We’re watching several areas in Texas as polls close there.

LatestHere’s the latest.Polls are now closed in Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia and parts of Florida and New Hampshire, states with crucial midterm races that will decide control of Congress. Turnout appeared strong in battlegrounds, as millions of people cast votes that will deliver a verdict on an unpopular president who has implored the country to act as if he were on the ballot.Democratic candidates have blamed President Trump, and the war he started this year in Iran, for the economic hardships that have driven a current of frustration across the nation. Republicans have focused on portraying their Democratic opponents as extreme on social issues and the economy as they played defense in reliably red states.Favorable polling has buoyed Democrats’ hopes of taking control of the House, but Republicans have worked to protect their majority with aggressive redistricting efforts. In the Senate, Republicans sought to use their fund-raising advantage to protect seats in traditionally conservative strongholds.That includes South Carolina, where Senator Darline Graham has been filling the seat long occupied by her late brother, Lindsey, and Democrats have hoped that Dr. Annie Andrews, a pediatrician, could flip the seat. In Georgia, Republicans face the tough task of trying to unseat Senator Jon Ossoff, whom they had marked as Democrats’ most vulnerable incumbent.In Ohio — which also features an acrimonious race for governor — former Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, is vying for a comeback as he tries to oust Senator Jon Husted, a Republican. In North Carolina, former Gov. Roy Cooper faces Michael Whatley, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, as he tries to flip a seat to Democrats.In Virginia, both parties were monitoring two races — the First District, which Democrats were hoping they could flip, and another competitive contest in the Fifth District. Florida is home to more crucial House races and a high-profile Senate matchup that pits the incumbent Republican, Ashley Moody, against Angie Nixon, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.The last polling places will not close until 1 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday, in Alaska. Full results won’t be known until well into the evening — and maybe not for days or longer, particularly if many of the races are close — but it’s clear that voters were eager to have their say. In each of the major Senate battlegrounds, including Texas, North Carolina and Michigan, early turnout eclipsed that of the last midterm cycle.In Texas, overall turnout could exceed 10 million votes, which would top the total from each of the last two midterms. In Georgia, Election Day turnout was on track to beat that of the 2024 presidential election, the Georgia secretary of state said.Here’s what else we’re covering:A complicated landscape: More than 400 Times reporters, editors, data analysts, video journalists and photographers are covering the midterms, seeking to understand a large country with voters who are complicated — and sometimes contradictory. Read more ›The counting process: Control of the Senate will hinge on the outcomes in the battleground states of Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas. Here’s when to expect results ›Big spending: This is the most expensive midterm election, as measured in spending on political advertising, since at least 2018, according to data from AdImpact. Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, alone contributed $474 million to Republican groups, candidates and their allies, more than any donor has ever spent in a single election cycle. Read more ›Minor disruptions: A technical problem with voting machines in Westchester County, N.Y., outside New York City, led officials there to collect ballots by hand in a competitive House race. In Florida, flooding forced more than 20 polling stations across eight counties to be relocated. In North Carolina, technical problems at several precincts caused minor delays; state election officials said they would delay the release of election results to at least 8:15 p.m. from 7:30 p.m. Read more ›Election integrity: Many election officials and Democrats have said they fear that Mr. Trump’s attacks on the integrity of U.S. elections could lead to tensions during voting and baseless challenges to the outcome. The administration has sought to prove that many noncitizens have cast ballots, but few people have been charged with offenses related to voting fraud. Local and state officials say they are well prepared to run a secure election.Court rulings: A federal judge has turned down a request by Democratic lawmakers and party organizations to prohibit the Trump administration from coercing states into screening incoming ballots. And the Supreme Court issued what appeared to be an extraordinary rebuke to Mr. Trump, signaling that it was not interested in assisting his efforts to interfere with how states administer elections.More federal election monitors than ever have been fanned out to polling places.ImageVoters at Henry Ford High School in Detroit, where federal monitors were stationed on Tuesday.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York TimesFor decades, the Justice Department has sent monitors to observe polling places on Election Day and ensure that local officials are complying with federal civil rights laws.But the Trump administration’s decision to significantly expand the program and send roughly 1,000 monitors to all 50 states on Tuesday caused Democrats and voting-rights advocates nationwide to fear that federal officials would interfere with voters casting ballots. President Trump has repeatedly made false claims about widespread election fraud, mobilized law enforcement officials to investigate voters and asked judges to intervene in state-administered elections. The Justice Department said that it had conducted its largest monitoring effort ever this year.On Tuesday, local and state officials nationwide said the monitors had largely behaved in keeping with past elections and had not tried to interfere with or intimidate voters, although there were reports of what appeared to be minor friction.In heavily Democratic Bernalillo County, N.M., Justice Department monitors asked voters “unusual questions,” according to a spokeswoman for the secretary of state’s office. State election officials complained to the Justice Department but had received “no additional reports of similar behavior” since, the spokeswoman said.In Michigan, state officials said they reached out to the Justice Department after receiving reports of improprieties in Dearborn, Flint and Lansing. Among them: federal monitors asking poll workers for their training materials and trying to speak with voters inside polling places — both of which violated their agreements with local officials. No further problems had been reported as of late Tuesday