicated the counting process.
That’s producing ominous echoes of 2020 in battleground states like Pennsylvania, where polls suggest the fight for control of the Senate is coming down to the wire.
Brendan McPhillips, the campaign manager for Democratic Senate hopeful John Fetterman, is warning supporters that the final results will likely take several days.
McPhillips also says that because ballots that are cast on election day, which often favour Republicans, tend to be counted first, Fetterman’s rivals may try to declare premature victory.
“Republicans are already laying the groundwork to potentially spread false conspiracy theories about the likely ‘red mirage’ of ballot processing in Pennsylvania,” McPhillips said on Nov. 7 in a note to supporters.
More than 1.4 million mail-in ballots were requested in Pennsylvania this year, he added — 70 per cent of them by registered Democrats, compared to 20 per cent by registered Republicans.
Democrats, buffeted by fierce electoral headwinds that include inflation, escalating fears of crime and a deeply unpopular president in the White House, have been leaning into what they describe as an effort to erode U.S. democracy.
As Obama and Biden feted Fetterman and gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro, Trump himself was whipping up his own supporters in Latrobe at a rally widely seen as a preview of the former president’s own comeback bid.
And if the results of the midterms won’t be clear for several days after polls close on Nov. 8, it could take even longer to determine who controls the Senate if that ends up coming down to the fight in Georgia.
