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TENS OF MILLIONS of people have already cast their vote in the US election via mail-in ballots and many more will have their say in person tomorrow.
Since 1845, US elections have always been held on the first Tuesday of November and this time round, voters will either hand Donald Trump another term in the White House or elect the first female president in Kamala Harris.
It’s been a roller-coaster election campaign, from US president Joe Biden withdrawing from the race to Donald Trump facing two assassination attempts.
However, it could be several days before a winner is announced if the last election is anything to go by.
US voters were previously accustomed to knowing who would be the next president on election night.
In 2008 and 2012, US media had enough data to call the election for Barack Obama before midnight on polling day.
But since Trump entered US politics, that timeline for declaring winners has grown.
In 2016, US media projected a Trump victory in the early hours of the morning, at around 2.30am.
Last time around in 2020, the wait for a winner to be called was the second longest in the television era of election coverage.
Back in 2000, the United States waited five weeks for a Supreme Court decision to settle a recount dispute in Florida between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
Florida’s votes gave Bush 271 electoral votes, only one more than the 270 required to win the Electoral College.
While the situation wasn’t just as dramatic in 2020, it was still a four day wait before US media were confident in declaring Joe Biden to be the next President of the United States.
When the media is confident that a trailing candidate no longer has a pathway to victory, it will declare a winner.
In the 2020 election, the Associated Press declared Joe Biden the winner four days after Election Day at 11:26am Eastern Time on Saturday, 7 November.
However, in the early hours after polling day in 2020, the Associated Press called Michigan and Wisconsin for Biden, which brought him to the brink of an Electoral College majority but not over the threshold.
Speaking to The Journal, Scott Lucas, Professor of American Studies at UCD’s Clinton Institute, noted that while it was four days before a “definitive” answer could be provided in 2020, “we actually knew by about five or six o’clock in the morning” who would be the winner.
“Trump came out at 2.30am and said he won the election, and that’s because he knew that it might swing against him in the states of Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia,” said Lucas.
Trump went on to lose these three states in 2020.
Arizona indicted a number of Trump’s advisers, including former New York mayor Rudi Giuliani, over an alleged scheme to flip his defeat in the state and overturn the 2020 election result.
It also emerged that Trump called Georgia’s election chief to ask him to “find” enough voted overturn Biden’s 2020 win in the state.
Maybe.
One of the reasons why it took so long to declare the results in some states in 2020 was the increase in mail-in voting as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Mail-in ballots take longer to count and verify than in-person voting and some states did not allow for mail-in votes to be pre-processed – such as removing ballots from envelopes – before election day.
Several key states were unprepared for the dramatic increase in mail-in ballots – mail-in and absentee voting accounted for 46% of votes cast in 2020, up from 26% in the mid-term election of 2018.
This resulted in so-called “mirages” in 2020.
Democrats were far more likely to vote by mail than Republicans and this created a situation where one candidate appeared to have a massive lead, only for their rival to surge later thanks to mail-in votes.
Trump seized upon these “mirages” in 2020 and claimed that mail-in ballots were “rigged”.
But this time round, there will be fewer mail-in ballots and some key states, such as Michigan, have changed their laws to allow preprocessing of mail-in ballots before election day.
Like in 2020, it could take days before the US media is confident in projecting a winner.
Polls in the seven key swing states will close between midnight and 3am Irish time on 6 November.
To get elected, either candidate needs to reach the magic number of 270 Electoral College votes out of the 538 on offer.
Each state has a different number of Electoral College votes on offer, which is calculated by adding the number of each state’s elected representatives in the House, which varies according to population, to the number of senators (two per state).
Some states consistently vote either for the Democrat or Republican party in presidential elections and their Electoral College votes are baked into each candidate’s pathway to reaching 270.
But swing states could be won by either candidate and have the power to decide the election.
The polls will close at midnight Irish time in Georgia, with North Carolina closing following at 12.30am.
If Harris does well in Georgia and North Carolina, it could mean the race won’t be decided by the usually slower-counting states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
However, if it looks like Trump will win in Georgia and North Carolina, Harris will require wins in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and that means we’ll be in for a longer wait to know who the next US president will be.
The polls close at 1am Irish time in Michigan and Pennsylvania, 2am in Wisconsin and Arizona, and 3am in Nevada.
The Associated Press notes that “it’s not uncommon for it to take a few days – and in rare instances, a few weeks – to reach that point” where a winner can be declared.
It took a few weeks in 2000, and a few days in 2020, and the results in swing states could determine how long the wait will be this time round.