afternoon, state officials said.Even before Election Day, local governments from Arkansas to Minnesota had decided to bar federal monitors from entering polling places, requiring them to observe from outside instead. In New Haven, Conn., local election officials told the Justice Department in a letter that “rhetoric and federal actions” appeared to be intended to “cast doubt on election integrity and to intimidate voters,” and wrote that they would deny access to the monitors.In a social media post, the Justice Department said its election monitors were “public servants doing a job the Department has done for decades: making sure that every eligible American can cast a ballot free from intimidation and discrimination.”A spokeswoman said Justice Department officials had spoken to the New Mexico secretary of state, and the issue had been “resolved.” She also said the monitors in Michigan had asked the same standard questions that had been asked in past elections. Monitors are generally allowed to talk to voters after they have left a polling location.The United States has sent monitors out on Election Day since the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in order to ensure public access to the polls, including for people with disabilities. The monitors are also meant to be on the lookout for indications of voter intimidation or suppression based on race, color, national origin or religion. The department’s civil rights division administers the initiative.Justice Department lawyers said at a court hearing on Monday that nearly 1,000 people would serve as monitors this year, up from a maximum of about 600 sent out in prior elections. The monitors are department employees but are not supposed to carry guns, display badges or wear law enforcement insignia.Often, they stand a set distance away from a polling place in civilian clothes, asking voters about their experience and observations. With more than 100,000 polling places nationwide, the vast majority of voters are unlikely to see, let alone interact with, a federal monitor.Even in Republican-led states, the presence of monitors has sometimes drawn scrutiny. During an August primary, Gov. Mark Gordon, Republican of Wyoming, complained publicly after he said the presence of federal monitors had been “aggressive, unexpected, disruptive.”This year, the Justice Department sent monitors to several Democratic-leaning areas that it had not visited in 2022 or 2024, including Boston, Chicago, Memphis and Seattle, according to Justice Department news releases. Because the program is meant to protect minority voting rights, it is not unusual for monitors to be stationed in areas with high concentrations of minority voters.In the cafeteria of Henry Ford High School in Detroit, Justice Department monitors walked around for about 15 minutes making notes on clipboards on Tuesday morning, poll workers and other observers who saw them later told a New York Times reporter.The monitors asked what seemed to be standard questions about accessibility for disabled voters and whether the machines were operating normally, the workers said.“They were satisfied with what they saw and how things were running,” said Loretta Wade, who oversaw special terminals for disabled voters.Reporting was contributed by Eileen Sullivan, Reis Thebault, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Neil VigdorScenes From Election DayWashingtonAlex Kent/The New York TimesPhoenixAdriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesMilwaukeeJamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesManhattanHiroko Masuike/The New York TimesAnchorageErin Schaff/The New York TimesWest Des Moines, IowaKC McGinnis for The New York TimesAnchorageErin Schaff/The New York TimesSan FranciscoJonah Reenders for The New York TimesColumbus, OhioMaddie McGarvey for The New York TimesRound Rock, TexasJames Talarico, Democratic candidate for SenateHaiyun Jiang/The New York TimesWhite Lake, Mich.Mike Rogers, Republican candidate for SenateVictor J. Blue for The New York TimesLos AngelesAriana Drehsler for The New York TimesAnn Arbor, Mich.Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Democratic candidate for SenateTodd Heisler/The New York TimesDetroitVictor J. Blue for The New York TimesUpper Arlington, OhioVivek Ramaswamy, Republican candidate for governorMaddie McGarvey for The New York TimesBexley, OhioDr. Amy Acton, Democratic candidate for governorMaddie McGarvey for The New York TimesFort WorthJeremy Raff/The New York TimesRichmond, Va.Demetrius Freeman for The New York TimesManhattanHiroko Masuike/The New York TimesBangor, MaineBrent McDonald/The New York TimesMilwaukeeJamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesQueensJosé A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York TimesAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTWe’re watching a few key areas as polls close in Maine and Michigan.ImageIn 2020, Senator Susan Collins fared well in Bangor, Maine, where she resides, narrowly winning the Democratic-leaning city even as President Trump lost it by 21 points.Credit...Lexi Parra/The New York TimesThe Senate contests in Maine and Michigan will be rare tests of progressive Democrats’ appeal in battleground states. There are a few key areas we are focusing on as polls at 8 p.m.Both of the states have large numbers of Democratic voters, but President Trump won Michigan in 2024 and Senator Susan Collins won Maine in 2020. This year’s Democratic candidates — Troy Jackson in Maine and Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan — will try to win back coalitions that have recently swung away from the party.It’s a marathon in Michigan, not a sprint.Michigan counts its votes relatively slowly. In 2024, when this year’s Republican nominee, Mike Rogers, came within 20,000 votes of victory, only around half of the state’s ballots had been counted by midnight Eastern. If the margin is particularly close, there’s a decent chance we will be waiting on Wayne County, the most populous county in the state and one that is teeming with Democrats. It is also usually among the last to finish reporting its votes: In the August primary, Wayne had not reported 90 percent of its results until around 3 a.m. Eastern.Dr. El-Sayed expects to draw a lot of support in Wayne — Kamala Harris won the county by around 250,000 votes in 2024 — but shifts inside the county could be critical to his overall success. In particular, we will be watching Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, and Hamtramck, a group of Wayne cities with large Arab and Muslim populations that made large shifts toward Mr. Trump in 2024. Those shifts were motivated at least in part by President Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza, which should not apply to Dr. El-Sayed, a vocal critic of the United States’ policies toward Israel.Conversely, Mr. Rogers will hope to cut into Democratic margins in the suburban Oakland County, which he lost by 12 percentage points in the 2024 Senate