Slightly unpleasant reminder: Although early voting has been going on for a while now in many places, and many people have already voted, no state (zero, none, zip) has released any results yet.

Slightly unpleasant reminder: Although early voting has been going on for a while now in many places, and many people have already voted, no state (zero, none, zip) has released any results yet. Everything we know about "who's winning" is based on polling and projections based on turnout so far (we generally know who voted, but not how they voted).

While these polls and projections are often highly predictive, the only thing that actually counts are the votes.

And we won't know immediately after the polls close, either. In many states, they can't START counting mail-in and early votes until after in-person voting has concluded (for a number of reasons, some sensible, some residual). We might not know who the next president will be until Wednesday or even later.

Anyway, pace yourselves.

@mattblaze What are the sensible reasons to wait that long? I haven't thought deeply about the information security aspects, but it seems like it is common to start counting in-person votes as election day goes on (so before polls close) - are there real issues with starting on early votes similarly?

@gregtitus In some states (not all), you can cast an in-person ballot on election day that overrides your mail-in ballot. In order to allow that, they can't process mail in ballots until they know who voted in person.