When will we find out who won the presidential election?

WASHINGTON — After polls close, attention will shift on election night to The Associated Press and the major TV networks to report the results and announce who will be the next president. But the big question on everyone's mind is when will we know the presidential election results? 

Some years, we've learned presidential election results within hours of the first polls closing. But in recent years, it's taken longer to know for sure which candidate has won enough electoral votes to win the White House. 

The AP has counted the vote on which many leading news organizations base their projections and declare winners since 1848.

When will election results be announced? When do we find out who won the election? 

The U.S. doesn't have a nationwide body that collects and releases election results. Elections are administered locally, by thousands of offices, following standards set by the states. In many cases, the states themselves don't even offer up-to-date tracking of election results.

Results will begin to be announced after polls close in each individual state on election night. But it may take some time before we know who will be the next president. 

The results are expected to come down to the seven battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Those states stretch across four different time zones. Georgia's polls close first at 7 p.m. Eastern, followed by North Carolina at 7:30 p.m. and Pennsylvania and most of Michigan at 8 p.m. The rest of Michigan closes at 9 p.m. along with Arizona and Wisconsin. Nevada closes at 10 p.m. Eastern.

US Election Results 2024 Live Map

Track the presidential elections results below as each state is called for either Harris or Trump. 

What time were presidential election results announced in recent years? 

In the 2020 presidential election, AP declared Joe Biden the winner four days after Election Day – at 11:26 a.m. ET on Saturday, Nov. 7.

In 2012, AP declared at 11:38 p.m. ET on election night that Barack Obama had been re-elected, beating Republican candidate Mitt Romney. The AP call came after determining that Obama had won Colorado, thereby exceeding the necessary 270 electoral votes. 

In 2008, all of the major networks declared around 11 p.m. ET that Democrat Barack Obama had been elected the first African American president of the United States, defeating Republican John McCain. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.