When Will CA's Election Results Be Known In 2024?

CALIFORNIA — More than 8 million Californians already cast their ballots just one day before the election, but even with the advantage of early voting, it's likely to take several days to determine the winner of several races.

In this election, several key races are highly competitive, with narrow margins of victory anticipated, making it a challenge to know the winners on Election Day, according to the California Voter Foundation.

And this election will be a nail-biter, since it will decide who sits in the White House and determine the balance of power in Congress.

And while the latest polls showed a landslide of support for Vice President Kamala Harris in blue California, national polling placed the presidential contest on a knife's edge. Harris and former president Donald Trump are battling down to the wire in swing states.

The New York Times reported that it was one of the closest presidential elections in the history of American politics.

Why Are There So Many Competitive CA Congressional And Down Ballot Races In 2024?

It isn't just this year, the Golden State's elections have been more competitive over the last decade.

There are several factors at play. Politicians are no longer responsible for drawing their political districts. For more than a decade now, that job has been reserved for an independent citizens' commission that shapes districts based on their communities, not for politicians' political advantages, according to the California Voter Foundation.

And these days, California's "Top Two" primary process sends just two legislative and congressional candidates to the General Election ballot regardless of party affiliation. This process has increased competition in several tight races.

Lastly, voters in a handful of congressional districts in the Central Valley and Southern California have alternated between electing Republican and Democratic candidates over the course of recent election cycles. Both the national Democratic and Republican parties have taken notice. With these districts "in play," California's congressional races that were starved for national funding in 2020 and 2022 have turned into some of the most expensive nationwide this year.

Further down the ballot, many city councils and school boards shifted elections from at-large to district-based, further contributing to tighter margins in local races.

"These changes brought more competition and narrower margins to the state's contests," the foundation said.

California's congressional races the decade before these changes took effect saw less competition, with normally one or two U.S. House districts seen as competitive. As a result, incumbents frequently went unchallenged. Over the past 10 years, there have routinely been five competitive congressional contests, one or two incumbents defeated each election season.

In 1990, legislative term limits were enacted, which also made races more competitive.

How Long Will Presidential Results Take?

It's hard to say just when the race for the presidency could be called as tight races in many states often mean the results will take longer. Slowing things down even more is the possibility of recounts in key swing states.

Legal challenges may also come into play. In the battleground state of Pennsylvania, this already happened when the high court ruled that voters should be allowed to cast provisional ballots in person at their polling place if their mail ballots are rejected due to defects. According to the BBC, more than 100 lawsuits were filed leading up to the election, with Republicans challenging everything from voter eligibility to voter roll management.

And of course, there are concerns surrounding election deniers, who pushed debunked claims of widespread voter fraud in 2020. Observers fear that a repeat of Jan. 6 in some form could occur if the results are widely contested again.

There has been no evidence of widespread voter fraud in California that would sway an election.

In California, more than half of likely voters reported that they had a lot of confidence in the state's voting system, according to a poll released by the Public Policy Institute of California the day before the election. However, differences were observed across party lines.

Nearly 80% of Democrats expressed confidence in California elections. Meanwhile, about 4 in 10 Republicans said they had very little confidence about how votes are cast and counted in the state, according to PPIC.

Some Republicans say they are gearing up for a fight if Harris is declared the winner.

“Election integrity is a top-of-mind issue for Republicans after the 2020 election and that is even more so going into 2024, because they’ve seen this before and they want to make sure we have a free and fair election,” John Ullyot, a Republican strategist and former Senate aide and Trump administration official told The Hill.

Experts say that election fraud is still top of mind in 2024 for GOP voters, and Trump's billionaire ally Elon Musk has played a huge role in underscoring these fears.

"If the fraud theme of 2020 was: ‘Covid is allowing ineligible people to vote or ballots to be manipulated,’ the 2024 theme seems to be ‘illegals are voting,’ and that fits in very much with the kind of nativist anti-immigrant language coming from the top of the Republican ticket,” Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, told The Guardian in October.