In the 2020 election, close results led to delays, recounts, audits and litigation, which raised questions about electoral processes and contributed to widespread claims of misinformation among the public. According to a U.S Election Assistance Commission report, 43% of voters used mail-in ballots in 2020 to vote. This influx of ballots, coupled with narrow margins in key states, meant Americans had to wait four days until the winner of the election was projected. However on election night and in the months after, Trump declared victory despite losing and attempting to overturn results he claimed were fraudulent.

The 2024 election could be the most heavily-litigated election in U.S. history, with over 165 lawsuits already filed and more expected. On the 538 Politics podcast last week, we tried to understand what is driving this historic level of litigation and the potential misinformation and additional legal challenges we can expect after Election Day. Since 2020, there has been a rise in election certification disputes, reports of harassment targeting local election officials and changes to voting laws across several battleground states.

The race is close, and while we cannot predict what will happen after Election Day, Larry Norden, vice president of the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center for Justice sat down with us to provide a clearer picture. For more details, check out the podcast.

They've been overshadowed by the presidential and congressional races, but there are also gubernatorial races in 11 states and two territories being decided today. Most of them will be easy wins for the incumbent party, but there are a couple races that could be competitive.

According to polling, the closest race is in New Hampshire. Popular Republican Gov. Chris Sununu is retiring, giving Democrats a ripe pick-up opportunity in what has become a light-blue state. According to an average of the last five polls of the race, Republican former Sen. Kelly Ayotte and Democrat Joyce Craig, the former mayor of Manchester, were tied 48% to 48%.

The other competitive race is a bit of a surprise — Indiana. Republican Sen. Mike Braun started off the cycle as the heavy favorite to succeed term-limited Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb. But the state GOP nominated a controversial pastor, Micah Beckwith, to be his running mate, and the presence of a strong-ish Libertarian candidate in the race could eat into Republican support. Meanwhile, the Democratic candidate, former Superintendent of Public Instruction Jennifer McCormick, could have crossover appeal as a former Republican. Only one pollster, ActiVote, has surveyed this race in October, and its most recent poll found Braun leading McCormick 56% to 44%.

Weather forecasts are predicting rain this Election Day in the middle of the country, from the Great Lakes south to Louisiana. That includes two key swing states — Michigan and Wisconsin. Will it keep voters away?

Whether the weather can influence election results has been studied a lot. There's some evidence that rain might slightly depress in-person turnout, but not really swing the outcome of elections. On top of that, most states in recent years have increased alternative options, like mail-in and early voting, potentially offsetting the impacts of any dreariness that might inspire people to stay snuggled up inside instead of lining up outside busy polling places. A study from North Carolina from 2012-2020 found that turnout decreased about 1% on rainy election days. In a close election, that could be enough to make a difference, but close elections are also more likely to motivate more voters to get to the ballot box no matter what.

Weather disasters might be a different story, however. North Carolina, which Trump won by only 1.3 percentage points in 2020, is still reeling from Hurricane Helene. Almost all of the counties affected by Helene voted for Trump in 2020, meaning low turnout there could cost him some votes — though it's unlikely they'd be enough to impact the statewide outcome in anything but the closest of contests. State officials there have made efforts to adjust polling places and hours to accommodate people, and the state set a turnout record for the first day of early voting.

Georgia is a new battleground in the post-2000 "red state, blue state" era. While statewide races had not really been highly contested before then, it has since trended left compared to the country as a whole. In 2016, Trump carried the state by 5 percentage points, which was the state's closest margin in a presidential race over the past two decades until Biden won it by just 0.2 points — becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate to win there since Bill Clinton in 1992.

Trump really needs to capture Georgia's 16 electoral votes to give himself a good shot at hitting the magic majority number of 270 nationally. Without knowing how other states will vote, 538's forecast suggests that Trump would have about a 4-in-5 shot at winning the presidency if he ends up carrying Georgia. But if Harris claims it, she would have about a 9-in-10 chance of becoming the next president.

And polls once again show an extremely close race in Georgia. Trump leads slightly less than 1 point in 538's polling average of the state. Although Trump holds a slight edge, his standing against Harris is significantly closer than it was against Biden, who trailed Trump by about 6 points when he stepped aside in late July.

Like Biden, Harris will need overwhelming support from Black voters in Georgia. At nearly one-third of the population, the Peach State has the largest population and proportion of Black Americans of any of the seven main swing states. In 2020, about 30% of Georgia voters identified as Black, according to exit polls, and nearly 90% backed Biden. Yet recent polls suggest that Harris may be running shy of Biden's 2020 support level, while Trump is running a bit ahead of his roughly 10% haul in 2020. Taken together, these potential shifts would notably improve Trump's chances of winning the state in 2024.

Trump can once again expect to win a sizable majority of white voters in the South, which has a higher degree of racially polarized voting than any other part of the country. Still, it's possible he might lose a little ground in Georgia, specifically: In 2020, Trump won about 70% of Georgia's white voters, but he's garnering a little less than that in recent polls, while Harris is polling right around the 30% that Biden carried.

Now, Georgia saw a sizable education split among its white voters last time around, with white voters without a four-year college degree going overwhelmingly for Trump (80% to 20%) but those with a degree only preferring him slightly (55% to 44%). How much Harris can recreate Biden's coalition among college-educated voters in particular will be pivotal to the Georgia outcome. Recent polls in the state that have data for college-educated voters have found Harris running a little behind Biden's 57% among the group as a whole (including voters of color).