Georgia polls close at 7 p.m.; first results expected around 8 p.m.

Georgia’s polls close at 7:00 p.m. tonight, Tuesday, November 3. If you are standing in line at your polling place at 7:00 p.m., you still get to vote. The line does not cut off at closing time.

That guarantee is in Georgia law — O.C.G.A. § 21-2-403(d) — which says every elector who is in line when polls are scheduled to close gets to vote, with 7:00 p.m. as the standard closing time. In other words: if it is not yet 7:00 p.m. where you are tonight, you are not too late to vote.

On Election Day you have to vote at your assigned precinct polling place, not just any polling place in your county. Find your polling place, precinct, and sample ballot on the Secretary of State’s My Voter Page at mvp.sos.ga.gov.

Plan for a line. A polling place stays open until the last person who was in line at 7:00 p.m. has cast a ballot, so a long line at closing still means you get to vote. Fulton County voters can check live wait times at polling places through the county’s Fulton Votes app.

What the first results show

The first wave of numbers — expected around 8:00 p.m., roughly an hour after polls close — will be early in-person and absentee ballots that election workers have already verified and scanned. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has said counties may report advance-voting results around that time, and he expected a large share of the Georgia vote to be posted early in the evening. Those early boards can skew toward Democratic candidates because early and mail ballots are reported first.

Election Day precinct results arrive later, in waves, because memory cards and voted ballots have to be physically transported from precincts to county election offices before they can be tabulated.

Raffensperger has said the slower counts Georgia used to endure are a thing of the past, describing a system in which voters could know the results before midnight. But the first board is not a finished count: county reporting speeds vary, and close races can take longer.

Races to watch overnight

The governor’s race, between Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms and Republican Rick Jackson, is rated a Toss-Up by political handicappers, and a final pre-election poll had the candidates tied at 49% to 49%. The last governor’s race, in 2022, went to Republican Brian Kemp over Stacey Abrams by 53.41% to 45.88% — a 7.53-point margin — so this year’s tied contest is much closer than Georgia’s previous one.

The U.S. Senate race, with incumbent Democrat Jon Ossoff facing Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, is rated Likely Democratic, with a final poll at 53% for Ossoff to 46% for Collins. Down-ballot statewide races for lieutenant governor, attorney general, and secretary of state all sit within that poll’s margin of error — a statistical dead heat.

A race that ends without a candidate clearing 50% plus one vote goes to a runoff, scheduled this cycle for December 1, with runoff early voting from November 23 through November 25. Being uncalled late into the night is not a sign of trouble: election experts stress that a longer count means ballots are being processed, not that anything is wrong.

Where to find the official board

The place to track Georgia results in near real time is the Secretary of State’s results portal at results.sos.ga.gov/results/public/Georgia, which shows totals by race and county. The Secretary of State’s election-results page (sos.ga.gov/page/georgia-election-results) links to statewide results, and the county election offices directory (mvp.sos.ga.gov/s/county-election-offices) lists each county’s contact information for local-level results. Use those official pages rather than a friend’s screenshot or a fast-moving social feed.

Provisional ballots, cured mail ballots, and military and overseas ballots are counted in the days after Election Day, so unofficial totals can still shift before final certification. A longer count is normal: officials prioritize accuracy over speed, and those extra ballots are simply processed over the following days and weeks.

Check the board again in the morning rather than treating any mid-evening numbers as final.