Will the Senate be called on Election Night?

[Xing]

Even though I currently think Republicans end up with 54 seats, I think the answer is “no.” It’s hard to see several of the vulnerable Democratic seats being called quickly enough. Georgia has the 50% threshold, plus Atlanta takes a while to come in, so that one won’t likely get called early. I don’t think Hassan will lose by much if she loses at all, so an early Republican call there is unlikely. Arizona and Nevada close much later, not to mention it can take a while to count all of the early votes, so good chance we won’t know the result for sure in either of those races on Election Night. Even if one of these seats were called earlier, there’s also a good chance Pennsylvania takes a while to call.

And if Democrats were to somehow overperform enough to hold the Senate, I also don’t see any way that it would be confirmed on Election Night for the aforementioned reasons.

[Xing]

Depends what you mean by election night cause I still count anything till 3 AM ET as Election Night

Even so, I think votes would have to be counted much more quickly than normal for a call before then.

[Xing]

Yes, mostly because NV and AZ tend to count their votes very fast, and I don’t expect either race to be decided by a razor-thin margin (although AZ will probably be closer than NV). WI/NC (esp. the latter) should also be called fairly early, and that’s all the GOP needs.

AZ took a long time to count its votes in 2018, and the margin changed quite a bit. Same thing happened in 2020, though that can be partially explained by increased early voting due to COVID. And if my memory serves me correctly, NV-GOV wasn’t called until the next morning, even though it was a 4-point margin, so I don’t think they’d need to be razor-thin to take a bit to call.

[Xing]

Bump.