race. Dr. El-Sayed could be vulnerable there after losing Oakland in the Democratic primary to Representative Haley Stevens, who represents most of the county in Congress, and endorsed Mr. Rogers’ Senate bid following a highly public feud with Dr. El-Sayed. Both men have made appeals to Michigan’s Jewish voters, a large share of whom reside in Oakland.Things could also be interesting in Saginaw County, a key swing region that Mr. Rogers lost by nine votes in 2024 even as Mr. Trump narrowly carried the county (and the state) on the same ballot. A victory for Dr. El-Sayed in Saginaw would be an encouraging sign for his prospects statewide.Collins needs as many split-ticket voters as she can get.At first glance, Maine is much friendlier for Democrats than other states where Republican incumbents are being challenged: Mr. Trump lost the state in all three of his presidential campaigns. But the other Democratic candidates for Senate aren’t facing Ms. Collins, who defied the polls and won re-election by more than eight percentage points in 2020, even as Mr. Trump lost Maine by nine.Maine reports its election results by municipality, and there are nearly 500 of them in the state. In 2020, Ms. Collins proved particularly strong in high-income municipalities where a majority of voters are college-educated, like Cumberland (where she ran ahead of Mr. Trump by 27 percentage points in 2020) and Scarborough (where she ran ahead by 23). She also fared well in Bangor, where she resides, narrowly winning the Democratic-leaning city even as Mr. Trump lost it by 21 points.Far to the north, Ms. Collins also fared quite well in Aroostook County in 2020, home to Caribou, where she was born and raised. Her strength there will be tested: Mr. Jackson, a fellow Aroostook native, represented much of the area in the state legislature for decades.In the event neither candidate reaches 50 percent of the vote, the contest will be decided via ranked-choice tabulation, a process which took ten days in both 2024 and the June primary.In Dearborn, Mich., the city clerk, George Darany, said a precinct in the city was briefly out of ballots late in the day after workers there failed to alert the clerk’s office in time that it was running low. Five people waited as officials replenished the ballots within about 10 minutes. The clerk’s office also began delivering ballot applications, which were also running low in some places, to all precincts.Mayor Abdullah Hammoud of Dearborn sent out an alert on social media about the ballot situation amid high turnout and long lines, and recommended that everyone stay in line to vote past the 8 p.m. closing time, if need be. “Let’s keep the momentum going, Dearborn. Every vote matters!” he wrote.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTEarlier this evening, I was at a polling site in South Portland, Maine, where the Democratic nominee for Senate, Troy Jackson, stopped by to shake voters’ hands and deliver his closing argument to reporters. Jackson described himself as a “change agent” and argued that voters had had enough of the Republican incumbent, Senator Susan Collins. VideoCreditCredit...Beth Reinhard/The New York TimesWe’re watching several areas in Texas as polls close there.ImageCredit...Elena Shao/The New York TimesIn Texas, the Senate race between James Talarico, a Democratic state legislator, and Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general, will play out across 254 counties that include a wide mix of densely packed urban centers and spread-out rural areas.There are a few areas we will be focusing on as the results map starts to fill after polls close at 8 p.m. Eastern in most of the state. Across the state, we will be looking at Hispanic voters, who may be shifting back to the left after fueling President Trump’s victory in 2024. Texas, with numerous majority-Hispanic counties, and large Hispanic populations in its urban centers as well, has some of the easiest trends to spot in that crucial demographic. We will also be watching swing voters in the suburbs, who Mr. Talarico has targeted to help combat Mr. Paxton’s strength in rural areas.Houston metro areaHarris County, home to Houston, is the state’s largest by population. In 2008, Barack Obama became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Harris since 1964. It narrowly flipped back to Republicans in 2012 but has since voted Democratic. Mr. Talarico is likely to carry the county, but the margin may vary: Joseph R. Biden Jr. won it by more than 13 percentage points in 2020, but Kamala Harris won it by less than six percentage points in 2024, as Black and Hispanic areas in Houston swung to the right.Houston suburbs of note include the Democratic-leaning Fort Bend County, where Black and Hispanic voters saw similar rightward shifts, and Montgomery County, a rapidly growing Republican stronghold where President Trump won by about 46 percentage points in 2024.Dallas-Fort WorthAnchored by Fort Worth, Tarrant County has historically been one of Texas’ most populous conservative counties, but it has swung back and forth in recent statewide elections.In 2018, Beto O’Rourke won Tarrant by less than a percentage point in his unsuccessful bid for Senate — the first time a Democrat had won the county in a statewide race in decades. Mr. Biden narrowly carried it in 2020 before flipping back to Mr. Trump in 2024. This year, the county has been a focus for both candidates: Mr. Talarico is aiming to replicate — or improve upon — Mr. O’Rourke’s success, while Mr. Paxton is seeking to keep his party’s hold on a crucial source of votes.Collin and Denton, the northern Dallas suburbs, are redder than Tarrant, but they also trended somewhat leftward in recent years before moving back toward Mr. Trump in 2024.Austin metro areaMr. Talarico’s home base is the area around Austin. He represents parts of Travis County in the state legislature and grew up in neighboring Williamson. The Austin suburbs of Williamson and Hays could prove especially insightful. Hays has had a higher share of Democratic voters in the past, but Williamson will cast more than twice as many votes. Mr. Trump won Williamson by two percentage points in 2024, but if it moves back to the Democratic column, that would be a boon to Mr. Talarico’s chances.Bexar and El Paso countiesHispanic voters have been a crucial swing group in recent years, and they are a key reason the Texas Senate race is in play. In 2024, they were nearly evenly split in Texas between Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump, according to Times Voter Trends, but there are signs they are moving back toward Democrats.Bexar, which includes San Antonio, is the state’s most populous majority-Hispanic county. Results there could offer indications of how that demographic is leaning in urban areas. El Paso has similar dynamics, though it will begin reporting its results an hour later because it is on Mountain time.South Texas and the borderThe rural counties in South Texas, particularly in