This fall, the State Board of Elections approved a new rule that requires election workers to manually count the number of ballots cast — not actual votes — after voting is completed. Critics, including Republican Party Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, feared the rule would delay the release of election results.

In the 2022 Ohio Senate race, Rep. Tim Ryan started off with an early lead when Franklin County, home to the state capital of Columbus, announced its first batch of ballots from the night, which fell from 74% to 26% for Ryan over the Republican. JD Vance, now Trump’s running mate. It was the highlight for Ryan. Ultimately, he won Franklin with slightly fewer votes – about two-thirds – and lost the statewide race.

So why was his lead so much bigger early in the evening?

Once again, it’s all about mail-in ballots. Ohio releases its pre-election votes as early as election night, including mail-in votes. As in other races since 2022, mail-in votes tended to lean in favor of Democrats. As Election Day votes poured in, Republican J.D. Vance took the lead and ultimately won by 6 points.

In the 2022 Senate race, about a half hour after polls closed in North Carolina, Democrat Cheri Beasley had a lead of nearly 200,000 votes. As of 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 absentee ballots, followed by the first in-person votes. Future updates will include results from ballots cast on Election Day. North Carolina has a history of counting its votes fairly quickly on Election Day, so if a blue mirage emerges from these early reports, it may not last very long.

It is unclear how vote counts may be affected by emergency changes implemented following Hurricane Helene, which devastated the west of the state. Among other changes, the Legislature decided that voters in 25 Helene-affected counties could drop off their absentee ballots at in-person early voting sites and at county elections offices throughout the state. These ballots must still be delivered by 7:30 p.m. on Election Day to be counted.

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

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

Republican Mehmet Oz began to catch up as more rural and Election Day votes were counted. 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 estimates there were more than 800,000 votes left to count, but most of them were in counties where Fetterman was winning by a wide margin: Philadelphia and the surrounding counties of Delaware, Bucks and Montgomery. But the way Pennsylvania counts its votes could lead to a blue mirage, a red mirage, or both, at different times in the evening. Pennsylvania does not require counties to first report their absentee ballots, and they are not allowed to begin processing those votes until after Election Day.

In the 2020 presidential election, Biden took a huge lead in the pre-election vote count, then Trump took a huge lead in the election day vote count, and then Biden finally regained his margin narrow as more mail-in 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 votes, but some, including Milwaukee, release them separately. This dilutes the chances of a mirage but also adds an element of unpredictability.

The city of Milwaukee reports Election Day votes ahead of absentee ballots. So it may be difficult to know how many votes remain to be counted until election officials provide accurate information about the number of mail-in ballots or confirm that they have already been counted.

In Wisconsin, latest vote information from Milwaukee, which is typically released in the early hours of Wednesday morning, is often needed to determine the winner in close races.

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

The key to a close race in Michigan is to wait until Wayne, Oakland and Washtenaw counties post significant batches of votes before jumping to conclusions. Wayne includes Detroit, while Oakland includes the city’s northern suburbs. Washtenaw County is home to Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan.

Michigan does not allow mail-in ballots to be counted until the morning of Election Day and warns on its election website that a high number of mail-in ballots typically prolongs the counting process by several hours or even of several days.

Arizona won’t release votes until an hour after polls close, due to state law. But that means when the first update arrives, it’s pretty big. Historically, about half of the state’s vote total is reported in the first update.

This update, as in many other states, has tended to lean heavily Democratic in recent elections because it includes mail-in ballots cast well before Election Day. This gap generally narrows as 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 “late arrivals” – the last mail-in ballots that include those cast on Election Day. These ballots heavily favored Trump in 2020.

But in the 2022 Senate race, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly took the lead in the first update, when Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county and home to Phoenix, posted 837 000 ballots in its first report. He maintained that initial lead, although it narrowed, when Election Day votes were reported. The votes counted after election night did not reduce his advantage.

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Learn more about how US elections work at Explaining the 2024 electionan Associated Press series aimed at helping make sense of American democracy. The AP receives support from several private foundations to improve its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. Learn more about AP’s Democratic Initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.