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I have four kids who live and one little girl who didn’t make it. It was the worst experience in my life and would break a relationship. I took a white coffin out the back door of holles street and as much as they were sympathetic it felt like nothing. We travelled with my little girl to glasnevin and I handed her into an open grave, it sticks to me this day. I have never really gotten over the trauma nor has my wife. We are lucky we have three healthy kids and my heart goes out to everyone that loses a child. Support Feaileacain
@orb7eckn: My deepest sympathies .. sorry have no other better words ..
@orb7eckn: Heat broken for your loss
@orb7eckn: Thank you for sharing your story a wonderful Lady and forever in my heart.
@orb7eckn: omg this is heartbreaking
@orb7eckn: So very sorry for your loss Joe. Condolences to yourself & your wife.
@orb7eckn: So sorry Joe. Heartfelt condolences to you and your family. My wife ( before I met her ) suffered the loss of her 10 day old Baby. She had a husband whom she was in the middle of divorcing. She told me she had a social worker and a language interpreter by her side who offered whatever comfort they could. The hospital staff and medics just wanted them out. I hope your family are doing well.
Savita Halappanavar …..
In all walks of life there good and bad. The problem now days is there to much box ticking and appearances the new nurses have no empathy or emotion or told not to then you have the others the only reason they choose health care was to get a visa so they have no interest at all added with overworked is what we see now.
@Be Lucky: As a patient in st James and st Vincent’s . Care was so bad,, couldn’t call it care , I felt like a criminal who didn’t deserve kindness .. nurses , it was rare to find one nice nurse .. if you cried or anyone saw you crying you got worse care .
I well.believe these horrible le stories I had the worst nightmare myself 23 years ago in the Rotunda hospital
@Karen Marten: I was so scared having my second child but it was the easiest birth out of 3 . 3hours from checking in to delivery was home 12 hours later .
3rd child in drogheda dirtiest hospital I’ve ever been in .
@Karen Marten: Same, but only 5 years ago.
I don’t think this is limited to birth, but is more widespread.
Maybe the problem is with how medical staff are selected.
There is a certain segment of the population that is psychopathic, or of similar psychological makeup.
People who lack empathy.
Yet the presence or absence of empathy is not a factor in who gets to become a medical professional.
Shouldn’t it be?
“… people giving birth …”?
@Athena: Yep!
We’re not discussing pigeons here.
@Jimmy Wallace: Yes, as it is part of the root cause of the problem.
@Athena: You mean the root cause of the problem is people in the medical profession who seem to lack empathy?
Is there anyone commenting here that shows that same lack of empathy, do you think?
@Jimmy Wallace: Of course it is a dreadful story but calling out the Journal when they publish woke nonsense is important too. People don’t have babies, women do. To ignore this nonsense is to allow it to become normalised.
Any wonder birth rates are falling with no proper health or housing
It was better in the times of “call the midwives ” my mother had some stories of the midwives calling when the younger kids came home from school they were told look what the mid wife brought a new brother /sister .
Even with paying private you aren’t guaranteed to have a private room. It’s bonkers. You spend 5 to 7000 and you aren’t even sure not to end up in an overcrowded public hospital room.
Doctors aren’t qualified, nurses have 0 empathy. If you can avoid giving birth here. Do.
@Alex: A lot of them were not qualified. My older brother was delivered by a trainee doctor in July 1973. Due to a lack of oxygen he suffered brain damage. He is 52 next month has the mental age of a 8 year old. God help him, he never stood a chance with the backwards system we had then.
@David Corrigan: that’s awful your poor mother and brother
@Karen Marten: It’s not simple Karen. My mother took great care of him until she passed away. Her attitude was that it was her problem. They were chased by the solicitors in the 70′s but they would have nothing to do with that. It’s not going to fix him is what they would say.
I reckon he would have been a solitcitor or something. A big strong man denied everything by a system not fit for the stone ages.
@David Corrigan: iys just awful the way women were and still are being treated so badly during childbirth . And then theres no support or services for children or parent .
@Karen Marten: We had A LOT of problems getting my brother care after my mother passed away. Escalated it to the highest ranks politically and in the HSE. Might as well be talking to a stone bloody wall. One HSE executive got angry at me because I emailed her. I told her to go and get a fecking real job and cut out her nonsense.
As far as I am concerned, the state put my brother into the condition he is in so they state will definitely provide a little support or whatever he needs.
Like you said, there’s no support for a lot of people. First world taxes for third world services.
I can’t actually fathom this is still ongoing. We had very good care.. apart from one nurse in her early 20s who decided that our 12 hour old little one should be woken up by rubbing an wet towel soaked in ice water on her back to shock her awake… If I had been less sleep deprived I’d probably have rammed the towel somewhere else.. but to see the horrors written above is painful to read.. it should be a wonderful memory not scarred by the traumas as described..