the Rio Grande Valley, will also help illuminate understanding of the shifts among Hispanic voters. The counties there are heavily Hispanic and have been shifting rightward since 2016. In 2024, Mr. Trump won them outright, flipping them from blue to red. Cameron and Hidalgo are the most populous, but smaller counties in the area with similar demographic profiles like Starr, or others close to the border like Jim Hogg or Kenedy, could show early signs of the region’s voting patterns.Rural TexasMore than 100 small, reliably red counties across rural Texas are expected to be sources of strength for Mr. Paxton. They tend to report results hours after polls close and are likely to include nearly all of their votes in their first report. By contrast, larger counties typically report early votes first, with Election Day votes coming in a few hours later.The early votes from large counties could be favorable to Mr. Talarico, but the margin is expected to narrow as the vast bloc of rural counties report their votes.We have our first competitive House race where most of the vote is counted: Florida’s 13th Congressional District, where Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican, leads by less than 0.2 points in a Trump +13 district with 95 percent of the vote counted. This race was rated “lean Republican” by the Cook Political Report, and it’s the first clear sign that Democrats are highly competitive in usually safely Republican districts.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTMargins are expected to tighten in the Senate race in Georgia. Many of the metro Atlanta counties have reported results from early and mail-in ballots, which are leaning Democratic. But there are a lot of votes to come that are expected to benefit Mike Collins, the Republican nominee, including results from ballots cast on Election Day as well as from rural areas in the rest of the state. ImageCredit...Malika Khurana/The New York TimesA map of Georgia shows five of the counties in the metro Atlanta area reporting favorable vote margins for Jon Ossoff, the Democratic candidate.The Democratic nominees for governor and Senate in Florida are very different types of Democrats, yet they are running close together so far. David Jolly, the nominee for governor, is a former Republican congressman who became a Democrat. Angie Nixon, the nominee for Senate, is a democratic socialist. Both are garnering roughly the same share of the vote so far.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesThe Senate race in Ohio, where polls just closed, was America’s most expensive general election this fall, clearing the $500 million mark in advertising spending. Republicans spent about 60 percent of the money used on the airwaves in that state, all part of an attempt to help the relatively little-known Republican incumbent, Senator Jon Husted. Some of that differential is attributable to the crypto industry. Husted was helped in the end by a crypto super PAC called Fairshake, which spent over $46 million to try to oust Husted’s Democratic opponent, Sherrod Brown.Since 2008, just two Democrats have won a partisan statewide contest in Ohio: Sherrod Brown, who is back on the ballot this year after narrowly losing his bid for a fourth Senate term in 2024, and Barack Obama, who won the state twice before President Trump carried it by wide margins in each of his presidential campaigns.Brown’s fortunes will partly hinge on a corridor of working-class counties in northern Ohio that backed both Obama and Trump, like Mahoning and Portage. Brown will also seek to cut into Senator Jon Husted’s margins in the Appalachian corner of the state that borders West Virginia. That was where he outperformed Kamala Harris the most in 2024. Keep an eye on Delaware County, too: Home to some of suburban Columbus, it’s a rare area in Ohio where Democrats have gained ground in recent years.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTOne worry that Republicans have had in Florida is that close statewide races — even if they are eventually won by Republicans — would mean stronger Democratic turnout in House races, possibly leading to surprises and upsets in a state where Republicans currently hold 20 out of 28 congressional seats.The first vote drops in Florida were remarkably strong for Angie Nixon, the Democratic nominee for Senate, who was winning early votes in the majority-Hispanic counties of Miami-Dade and Osceola by 10 and 24 percentage points. Both of those counties had flipped to Republicans in 2024.A rightward shift is likely to happen once Election Day votes start reporting in these counties, particularly because the partisan gap between Florida’s Election Day votes and early votes is smaller than it was two years ago. ImageCredit...Arfa Momin/The New York TimesA map of votes reported for the Florida U.S. Senate special election, highlighting Osceola and Miami-Dade Counties where more than 70 percent of votes are in. Nixon leads by 24 points in Osceola and 10 points in Miami-Dade.Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, a Republican congresswoman with celebrity status in MAGA circles, appears to be locked in a tough fight with Leela Gray, a retired Army brigadier general and a Democrat, in her St. Petersburg-based district.Here’s why some states take longer to count and report their results.ImageWorkers receiving mail-in ballots in a sorting area in Santa Ana, Calif. The state’s emphasis on voting by mail often leads to a slower vote count, election experts said.Credit...Apu Gomes/Getty ImagesIt’s Election Day, an exercise in democracy that seemingly never fails to leave Americans hanging on every last ballot to be counted.Gather your patience, and some caffeine, as experts say it may take several days, if not longer, for complete results to emerge, introducing an element of uncertainty to races that could decide control the Senate, House and governorships.The waiting game is expected to raise a recurring question in U.S. elections: Why are some states much slower to report results than others?“Slow is in the eye of the beholder,” said David Scott, vice president of elections for The Associated Press. (Many news media outlets, including The New York Times, rely on the news organization’s race calls.)What usually causes counting delays?Voting by mail, which gained in popularity during the coronavirus pandemic, has become increasingly common in several states, particularly in the West. But, experts said, that convenience does not always lend itself to the speed of processing and counting ballots.Six states, including Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, do not allow election officials to begin processing those ballots until Election Day, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.Machines that can open envelopes can help speed the process, but many places have not upgraded their technology, often because of the expense, said Tammy Patrick, chief programs officer at the National Association of Election Officials.As a result, election workers, one Republican and one Democrat, must open the envelopes by hand.