Election Day has finally arrived. More than 59 million Americans have already voted, and many more are voting today. But while we’d all like to end the suspense and learn the outcome, we almost certainly won’t know the results of every race tonight.
Some years, we learn which party wins control of the House of Representatives or the Senate on the night of the election. But, other years, it takes much longer. In 2022, for instance, the Associated Press didn’t call the House of Representatives for Republicans until eight days after Election Day. And individual races can take days or even weeks to know which candidate won.
The Trump administration often exploits this ambiguity to cast doubt on the integrity of elections, arguing that there must be something sketchy going on if it takes so long to report results. For example, President Trump disparaged California’s elections as “worse than any third world country” for their tendency to count ballots slowly. This is a key tactic of the Trump administration’s predictable Deceive, Disrupt, Deny playbook to meddle in the midterm elections.
But the truth is, though rumors travel fast, elections can move slowly. If some races aren’t called right away, it’s not evidence of interference or problems with the process. It’s what we expect.
In fact, it is very, very likely that some House races will take a long time to count. We don’t know exactly where yet, and won’t until results start coming in, but somewhere will be slower than anticipated.
Learn more about what happens after polls close →
We crunched the numbers for the 2026 midterms
How long might it take to know results for the 2026 midterms? Well, we don’t have a crystal ball, but we used the next best thing — data.
Our team at Protect Democracy looked at historical data1 and applied what we know about this election to estimate when 2026 House races (and the House overall) might be called by the AP under different scenarios.
Then we simulated thousands of 2026 elections. Our simulated elections were performed under a range of different national environments, from scenarios in which the results strongly favor Republicans to ones in which they strongly favor Democrats.
Keep in mind that our results are subject to significant uncertainty — it is highly likely that some races will be called much sooner or later than our model expects.2
But our model can help suggest what to look for in the days ahead.
