The Board of Elections provides a rough timeline of election night reporting of unofficial election night results.

The Results File and the Election Night Dashboard will be updated roughly every 10 minutes, beginning after polls close at 7:30 p.m. North Carolina elections officials do not “call” elections. Projections of race winners may be made by media and/or candidates using unofficial results.

Before the election results are considered final, there is a rigorous post-election process to ensure that all votes were counted. County Boards of Election each complete a “canvass,” which is the official process of determining the votes have been counted and tabulated correctly, resulting in the authentication of the official election results. According to state law, the canvass meeting when the results are certified is 10 days after Election Day. The State Board of Elections meets on the Tuesday 3 weeks after the Election Day to finalize the results.

The state and county board of elections conduct audits after every election, including audits of voter history, manual entries, provisional ballots, and close contests. Audit results from previous elections are available online.