For the second Election Day in a row, election night ends without a clear winner.
It could be days until a party is projected to win the House of Representatives.
It could be a month until we know the same for the Senate.
Here’s the state of the race for both chambers and when — maybe, just maybe — we’ll know the outcome.
The House
Republican control of the House was all but a foregone conclusion heading into Tuesday, but Democrats outran the polls and projections.
Republicans will have to claw their way to a majority, seat by seat. The Needle suggests Republicans are likelier than not to win the House, but it is no certainty. As of 5 a.m. Wednesday, there was only enough information to have them projected to win 197 seats — 21 short of the 218 needed for a majority.
They’re nowhere close to being called the winner in many of these races; in many of these states, late mail ballots have the potential to help Democrats. It will take days to count these ballots.
Meanwhile, Democrats lead in another group of races where Republicans might wind up mounting a comeback.
The Senate
The fight for control of the Senate will come down to four states: Wisconsin, Nevada, Georgia and Arizona.
Wisconsin is the only one that could be resolved by early Wednesday. Republican Ron Johnson led by just over 1 percentage point at 7 a.m. Eastern, with 94% of the vote counted. A handful of counties might still have a modest number of absentee ballots to report, which could let Democratic challenger Mandela Barnes close some of the gap. Either way, the number of absentee ballots should be ascertained fairly quickly. They ought to be counted fairly quickly as well.
On the other end of the spectrum is Georgia , which seems unlikely to be resolved before a Dec. 6 runoff election. A New York Times analysis of the results by precinct and state absentee files suggests that Sen. Raphael Warnock (who leads) is unlikely to reach the 50% necessary to avoid the runoff, barring an unusual number of provisional or late mail ballots. Unlike in 2020, there weren’t many absentee ballot requests this year.
If Wisconsin goes for Johnson and Georgia is stuck in runoff purgatory, there’s only one way for the Senate to be decided quickly: One party wins both Arizona and Nevada. It appears neither will do that soon.
Of the two, Nevada is the clearer case. Still, the race is too close to call. Republican Adam Laxalt leads Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto by 2.7 percentage points, but most of the remaining vote is expected to be Democratic-leaning mail ballots and provisional ballots, including from same-day registrants.
The Needle suggests a close race, but much remains uncertain, as the exact number of outstanding ballots is unclear. The turnout in the state appears fairly low, suggesting that a large number of ballots might remain. It is also unclear how long it will take to count them. Last time around, Joe Biden was projected to win only on Saturday, even though he won by a fairly comfortable 2 points and seemed poised to gain in the late ballots. At this point, such a clear path to victory seems unlikely for either candidate.
The situation in Arizona is even less clear, but here there is at least a chance of a quick resolution. Democrat Mark Kelly leads by 6 percentage points, 52% to 46%, with most of the Election Day and early votes counted. Most of the remaining vote is the mail ballots that were returned to the state near the election, including on Election Day, along with provisional ballots.
These days, mail and provisional ballots are typically good for Democrats. But this is not a normal case. A large majority of voters cast ballots by mail in Arizona, so the mail ballots are not nearly as favorable toward Democrats. Instead, a strange pattern has emerged in recent years: Democrats mail in their ballots well before the election, leaving Republicans to turn in their ballots near the election or simply prefer to vote in person. In 2020, Donald Trump won the ballots counted after Election Day by a wide margin here, turning a 4-point lead for Biden at this hour in 2020 into a race won by less than 1 point.
This time, Republican Blake Masters will need to mount an even larger comeback — at least as measured in percentage point margin. It may seem daunting, but it may not be quite as challenging as it looks: There might be about twice as many outstanding mail ballots, as a share of all voters, as there were at this time in 2020.
Kelly seemingly has a healthy lead from the early vote, but there is no hard evidence that a Masters victory is impossible. We’ll probably begin to get a sense of whether these mail ballots look like 2020’s mail votes as soon as Wednesday.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times .