Control of Congress may not be settled by election night results in 2026, and some contests will take longer to call. Election administrators and researchers say that is routine and not evidence of wrongdoing, even if some candidates claim otherwise.
As ballots are cast and counted on Tuesday, election specialists urge voters to treat unfounded allegations of fraud with skepticism. Many marquee contests are expected to be tight. Close margins typically slow reporting and delay projections.
David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, said he doubts Americans will know who controls the House or Senate on election night. If they do, he said, it would suggest a sweeping outcome.
election night results and misinformation risks
Becker said candidates who believe they are underperforming are the most likely to question the process. He added that former President Donald Trump would probably spread false claims about the election on election night, noting his behavior in 2020. Asked recently if he would accept the midterm outcomes, Trump replied that he would if the elections were honest.
Lawrence Norden, vice president of the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, warned that misinformation tends to spread between voting and the release of final tallies. That window gets longer when races are close. Speedy counting cannot erase a razor-thin margin, he said.
Perception of speed versus the actual count
Becker noted that public perception of how fast votes are counted is often shaped by when news organizations project winners, not by the pace of official tabulation. Media projections are driven by the margin of victory and assessments of outstanding votes and their likely composition.
California illustrates the range of timelines. Some contests are called almost immediately, while others can take days or weeks. William Gates, executive director of Arizona State University’s Mechanics of Democracy Laboratory, said that heavily favored races may be projected minutes after polls close, but high-profile contests such as the Los Angeles mayoral primary and the governor’s race in past cycles have taken several days to settle.
One factor is California’s universal mail voting. Ballots postmarked by Election Day can arrive up to a week later and must pass signature verification. Those received before Election Day can be processed in advance but are not counted until after polls close. Ballots arriving on or after Election Day usually take longer because they must clear verification before being counted.
Gates, a former Maricopa County Board of Supervisors member, said Arizona’s counting pace is comparable to other states, but close contests and the state’s swing status draw disproportionate scrutiny. In 2020, networks varied in projecting the state’s presidential winner, and he said his family received threats amid the attention.
Becker emphasized that complete vote counts have never been finished on election night. Ballots are complex and certification takes weeks in every state.
Mail voting and the count timeline
States with large numbers of mail ballots typically take longer to report. In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, state law bars officials from processing mail ballots before Election Day morning, slowing the release of results.
Jurisdictions that automatically send ballots to all active registered voters include California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, Utah, Washington and the District of Columbia.
Because the makeup of mail, early in-person and Election Day voters can differ, reported totals can shift as each tranche is processed. Norden likened the process to watching a recording of a completed game. The outcome is already determined by the ballots cast, but the audience learns the result as the count unfolds.
Trump has disparaged mail voting as fraudulent, but Becker said partisan patterns in mail balloting shifted in 2020 after Trump opposed the method during the pandemic. Since late-arriving mail ballots are reported later, some places show a “red mirage” early, followed by a “blue wave” as those ballots are tallied. He cited Pennsylvania in 2020, where Election Day votes were reported first and leaned Republican, while mail ballots, processed later under state law, were largely Democratic and reported in subsequent batches.
Becker suggested one guiding principle as results come in. Candidates who complain about the process generally believe they are losing, he said, while candidates who are winning allow the process to run its course.
Voters weighing these dynamics can also consider why voting is important in the 2026 midterm elections as they follow results and post-election debates.