What a horrific read. Those poor women. I’ve only recently had experience of medical professionals not believing a patient crippled with neuralgia pain. Every single one of those women should be taking a Medical negligence claim against the HSE or a Human Rights action against the state for abuse.
I have to wonder how much of this horror is down to being understaffed and overloaded.
There should be enough staff of all levels in every hospital that they work the same kind of hours as everyone else.
There should also be enough facilities that nobody is on trolleys.
Exhausted overworked staff pretty much guarantees poor care and bad mistakes.
How do we get there from here?
We can’t start somewhere else.
@Steve O’Hara-Smith: I remember midwives chatting and laughing away at the workstation for most of the night 1 night after I’d had a section it wasn’t busy. I had to ring the bell for painkillers that were due as they weren’t giving them to me routinely and she was irritated when she came in, gave me the drugs and I asked when the next one was due. She told me the next one was due at 5 am and if I wanted it, to come out to the nurse’s station to get it I was still struggling with walking. They were definitely not rushed off their feet. This was holles street and it was rife with this culture so much treatment like this it was disgraceful. I was private too not that it should make a difference.
Stories like this make me even happier with my decision to not have children.
Absolutely despicable women are bring treated like this when they are at their most vulnerable point in their lives.
They deserve better!
Oh but we’re a ” rich advanced country ” so we should be happy
Private is the only way, no one wants to be around medical card riff raff
@John D Doe: typical snobbish remark. Who ever reared you must be so proud
@Joe Kelly: class is very important in life
@John D Doe: Even with private you are not guaranteed a private room. It’s one of their policy.
@John D Doe:
Yes, class is important, it’s a pity you have none.
@John D Doe: you could ne treated just as badly in Holles Street or any other private maternity hospital as you could be in a public one actually
@Regular John: as a members of the elite I find your comment amusing
@John D Doe: You claiming to be “elite” whilst unable to write a single sentence without multiple mistakes is amusing. You’re fooling nobody.
This sounds quite barbaric and I’m sure everyone can sympathise for all these women and their families however can I ask if an organisation like the Journal, which prides itself on factchecking, has checked the facts of all these experiences or to play Devils Advocate, if there may possibly be reasons for some of them.
I know when I was a small child and spent a considerable amount of time in hospital I found out it was a training hospital, I honestly thought every injection, every poke and prod was someone practicing on me. I hated them.
The facts are Ireland is one of the safest countries in which to give birth, clearly not one of the most pleasant, as your own statistics show a small, but significant, amount of women have a negative experience.
I suspect questioning this is any aspect will invite certain wrath but is it possible that in the hectic environment of a labour ward certain births become more difficult or confused than others and during these births ideal communication is not always possible. During these births the midwives and doctors present may be focused on delivering a healthy baby and ensuring the new mother is kept well too. This sounds quite barbaric and I’m sure everyone can sympathise for all these women and their families however can I ask if an organisation like the Journal, which prides itself on factchecking, has checked the facts of all these experiences or to play Devils Advocate, if there may possibly be reasons for some of them.
I know when I was a small child and spent a considerable amount of time in hospital I found out it was a training hospital, I honestly thought every injection, every poke and prod was someone practicing on me. I hated them.
The facts are Ireland is one of the safest countries in which to give birth, clearly not one of the most pleasant, as your own statistics show a small, but significant, amount of women have a negative experience.
I suspect questioning this is any aspect will invite certain wrath but is it possible that in the hectic environment of a labour ward certain births become more difficult or confused than others and during these births ideal communication is not always possible. During these births the midwives and doctors present may be focused on delivering a healthy baby and ensuring the new mother is kept well too.
@Boyne Shark: my story is one of them above and everything written was my own words. Yes midwives and doctors are there to ensure the safety and birth of a baby but mistakes happen and they did. But not being honest to a mother is not good enough. Yes giving birth is an unknown esp as a first timer but honesty is easier to deal with hiding information.
@Boyne Shark: I wouldn’t rule out a certain degree of exaggeration in some cases, in the hope of generous compensation. Let’s face it ,it happens.
@Caroline Walsh: I don’t doubt that you recounted your experience accurately and honestly and can only sympathise with you for what you went through. What I asked is if the Journal performed due diligence and checked if there may have been a genuine medical reason or mitigating circumstances that could explain your experience. If they haven’t carried out due diligence then, unfortunately, we will never know.
Terrible reading all this unnecessary suffering of women I could write a book on my very traumatic births which depend on sympathetic and caring doctors and nurse who listen to women .The culture in some hospitals mitigate against this happening and no-one is ever brought to account for mistreating patients .And nothing excuses these inhumane careless so called professionals
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