“There’s a saying that we often use in elections,” Ms. Patrick said. “We want our elections to be cheap, fast and accurate, but we only get to pick two things.”While many states require absentee ballots to be returned by Election Day, some allow for them to be received up to 10 or 15 days later, as long as they are postmarked by Election Day.Who’s in for a long night?California, the nation’s most populous state, is an obvious contender because of its emphasis on voting by mail, experts said.During the presidential election in 2024, when nearly 81 percent of residents cast ballots by mail, about 60 percent of the state’s vote was counted by election night, according to The Associated Press.“It’s part of what they have chosen to value, which is maximum participation,” Mr. Scott said.It’s not just states that have developed a reputation of lumbering through an election. So have some cities critical to Democrats, two of which could tip races for the control of the Senate.In Texas, Harris County — its seat is Houston, and it is the most populous in the state — is often a straggler in reporting its election results. That’s something that those who track results said to keep in mind in the Senate race between James Talarico, the Democratic nominee, and Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee and the state attorney general, whom polls have shown to be in a tight contest.In Michigan, Wayne County, which includes Detroit, has experienced similar counting delays in past elections that experts said could significantly loom over the Senate race between Mike Rogers, a Republican former representative, and Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee.Ms. Patrick, of the National Association of Election Officials, said many people lose sight of the fact that not a single state in the nation reports official results on election night.“The real tension here is when the races are close and whether or not the media are comfortable projecting to winners,” she said.What about ranked-choice voting?Two states with pivotal Senate races, Maine and Alaska, use ranked-choice voting, in which voters select a set number of candidates in order of preference.If no candidate captures 50 percent of the vote in the first round of counting, additional rounds follow, which experts said could result in delays of several days in those states.Like other New England states, Maine has a highly decentralized election system in which votes are reported at the municipal level, which analysts said could create delays.And Alaska, because of its large size and more extensive grace period for returning absentee ballots, could also take longer to settle.Counting of absentee ballots begins on election night at five regional elections offices in Alaska, which does not require voters to have a reason for choosing to vote by mail. The state accepts absentee ballots that are postmarked by Election Day until 10 days after an election if mailed from within the United States and up to 15 days after if mailed from overseas.Who’s in for an early night?Election experts pointed to Florida as one of the fastest states to report election results.It does not allow same-day voter registration and requires absentee ballots to be received by 7 p.m. local time on Election Day.The emphasis on speed and tightening of voting rules came after Florida was widely criticized during the 2000 election, when the outcome of the presidential race hinged on ballot problems and a protracted recount in the state.“States make choices,” Mr. Scott said.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTWhatever happens tonight, the results will look very Democratic for the next half hour or longer — including in states where Democrats are considered underdogs, like Florida or South Carolina. That’s because most of these states report their early votes first, and the early vote was heavily Democratic this year. Republicans hope to counter with votes cast on Election Day, which will be reported later on.President Trump appears to be watching Fox News, and he isn’t happy with what he’s seeing. The president has denounced the cable channel in three Truth Social posts within a span of 95 minutes, accusing the network of “spending too much time covering the Trump Deranged Dumocrats!” He added, at 7 p.m., that Fox News’s ratings were “way down, not because of me, but because they are AGAINST me!”Evan Reynolds, Laura Bult, Brian Oh, Stephanie Swart and Edward VegaVideoWhat to Watch in Georgia and North CarolinaOur election data reporter Evan Reynolds looks at counties that could decide the Senate race in the diverse and rapidly growing southern states of Georgia and North Carolina.In Georgia, where polls just closed, the first batches of votes typically consist of ballots cast by those who voted absentee or early in-person. Margins may significantly shift as ballots from Election Day voters are posted.ImageCredit...Nicole Craine for The New York TimesAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTOne contest to watch in Florida, where most polling places have begun to close, is the governor’s race. Florida has leaned Republican the last few elections. But life in the state has gotten very expensive, and that is one statewide race — between David Jolly, the Democrat, and Byron Donalds, the Republican — that both parties found to be much more competitive than they expected going into the midterms.Leanne Abraham and Arfa MominThe incumbent Republican in Indiana’s Third Congressional District, Representative Marlin Stutzman, who is trailing with just 39 percent of votes reported, is a lawmaker who rarely makes waves or national headlines, but he gained attention this year when he introduced a plan in Congress to phase out direct military aid to Israel in favor of a transition to a joint defense and economic investment program between the country and the U.S. The topic was thrust back into the news this morning when President Trump said that direct military aid to Israel would be “cut off at the end of the year.”Just before the polls closed, supporters of Angie Nixon, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Florida, made last-minute calls at her election-night watch party in Jacksonville to get out the vote.ImageCredit...Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe areas we are watching as polls close in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.ImageDemocratic and Republican supporters waiting outside a polling place in Pinehurst, N.C.Credit...Travis Dove for The New York TimesA group of three Senate battleground states in the South, all closing in the 7 p.m. hour, could provide an indication of whether polls accurately predicted Democratic momentum — or, perhaps, a sign of a surprisingly strong night for Republicans.A vast majority of polls have shown Democratic Senate candidates with wide leads in Georgia, where Senator Jon Ossoff is facing Representative Mike Collins, and North Carolina, where Roy Cooper is up against Michael Whatley. And in South Carolina, a state President Trump won by nearly 18 percentage points in 2024, Senator Darline Graham has stiff competition from Dr. Annie Andrews. A few key areas in each state could provide the earliest look at how the night might unfold.Beyond the typical urban and rural divides, these states will be closely watched for trends among Black voters and the shifting winds in suburban counties.In Georgia, watch these bellwether counties.Georgia’s electorate, like that of many Southern states, is deeply polarized along racial lines: According to Times Voter Trends, Kamala Harris won 90 percent of Georgia’s Black voters in 2024 and just 28 percent of the state’s white voters. As a result, several of the state’s most competitive counties have relatively similar shares of white and Black voters, particularly in rural areas.Three such counties — Baldwin, Jefferson and Washington — have voted in line with the state as a whole in recent cycles. Joseph R. Biden Jr. won them while narrowly taking Georgia in 2020, but Donald J. Trump flipped them, and the state, four years later. A victory for Mr. Collins in any of these counties could indicate a closer race than most polls have suggested.The heavily Democratic Atlanta metro area tends to report later in the evening, but keep an eye on Fayette County, a historically Republican suburb of Atlanta where Democrats have been steadily gaining ground (Ms. Harris lost the county by three percentage points in 2024). An Ossoff victory here could be a sign that Democrats are continuing to improve among suburban voters.Pay attention to regional trends in North Carolina.North Carolina has been consistently close in recent elections, but underlying regional trends have shifted for both parties.In the state’s mountainous Appalachian west, Democrats have made progress, particularly around Buncombe County, home to Asheville. The region, which was heavily affected by Hurricane Helene in 2024, was one of just a handful of areas nationwide that swung toward Ms. Harris.Conversely, to the east, Democratic margins have broadly declined in the eastern Tidewater region. The party’s margins have also gradually decreased in rural Black enclaves in the state’s northeast, like Halifax and Northampton Counties, where population growth has been much less explosive than in other regions of the state.(Both parties are defending vulnerable House seats in these regions this cycle, another indicator of the state’s shifting political geography.)Democrats could have a particularly strong year in Nash County. Traditionally a bellwether county — one Mr. Trump flipped in 2024 — Nash is where Mr. Cooper was born and raised.Keep an eye on upstate South Carolina.There’s not much precedent for a close race in South Carolina, where Democrats have not won a Senate seat in nearly three decades. Yet a New York Times/Siena poll last week showed the race as effectively a tossup, with Ms. Graham leading by less than one percentage point.If Ms. Andrews hopes to carry South Carolina, she will need to cut into Republican margins in the state’s largest counties, including Horry County, which Mr. Trump carried by a more than two-to-one margin, and Greenville and Spartanburg Counties, where he received more than 60 percent of the vote. (Notably, Ms. Graham fared poorly in Greenville and Spartanburg in the August primary, while the Times/Siena poll showed Ms. Andrews doing much better than expected there.)Ms. Andrews could significantly increase her vote total with a strong showing in Charleston County, a Democratic-leaning area that Ms. Harris won by six percentage points in 2024.At Ken Paxton’s watch party in Dallas, the campaign staff has wheeled out a cannon. It is unclear if the cannon is real or a replica. It resembles the famous cannon that became a symbol of the Battle of Gonzales in 1835, the first major military clash between settlers in what would eventually become Texas and the Mexican Army during the Texas Revolution. Paxton, a Republican, is running for the Senate against James Talarico, a Democrat seeking to win the first statewide race for his party since the 1990s.President Trump is not expected to make a public appearance tonight, but he is sharing his real-time thoughts on Truth Social. So far, he is particularly angry about Fox News’s coverage tonight. An hour ago, Trump said he was turning off Fox because he “can’t stand Jessica Tarlov’s voice” and would return to the channel later. Tarlov is the resident liberal on Fox News. But Trump appears to still be watching Fox because he is now criticizing its polling. “Every question is a hit job,” he wrote.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe incumbent in Indiana’s Fifth Congressional District, Representative Victoria Spartz, is an idiosyncratic figure in the House G.O.P. conference and a frequent nuisance for Republican leaders. That is in part because of her reputation for changing her mind on how she plans to vote on major legislation at the last minute, including on the Republican budget bill teeing up her party’s marquee tax and spending cuts legislation.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTGeorgia’s G.O.P. chairman, a Trump ally, predicts a ‘fair’ election in the state.ImageJosh McKoon, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, speaks before President Trump arrives at a campaign rally at Dalton Municipal Airport, on Oct. 16, in Dalton, Ga.Credit...Mike Stewart/Associated PressThe chairman of the Georgia Republican Party expressed confidence on Tuesday that the state would conduct a fair election and predicted that its outcome would be respected.The assessment carried special weight in a state that was a focal point of President Trump’s efforts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, even as the chairman, Josh McKoon, has continued to cast doubt on Mr. Trump’s loss. Mr. McKoon helped advance Republican efforts to reshape election oversight before the 2024 election, championing a new conservative majority on the State Election Board and proposing new voting rules.On Tuesday, Mr. McKoon said election workers at the polling places he had visited appeared to be conducting an orderly vote. He reserved the right to pursue recounts and examine possible irregularities in extremely close contests, but he said new safeguards were a reason to trust the system.“I have confidence in that process,” Mr. McKoon, a former state senator and current poll watcher, said in an Election Day interview at the Sandy Springs Library in Fulton County. “I think we’re going to have a fair election.”