The first results of the midterm elections in the USA will be available early Wednesday morning German time. However, it may take days or even weeks for the new majority in the Senate and House of Representatives to be determined.
A new congress will be elected in the USA today. According to polls, the Republicans have very good prospects of winning the majority in the House of Representatives. And their chances in the Senate are not bad either, although the race for the Chamber is likely to be tighter. However, that is not certain: “The Republicans are only one error tolerance away from a landslide victory – or annihilation,” judged the news site Fivethirtyeight, which specializes in evaluating statistics and surveys.
Because of the time difference, the first results in this country can be expected on Wednesday night at the earliest. However, since dozens of races are expected to be close, the United States is also preparing for a long election night. It may even take days or weeks for the winners to be determined.
In the course of the evening or night, there may be distorted impressions, especially at the beginning. That was already the case in the presidential election two years ago. The reason is the way in which the ballot papers received by postal vote are counted. Traditionally, this method has been used primarily by Democratic voters, while Republican supporters tend to go to polling stations more directly on election day.
Some states initiate the counting of mail-in ballots early. Florida and North Carolina, for example, allow poll workers to take the ballots out of the envelopes before election day and feed them into counting machines so that they can quickly start counting them. This can lead to the Democrats initially gaining a large lead over the course of election night, which then gradually fizzles out as the election officials progress with evaluating the ballot papers cast on the day itself. In the USA, in such a case, based on the party color of the Democrats, there is talk of a “blue mirage”, a blue mirage or illusion.
Conversely, there can also be a “red mirage” if the Republicans initially seem to have the advantage. The phenomenon can occur, for example, in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where poll workers are prohibited from opening mail ballot envelopes before Election Day. It then takes longer to count them, which is why many votes for the Democrats only flow into the election results later.
The first wave of results should come our way on Wednesday between 01:00 and 02:00 CET. Because then the polling stations will close in several states on the east coast. A first trend could already be seen if the Republicans are expected to clearly win close races, such as for a Senate seat in North Carolina.
It could get really exciting around 4 or 5 a.m. CET, says political expert Kyle Kondik from the University of Virginia. Because then the polling stations in the Midwest have also been closed for a while. The Republicans may then have so much momentum that experts from individual US media outlets will dare to predict who will have control of the House of Representatives in the new Congress.
However, if the race for the Chamber of Deputies is still tight when dawn is almost breaking on this side of the Atlantic and the projections for dozens of hard-fought seats on the west coast are coming in, experts estimate that it could be days before it is clear who will be in the future House of Representatives is in power. In California, for example, it often takes weeks to count all the ballots, since the state also accepts absentee ballots if they arrive days after the election, as long as the envelopes are postmarked no later than Election Day itself, i.e. November 8th. Nevada and the state of Washington do the same.
As for the Senate, it could also take longer to decide the presidency of the Chamber. Possibly even weeks. Because the decisive factor could be Pennsylvania, Arizona or Georgia. And in these states, polls point to particularly tight exits. If Georgia, in particular, is as close as expected and neither candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote, a runoff will be automatically scheduled for December 6th. That means it may remain open until then which party controls the Senate when the new Congress swears in on January 3, 2023.
