A little primer for anyone inexperienced in watching election returns from someone who has been following them far too closely for far too many years:

1. Don’t be worried when initial returns for a state show big percentages towards Republicans. Rural communities tend to lean conservative and because of the relatively low populations, those counties tend to report results quicker than the suburbs and cities. This is not some conspiracy causing the “numbers to change” as Trump claimed in 2020, this is just low population areas reporting results before higher population areas.
2. News channels will be showing you tons of state maps broken down by counties as results come in and it’s going to be very disheartening if you don’t realize that most of those red counties have much, much lower populations than urban and suburban areas. In an ideal world, they would show state totals with counties sized by population, as that would make this issue much more evident.
3. We almost certainly won’t know who the winner is in the presidential election on the night of November 5. It’s likely going to take awhile, so don’t go in with the expectation that we’ll finally be able to put the chaos behind us immediately. The GOP will likely continue to work to disenfranchise voters for weeks after the election, and we have to hope the courts don’t let them steal the election. It’s why it’s so important everyone votes and the margin is as large as it can be.
4. If you have access to results from 2020 and 2016 (usually available via the state government’s website), you can make some educated guesses about how things will ultimately turnout by looking at the turnout and results from some of those rural counties and comparing to previous years. For example, if some rural county went 73% for Trump in 2020 and had record turnout, and this year he’s only getting 60% and turnout is lower, chances are Trump is going to have a bad night. For smaller, more local races, results in a single precinct can be a bellwether for an entire election - not because a candidate won it, but by the size of the margin of victory.
5. Following along with #3, don’t stay up all night trying to get the returns. As I said, this is going to take awhile, and it’s important to pace yourself or else you’ll drive yourself crazy. Hopefully you’ve already taken the most important action you can by casting a ballot, so you’ve done what you can.