I am pretty sure that in the 19th century and early 20th century

[Proud liberal 80]

That America did not know the election results on Election Day....this is a phenomenon that grew in the mid 20th Century because of the news media and their election desks....hell, most of the time there is still a lot of vote outstanding when the media calls a state and that state still is counting for days...we just don’t pay attention to it because the state wasn’t even close.

This notion that we must know at election night is just dumb.

[Retrograde]

1. They did have the telegraph by the time of the Civil War

so a lot of states did have good ideas of how the popular votes went. I remember reading - maybe in Team of Rivals - about Lincoln getting telegraphed return updates on election day in his 2nd election.

A lot of states will have partial results: mine takes care to list results as not complete until the SoS certifies them - about a month after the election. There are usually races that are very close and can change from day to day - I'd expect Issa's and Nunes's races to be like this.

[Klaralven]

2. Before radio broadcasts America wouldn't have known the results til the newspapers came out next day

The AP has counted the vote in U.S. elections since 1848, including national, state and local races down to the legislative level in all 50 states, along with key ballot measures. The AP collects and verifies returns in every county, parish, city and town across the U.S., and declares winners in over 5,000 contests.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press