Election results are coming in soon. Here's where things stand.

• Polls close Tuesday night, but it's unclear when we'll know the results of the 2024 election.

• Some states' election laws allow for some votes to be counted before polls close; others do not.

• Here's where things stand — and what to watch for on election night.

After nearly two years of campaigning, two assassination attempts, and an unprecedented decision by the sitting president to drop out of the race, the 2024 US presidential election is coming to an end.

Polls have closed in some places, and results will begin rolling in soon.

The final week of the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump was all about outrage, with each candidate trying to amplify controversial comments from the other's camp to try to shake up a race in which polls remained incredibly tight to the end.

The election is expected to come down to just seven states that polling has indicated either candidate could win: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Each state has different election laws, and some are expected to take longer than others to count the vote. If the race is as tight as polling suggests, there's a very good chance we won't know who won the election until sometime after Tuesday night.

Here's the latest — and what to watch for.

When we'll know the results in each state

In some states, we may know the results pretty quickly. In others, counting may take days. Poll closing times listed below are in Eastern Time.

7 p.m. — Polls close in Georgia, where a winner could be declared by late Tuesday night. Though the state took days to process mail-in ballots in 2020, a new law allowed election officials to begin tabulating those votes Tuesday morning, speeding up the process.

7:30 p.m. — Polls close in North Carolina, which has historically counted votes quickly. A winner could be declared Tuesday night.

8 p.m. — Polls close in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Michigan is expected to count ballots relatively quickly and could announce a result Tuesday night or early Wednesday.

But the Pennsylvania count is expected to take days. That's because the election is expected to be so close in the Keystone State and because a big chunk of the electorate votes by mail, and officials can't begin to count those votes until polls close.

In 2020, most news outlets didn't call Pennsylvania until Saturday — at which point Joe Biden became president-elect.

9 p.m. — Polls close in Wisconsin and Arizona. We may not know the results in Wisconsin until Wednesday, a state election official told CNN in September, in part because of the amount of time it takes to count absentee ballots in the heavily Democratic city of Milwaukee.

Like Pennsylvania, Arizona's vote count is expected to take days, given that most of the electorate is expected to vote by mail. Initial results probably won't be available until 10 p.m.

10 p.m. — Polls close in Nevada, which could also take days to count, given that most of the state is expected to vote by mail.

How to read the Electoral College math

The US uses the Electoral College to elect a president. Each state gets a set number of votes that correlates with its population — if a state has two US senators and three House members, it has five electoral votes.

The winner must get at least 270 electoral votes — a majority of the 538 total. In the vast majority of states, either Harris or Trump is widely expected to win, leaving the campaigns to fight over the 93 electoral votes up for grabs in the seven battleground states.

If Harris wins Georgia, North Carolina, and Michigan on Tuesday night or early Wednesday, she will have a projected 273 electoral votes — enough to make her the winner.

If Trump sweeps those states, he'll have a projected 266 electoral votes — not enough to be declared the winner but it would him in a very strong position to win.

Harris' easiest path to victory would be to win the traditional "blue wall" states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin — a result that should put her at 270 electoral votes. She has generally polled better in these states than the Sun Belt states of Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina.

For Trump, one path to victory would involve holding on to all or most of the Sun Belt states while also winning Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Wisconsin.

Read the original article on Business Insider