Beyond local election results, many states will have Election Week, not just Election Day, as mail-in votes are counted

Publishing election results has become more complicated for rural newspapers, because the reduced number of printing sites has forced many to shift their largely once-a-week publication schedules. But at least they get final results in a timely fashion; many major races that could decide control of Congress may not be decided for days after voting ends, NBC News points out in its “First Read” this morning. "Brace yourselves for an Election Week, not Election Day," write Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Ben Kamisar, Bridget Bowman and Alexandra Marquez.

They note that the 2020 presidential election wasn't called for four days, mainly because "the sheer number of mail-in ballots due to the Covid pandemic, combined with state laws prohibiting the early processing and counting of those ballots. Well, guess what? Some of these states still haven't revised their laws, and that means that we might not know for days which party controls the U.S. Senate." (The House is generally expected to switch from Democratic to Republican control.) And the question of Senate control could go into Georgia overtime, just as it did in 2020, "if neither Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., nor GOP challenger Herschel Walker surpasses 50% of the vote."

In many states, counties can't begin to process mail-in and absentee ballots until Election Day; that is the case in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which have key Senate races. Arizona can process early ballots as soon as they come in, but "It's typically taken days to project winners (like Kyrsten Sinema in 2018 or Joe Biden in 2020) – until all the votes have been counted if the race is close," NBC notes. It reports the percentage of 2020 presidential votes counted by 6 a.m. ET the morning after Election Day in  key states: Arizona, 81.7%; Georgia, 94.4%; Michigan, 82%; New Hampshire, 75.4%; Nevada, 84.9%; Pennsylvania, 78%; and Wisconsin, 97.5%.