WASHINGTON—The results on Election Day will come down to seven states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have visited them the most. Together, these states are likely to deliver the Electoral College votes needed for the winning candidate to get a majority of 270.
It will be a game of hopscotch to keep up with key times in each of the states, which stretch across four different time zones.
A look at the Election Day timeline across the seven, with all listings in Eastern Standard Time:
Arizona
Polls open at 8 a.m. in Arizona, which Joe Biden carried in 2020 by 0.3 percent. He was only the second Democratic presidential candidate to do so in nearly 70 years. Polls will close at 9 p.m.
Arizona does not release votes until all precincts have reported or one hour after all polls are closed, whichever is first.
Georgia
Polls open at 7 a.m. in Georgia, which played a key role in 2020. Biden was the first Democrat in a White House race to carry the state since Bill Clinton in 1992, defeating Trump by less than one-quarter of a percentage point, a margin of 11,779 votes.
Georgia’s polls close at 7 p.m.
Michigan
Polls open at 7 a.m. ET in Michigan, one of the “blue wall” states that went narrowly for Trump in 2016 after almost 30 years of voting for Democratic candidates. Biden won it back four years later. His margin was about 154,000 votes out of more than 5.5 million votes.
Michigan covers two time zones, but polls in most of the state close at 8 p.m. ET, with the rest at 9 p.m. ET.
Nevada
Polls open at 10 a.m. ET in Nevada, the smallest electoral vote prize of the battlegrounds. But it has one of the best track records as a presidential bellwether. The candidate who won Nevada has gone on to win the White House in 27 of the past 30 presidential elections.
Polls close at 10 p.m. ET. The state doesn’t release results until the last person in line has voted, so there’s usually been a wait between poll close and the first results.
North Carolina
Polls open at 6:30 a.m. ET in North Carolina, which has been carried by Democrats only two times in presidential elections since 1968. But the state has stayed competitive for both major parties. Trump’s 2020 victory in North Carolina, by about 1 percentage point, was his smallest winning margin in any state.
Polls close at 7:30 p.m. ET.
Pennsylvania
Polls open at 7 a.m. ET in Pennsylvania, another “blue wall” state. Biden’s 2020 margin in Pennsylvania was about 80,000 votes out of more than 6.9 million votes. This year, it’s the spot where Harris and Trump met for the first time at their sole debate in September in Philadelphia.
Polls close at 8 p.m. ET in a state with more electoral votes, 19, than any of the battlegrounds.
Wisconsin
Polls open at 8 a.m. ET in Wisconsin, the third “blue wall” state in this group. Wisconsin is no stranger to close elections; the margin of victory in the state was less than 1 percentage point in 2020, 2016, 2004, and 2000.
Polls close at 9 p.m. ET.