If you think you’ll wake up Wednesday morning knowing who your next president will be, then you might be in for disappointment. But but rest assured, the delay is normal.

The process of opening, verifying, and tabulating hundreds of millions of ballots across 50 different jurisdictions isn’t a fast or easy one, and it’s not unusual for it to take a bit of time after the election, especially in a close race. In fact — if you recall — the 2020 election wasn’t called until the Saturday following election day.

According to Secretary of the Commonwealth Bill Galvin, we won’t know the official vote counts from most states — including Massachusetts — until after November 8, when all mail in ballots postmarked by Election Day are due, and it’ll be more than a week before the election is over entirely.

“It can’t be certified until the books on the elections are closed,” Galvin explained during a press conference Monday at the State House. “There’s three days…ballots cast in Massachusetts, if they are sent back by mail and postmarked, have to be included. There’s 10 days for overseas ballots, which are primarily military people. So the final results could not even be certified until that time.”

Unofficial results may be provided by city or town elections officials — although in Massachusetts they aren’t required to do so — and media outlets like the Association Press have working relationships with officials across the nation in order to proceed their own unofficial tallies.

“We’ll be hearing that and seeing those, but certified results will occur after that,” Galvin said.

While results in Massachusetts will probably be called by media outlets early, that won’t and hasn’t always been the case elsewhere.

In 2020, with several states still outstanding in the days after the November 3 General Election, the race wasn’t broadly called until Saturday, when swing-state Pennsylvania was announced for President Joe Biden (and yes, this could explain some amount of any déjà vu you might be experiencing this year). The delay was mostly due to widespread implementation of early and vote by mail options, created due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Following the call, former President Donald Trump wasn’t ever satisfied he’d received a fair shake and contested the results almost until he left the White House in 2021, effectively dragging certainty about the election through January 6, 2021, and a full-scale riot that interrupted the certification process. (Trump still maintains he won the election, despite demonstrably not being the President from 2021 onward).

Though you may have to wait for a definitive answer on the presidential race, according to Galvin — the nation’s most senior elections official — the people doing the vote counting will do their jobs correctly, however long it takes.

“I can tell you that people who administer elections in the United States are people of integrity, they are honest people and the tallies they present are honest tallies,” he said.

Of course, it’s not always the case that voters have to wait for results. In 2016, Trump’s victory became apparent overnight after the Associated Press announced his election as the 45th President at 2:29 a.m. on Wednesday. Former President Barack Obama’s wins in 2008 and 2012 were announced on election night.

Former President George W. Bush knew he’d beaten former Secretary of State John Kerry the night of the election 2004, a much clearer result than he’d seen in 2000, when Florida’s “hanging chad” drama delayed results until December. When the U.S. Supreme Court eventually ordered an end to recounts, Bush won the state and the White House a full 36 days after the polls closed.

In this Nov. 24, 2000, file photo, Broward County, Fla., canvassing board member Judge Robert Rosenberg uses a magnifying glass to examine a disputed election ballot at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., during that year’s disputed election. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz, File)
An election worker processes mail-in ballots for the 2024 General Election at the Philadelphia Election Warehouse, Tuesday in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)