This fall, the State Board of Elections approved a new rule that requires poll workers to hand-count the number of ballots cast — not the actual votes — after voting is complete. Critics, including GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, worried the rule would delay the reporting of election results.

In the 2022 Ohio Senate race, Rep. Tim Ryan jumped out to an early lead as Franklin County, home to the state capital of Columbus, reported its first batch of ballots of the night, which went 74 percent to 26 % for Ryan vs Republican. JD Vance, now Trump’s running mate. This was the highlight for Ryan. In the end, he took Franklin by a little less of the vote — about two-thirds — and lost the statewide race.

So why was his lead so big earlier in the night?

Again, it’s all about postal ballots. Ohio releases its pre-Election Day ballots beginning on Election Night, including mail-in ballots. As in other 2022 races, mail-in ballots have tended to lean Democratic. As the Election Day votes came in, Republican JD Vance took the lead and eventually won by 6 points.

In the 2022 Senate race, about half an hour after polls closed in North Carolina, Democrat Cheri Beasley had a nearly 200,000-vote lead. By midnight, Republican Ted Budd had a lead of more than 150,000 votes.

North Carolina counts almost all of its ballots on election night. The first reports of the night in most North Carolina counties will be the results of mail-in ballots, followed by early in-person voting. Subsequent updates will include results from ballots cast on Election Day. North Carolina has a history of counting votes on Election Day fairly quickly, so if a blue mirage emerges from early reports, it may not last very long.

It is not clear how the vote count may be affected emergency changes implemented after Hurricane Helene devastated the western parts of the state. Among other changes, the legislature ruled that voters in 25 counties affected by Helene can drop off their absentee ballots at open in-person early voting locations and county election offices anywhere in the state. These ballots must still be turned in by 7:30pm on election day to be counted.

Pennsylvania followed the same pattern as Georgia and Ohio in 2022.

Initial voting updates, which included a large share of mail-in ballots, gave Democrat John Fetterman a lopsided lead before Republican votes began to close the gap in the Senate race. The state had reported even before polls closed that more than 7 in 10 mail-in ballots returned before Election Day came from registered Democrats.

Republican Mehmet Oz began to catch up as more of the rural and Election Day votes were tabulated. But those votes weren’t enough to overcome Fetterman’s lead.

When the AP named Fetterman the winner, he led by 2 percentage points. The AP estimated that more than 800,000 votes remained to be counted, but most of them were in counties where Fetterman won by large margins: Philadelphia and surrounding counties, Delaware, Bucks and Montgomery. But the way Pennsylvania counts its votes could result in a blue mirage, a red mirage, or both — at different times of the evening. Pennsylvania does not require counties to report mail-in ballots first, and they are not allowed to begin processing those ballots until Election Day.

In the 2020 presidential election, Biden took a massive lead when the votes were counted before Election Day, then Trump took a huge lead when the votes were counted on Election Day, and then Biden eventually regained his margin narrowed as more postal votes were counted.

In Wisconsin, municipalities report their vote totals to counties, and each city can choose how to report its results. Most combine mail-in ballots with Election Day ballots, but some, including Milwaukee, issue them separately. That dilutes the chances of a mirage, but also adds an element of unpredictability.

The City of Milwaukee reports Election Day votes before mail-in ballots. That can make it difficult to know how many votes remain to be counted there until election officials provide specific information about how many mail-in ballots remain or confirm that they have already been counted.

In Wisconsin, information on the last votes coming in from Milwaukee, usually reported in the early hours of Wednesday morning, is often needed to determine the winner in close races.

As in Wisconsin, there is no universal pattern in Michigan for when counties report their mail-in ballots. This often makes geography a better indicator of the direction of a race than the type of vote.

The key to a close race in Michigan is to wait for Wayne, Oakland and Washtenaw counties to release significant vote lots before jumping to any conclusions. Wayne includes Detroit, while Oakland consists of the city’s northern suburbs. Washtenaw County is home to Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan.

Michigan does not allow absentee ballots to be counted until the morning of Election Day, and warns on its election website that large numbers of ballots typically extend the counting process by hours, if not days.

Arizona won’t report votes until an hour after polls close because of state law. But that means when the first update comes out, it’s pretty big. Historically, about half of the state’s total votes are reported in the first update.

This update, like many other states, has tended to lean heavily Democratic in recent elections because it includes mail-in ballots cast well in advance of Election Day. This gap usually closes as the Election Day votes are counted. But after that, things take a more complicated turn in Arizona than in other states.

Ballots counted after Election Day include “early lates” — the last mail-in ballots to arrive, which include those mailed on Election Day. These ballots strongly favored Trump in 2020.

But in the 2022 Senate race, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly took the lead in the first update as Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county and home of Phoenix, released 837,000 ballots in its first report. He maintained that initial lead, even if it narrowed, when the votes were reported on Election Day. Votes counted after election night did not give him the advantage.

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Read more about how US elections work at Explaining the 2024 electionan Associated Press series designed to help understand American democracy. AP receives support from several private foundations to improve its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about the AP Democracy Initiative Here. AP is solely responsible for all content.