“I think everybody’s going to respect the outcome of the election,” he added.He did not express similar confidence about the 2020 election. Asked about Mr. Trump’s claims that the election had been stolen, Mr. McKoon cited what he said were irregularities and changes to voting procedures that year, saying, “I don’t think we’re ever going to be able to say with certainty what happened with that whole process.”A statewide hand count of Georgia’s presidential ballots in 2020 confirmed former President Joseph R. Biden’s victory in the state.Voters in the storm-soaked Navajo Nation are ‘mud bogging’ to the polls.ImageFall flooding near Chinle, Ariz., south of Rock Point, in Navajo Nation, on Sept. 15.Credit...Navajo Police Department, via Associated PressBack-to-back storms have hammered the Navajo Nation in recent weeks, prompting concerns from local officials that washed-out roads could prevent hundreds of voters from making it to the polls in the country’s largest Native American reservation.Navajo polling sites often take on a festive atmosphere on Election Day. But in Rock Point, a hard-hit community in northeast Arizona, many residents found themselves stranded on Tuesday behind impassible dirt roads or shaky bridges.“Our community has already endured so much,” said Valinda Shirley, the vice president of the Navajo Nation’s Rock Point chapter. “We should not lose our voice because our roads are underwater or damaged.”She pleaded for help from the county, state and tribe, but said she had not received a response by Tuesday afternoon. An advisory from Arizona’s secretary of state said the only available route to Rock Point’s polling site “may require a lengthy detour.”Apache County, where Rock Point is, has been directing residents to a car pool service coordinated by the nonprofit Arizona Native Vote, which has offered rides to the polls via mud bogging, a type of off-roading on four-wheel-drive vehicles.Rock Point is in Arizona’s Second Congressional District, which has been surprisingly competitive this cycle. Representative Eli Crane, a Republican incumbent, is trying to fend off a challenge from Jonathan Nez, a Democrat and former president of the Navajo Nation.Tribal voters are also choosing their next president, and Ms. Shirley worries that residents blocked from polls could lose the chance to cast a decisive ballot. “It’s going to be very close,” she said.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTWhat went wrong with the ballot scanners in a crucial House district?ImageBallots were placed in orange emergency ballot containers because of a scanner breakdown in Chappaqua, N.Y., and across Westchester County.Credit...Brendan Mcdermid/ReutersIn a broad swath of suburbs just north of New York City, voters in Westchester County turned up at their polling sites on Election Day to confront an unsettling sight.Across the county, the voting machines that processed the marked ballots were not working. At a New Rochelle polling site, the voting machines rejected ballot after ballot, and a long line began to form.“The first hour was pretty stressful,” said Jazz Jenkins, a 25-year-old poll worker in New Rochelle. And as the problems continued, she added, voters were not shy about expressing “this huge level of skepticism.”It would be hard to imagine a worse location for a countywide voting problem in New York than Westchester, where one of the country’s most contested House races was taking place between the Republican incumbent, Mike Lawler, and the Democratic challenger, Cait Conley.By late afternoon on Tuesday, the situation still had not been resolved, with poll workers depositing filled-out ballots in orange emergency containers for eventual processing. How and when that would occur was still being worked out, but it seemed likely that the results in the congressional race would be delayed.“They weren’t taking the ballots,” Tim Mannion, a 41-year-old movie projectionist, said during an interview outside his polling site on Tuesday afternoon in Pleasantville.“They asked me to fill it out and then placed it in a sealed bag,” said Mr. Mannion, who said he had voted for Ms. Conley. “I just hope my vote is counted.”Conspiracy theories quickly abounded, especially in President Trump’s circle. But Mr. Lawler, a Trump ally, cautioned against spreading false theories.“I want to be clear: There are no shenanigans going on here; there are no intentional issues going on here,” Mr. Lawler said at a news conference on Tuesday.Instead, what appears to be at issue is an unfortunate bureaucratic snafu.So what happened?At some point in recent weeks, as New Yorkers across the state were receiving their mail-in ballots, the Westchester County Board of Elections was made aware of a problem. A town justice race in the Village of Ardsley, population 5,000, had been omitted.The county noticed the error in time to correct the digital “ballot definition file,” which lists the races and candidates in the election, according to the state Board of Elections. And the county updated the ballot reading software to account for the new ballot format — but only in Ardsley. The software was not adequately updated in the rest of the county to account for the new ballot file, the state said.For Election Day, many counties, including Westchester, get their ballots printed ahead of time, and the ballots were printed with the corrected information, according to the state. But the machines in Westchester were still programmed to read the old file — except in Ardsley.Ken Jenkins, the Westchester County executive, offered a slightly different narrative. In his telling, it was the printer who was at fault, rather than the county.“The local folks say that it is the printer’s issue,” Mr. Jenkins said. “Certainly the state is correct that the machines could have been reprogrammed for the updated ballot; however, the printer, according to the Board of Elections, used the wrong file.”The Westchester County Board of Elections did not respond to requests for comment.Both accounts do agree on at least one thing: Tuesday’s voting problems are a product of human error, and every Westchester County resident will ultimately have their ballot tallied.“Every valid vote will be counted, and the established canvass, recanvass, and post-election audit procedures will remain in place,” the state Board of Elections said in a statement. “Accuracy will never be sacrificed for speed.”As of about 1 p.m. about 22,000 ballots across Westchester County had been submitted but not processed at polling sites, according to a person familiar with the matter.County election officials are now ensuring there are properly coded scanners at the roughly 400 polling sites across the county, the person said.Shortly before 6:30 p.m. at Village Hall in Tarrytown, voters could still be seen filling out their ballots before a volunteer put them in orange bags.