This is what time you'll find out who wins the US election

Unless you just woke up from a five-month-long nap, you’re probably aware that the 2020 US presidential election is taking place today, November 3.

In fact, even if you did happen to pass out for a little while, it’s been impossible to miss regardless of where in the world you are.

If you’d rather skip the hours of updates to come, the countless minutes of pundit pontificating, and the endless seconds of repeated sound bites and get to when you find out who the next President of the United States will be – we’ve got you.

There are just a few things you need to know first. Stay with us:

Electoral College votes

The election is decided by the Electoral College. Members of the Electoral College represent their state and each state is given a specific number of electors based on their population. If a candidate wins a state they win all the votes available to that state. For example, the state of California is worth 55 electoral college votes while the state of South Dakota is worth 3.

This is only important to you because there are 538 total electoral college votes up for grabs tonight, which means that the magic number you’ll be hearing over and over again, as it’s what’s needed to secure the White House, is 270.

Exit poll interviews

Networks love exit polls. This is where they interview people who’ve just voted and try to use those small numbers as indications of larger trends. Depending on the results of exit polls (particularly in key battleground states), the election could be called much earlier than usual. As CNN explains, “In order for Trump to win, he would need to secure all of the states currently considered battlegrounds, including Florida, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, and New Hampshire.”

Times polls close

Keep in mind that you’re dealing with 50 states across six time zones (four in the continental US). So that’s a lot of polls over a lot of time zones that need to close up.

This means that there are some very important times to tune in if you want to know which way the election is looking to go. Here are some times that could either make or prolong the declaration of a winner:

Florida closes at 4 pm PST / 7 pm EST
North Carolina and Ohio close at 4:30 pm PST / 7:30 pm EST
17 and a half (yes, actually) + DC close at 5 pm PST / 8 pm EST
Arizona, all of Texas, and eight and a half other states’ polling close at 6 pm PST / 9 pm EST
Nevada and four other states close at 7 pm PST / 10 pm EST

Announcement of winner

For the past few US elections, the Associated Press has called the winner between 8 pm PST / 11 pm EST and 8:40 pm PST / 11:40 pm EST. This seems to be the standard most media are comfortable with. At that point, all of the continental US polls will have closed and nearly all of the 570 electoral college votes will have been decided (if not yet known), and exit polls will indicate if there are any final surprises in store.

Keep in mind, however, that the 1996 election was called as early as 6 pm PST / 9 pm and the 2000 election was not called that night because of the Florida recount.

So there you have it.

We have no concrete idea when the next President of the United States will be named. But barring any major shocks or upsets, or one of the candidates (we’ll let you guess which one) refuses to accept the results and causes one hell of a stir, you should know roughly who the next POTUS is around 8-8:30 PST / 11-11:30 pm EST.

Happy watching.

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