Four states vote in primaries, results may take until late night

Most voters looking for a clean result Tuesday night may have to wait. Maine, Nevada, South Carolina and North Dakota all held primaries on June 9, and election officials expected most usable returns to arrive late in the evening, with mail ballots, provisional ballots and ranked-choice counting slowing the final picture.

Nevada offered the clearest warning about delay. The secretary of state said elections do not end on Election Day because mail ballots and other late-arriving ballots still have to be processed and cured, and counties were set to release unofficial primary results only after all statewide voting had finished after 7 p.m. County officials were also scheduled to report mail-ballot processing status counts on election night or beginning the next day. In Clark County, unofficial results were not to include provisional ballots, which are counted later. Nevada’s June primary included major statewide contests for governor and attorney general, along with several mayoral primaries in Clark County, where the state’s population center often sets the tone for the rest of the map.

Maine’s count carried a different kind of risk: ranked-choice voting. The secretary of state’s office said ranked-choice voting is used in state primaries and in federal races covered by Maine’s primary and general election rules, and the state had published tabulation materials for the 2026 cycle. That system can stretch the count beyond Election Night in crowded races, especially where no candidate clears a majority on the first pass. Maine also kept absentee voting open statewide until the week before the primary, adding another layer of ballots that could still be moving through the process. The most closely watched race there was the Democratic U.S. Senate primary, where the winner will face Republican Sen. Susan Collins in November in what is expected to be one of the marquee Senate races of 2026.

The House side in Maine was crowded as well. The Democratic primary in the state’s 2nd Congressional District featured four candidates, a field that could force multiple rounds of ranked-choice tabulation before the race settles. Across the four-state slate, Associated Press trackers and other election monitors expected live results to start showing Tuesday night, but the final count in Maine and Nevada could take longer wherever absentee, mail and provisional ballots remained outstanding.