“It’s been paper all day,” Frank Clark, a poll worker, said.What happens next?While election officials race to reprogram their machines, voters casting ballots in Westchester are having those ballots placed in the orange containers. Those containers, in turn, will be kept in bipartisan custody until such time as their contents can be fed — under bipartisan supervision — into the ballot scanners, according to the state. The hope is that those scanners will again be functional by the time polls close at 9 p.m.During his Tuesday news conference, Mr. Lawler said ballots will be processed once the scanners are set up. “It’s going to take a few hours,” he said. “We expect to have results certainly into the wee hours of tomorrow morning.”Why does this matter?The impact of this ballot-counting snafu is largely in the narrative-setting realm.Because of the software issue, the initial vote may tilt toward Mr. Lawler, who lost Westchester County in 2024. But by the time all the votes are counted, the result will be the same as if the problem had never occurred.“Election officials plan for things to go wrong, and that ultimately the cause of what went wrong doesn’t matter,” said Derek Tisler, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice. “They are trained that if the scanner is not working, if it’s not accepting ballots, it doesn’t matter why that’s happening, you go to Plan B.”Mr. Tisler compared the process of machines counting votes to the machines that read Scantron tests in schools — marks corresponding with certain answers are interpreted by the machines’ programs and counted. The machines themselves don’t read the ballots, just the marks, and translate them accordingly.A full investigation would still need to take place after Election Day for officials to fully understand what exactly went wrong, Mr. Tisler said. But when it came to election results, the issue at hand was immaterial, since local officials quickly pivoted to backup measures.Charges of vote-fixing conspiracyAlmost as soon as the first reports surfaced of issues in Westchester County, prominent political voices took to social media to spin the situation into a conspiracy.Laura Loomer, a right-wing agitator who frequently posts conspiracy theories on social media, suggested on X on Tuesday morning that the situation in Westchester was bigger than just a glitch in the voting machine software.“Democrats are already trying to steal the election in New York today,” she wrote. “What are the odds the ballot machines in Westchester County aren’t working? Democrats only know how to cheat.”Mr. Lawler appeared on CNN to directly rebut Ms. Loomer’s claim and to vow, “Every single ballot is going to be counted.”Is there any precedent for this?Mr. Tisler pointed out that an extensive investigation will take place following the election to determine exactly what went wrong.But if the issue in Westchester is determined to be human error relating to the calibration of voting machine technology, a similar situation occurred in Antrim County, Mich., on Nov. 3, 2020 when Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Donald J. Trump faced off in the general election.On election night that year, unofficial results initially showed Mr. Biden beating Mr. Trump before local officials noticed an error and fixed it. Mr. Trump eventually beat Mr. Biden by roughly 2,500 votes.The problem was determined to have stemmed from human error — an election worker configured ballot scanners and reporting systems with slightly different versions of the ballot, which meant some results did not correlate with the correct candidate when ballots were loaded into machines.The crucial difference was that in Westchester County, when the machines struggled to read the ballots, they simply spit them back out instead of tallying the vote incorrectly.“Importantly, the affected scanners rejected ballots they could not properly recognize rather than incorrectly tabulating them,” the state Board of Elections said.Reporting was contributed by Nick Corasaniti, Grace Ashford, Wesley Parnell and Andrea Barnes.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTDemocratic polling leads in Michigan and Maine have come with questions.Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, left, and Troy Jackson, the Democratic nominees for Senate in Michigan and Maine, have faced some doubts inside their own parties regardless of their polling leads.Victor J. Blue for The New York Times; Scott Eisen/Getty ImagesDr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for the Senate in Michigan, has consistently led Mike Rogers, his Republican opponent, in public polling. In Maine’s Senate race, Troy Jackson, a Democrat, has led most recent polls, albeit by smaller margins.Both states have been closely watched as they are swing states known for surprising those who watch elections closely. Michigan has not elected a Republican to the Senate since 1994, but voted for President Trump in 2024. In Maine, the opposite is true: The five-term incumbent is Senator Susan Collins, a Republican, but the state has voted for the Democrat in every presidential election since 1992.Both Democratic candidates have also faced some doubts along the way, regardless of their leads in the polls. Some have questioned whether Dr. El-Sayed’s strong views about U.S. policies toward Israel could alienate voters, while Mr. Jackson has been questioned as a relative unknown — he entered the race after Graham Platner dropped out — who is going up against a popular incumbent.Dr. El-Sayed appears to be gaining ground. A CNN/SSRS poll conducted in late October found him leading Mr. Rogers by seven percentage points, up from a three-point lead in early September. The poll also found that his support among college graduates — a traditionally Democratic stronghold — had risen to 62 percent, an 11-point increase from when CNN polled the race in September.This week, the final Times/Siena poll of Michigan had his lead at 11 percentage points, his highest margin since the matchup was set following the August primary. A majority of voters said they viewed him favorably, while just 37 percent said the same of Mr. Rogers.Polls in Maine have been far more mixed. Mr. Jackson has led in most recent surveys, but his margins have generally been tight and a handful of polls have showed the race tied or Ms. Collins narrowly ahead.A Fox News poll conducted by Beacon Research/Shaw & Company in mid-October found the candidates tied at 49 percent, while a late-October poll from CNN/SSRS found Mr. Jackson ahead by four percentage points. And an Emerson College survey, sponsored by Poll Vault, found Ms. Collins ahead by one point — making it just the second survey fielded in the past month (out of 16) to find her in the lead.In the final Times/Siena poll of the race, which was released on Sunday, Mr. Jackson led by six percentage points — a nine-point leftward shift from our last poll of the race in mid-September.Mr. Jackson is also contending with Ms. Collins’s history of outperforming polls. In 2020, she trailed in nearly every public poll of the race down the stretch, but went on to beat her Democratic challenger, Sara Gideon, by about eight percentage points. Polls had underestimated her support by roughly 12 percentage points, though that came in a presidential election year in which polls systematically overstated Democratic support.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT