Poll Closing Times Today, By State — With Kalshi Odds

When do polls close? For the August 18, 2026 primaries, polls closed at 7 p.m. local time in Florida and Wyoming and 8 p.m. local in Alaska, which put most of Florida done at 7 p.m. ET, the panhandle at 8, Wyoming at 9 p.m. ET and Alaska at midnight ET. The next big closing night is the November 3, 2026 general election, and the same rule applies: local time first, then the time zones spread it across the evening. The state-by-state times and the Kalshi prices from August 18 are below.

Tuesday's three primaries do not close together. They cascade across the clock, from 7 p.m. Eastern when the first Florida precincts lock up to 12:00 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday, August 19, when the last Alaska polling place finally does, and the roughly five-hour cascade in between is the whole story. Florida, Wyoming and Alaska all vote on August 18, but they sit in three different time zones and run three completely different kinds of race, so the night arrives in stages instead of all at once. This page gives you every closing time, where to follow the count, and what the prediction markets already believe about the headline races before a single ballot is read.

What Changed Today

This page has flipped from the August 11 results record to Tuesday's slate. Every closing time below is for the August 18 Florida, Alaska and Wyoming primaries, and every price was fetched from Kalshi's live boards as of this morning, Sunday, August 16, 2026. The short version of what moved since the last cycle: Florida's two governor primaries are priced as near-certainties (Donalds 98¢, Jolly 99¢), Wyoming's Republican governor primary is the one headline race trading as a contest, and Alaska's nonpartisan format means its marquee questions do not resolve Tuesday at all. The rest of this page walks through each of those in order.

Poll Closing Times For The August 18 Primaries

The answer in ten seconds, drawn from each state's election authority and its timezone map:

Two details are worth knowing before you plan your night. First, being in line when polls close still gets you a ballot (Florida's Division of Elections says so explicitly), so a busy precinct can push the first meaningful returns past the listed hour. Second, and this is the callback the rest of the page keeps paying off: closing time is not calling time. Florida usually starts reporting within minutes of 7 p.m., but Alaska's count does not begin until after its 8 p.m. local close, which is already past midnight on the East Coast.

The single row that reshapes your evening is the bottom one. Alaska closes at 8 p.m. Alaska Daylight Time, which is four hours behind the East Coast, so the last polls in the country do not shut until 12:00 a.m. Eastern, early Wednesday, August 19, and the state's first substantial numbers land well after that. If you are following from anywhere east of the Rockies, Florida and Wyoming are a prime-time watch and Alaska is a morning-after read.

If you only remember two numbers, make them these

by 9 p.m. ET, every poll in Florida and Wyoming is closed; Alaska is a separate, much later story.

Where To Watch The Results

Each state posts official returns as they are counted. Florida's numbers flow through the Florida Department of State's Division of Elections results portal and each county's Supervisor of Elections; Wyoming's come from the Secretary of State's office and county clerks; Alaska's run through the Alaska Division of Elections, which typically releases its first batch after 8 p.m. Alaska time and adds absentee and mail counts over the following days. The Associated Press calls races off those same feeds, and it is the source most national outlets lean on once the count is live. One thing to keep in mind as you watch: on a lopsided board like Florida's, the eventual AP call is a formality the market settled long ago, so the news will trail Kalshi's price. On a contested one like Wyoming's, the call is the moment the market has actually been waiting on. So the polls tell you when the voting stops, and those feeds tell you when it is settled, but the markets already have a running opinion, and the three states could not be priced more differently.

Florida: The Market Already Closed Both Primaries

Florida is the biggest state voting Tuesday and, on the boards, the least suspenseful. Kalshi treats both governor primaries as effectively decided. Here is the live Republican board as of Sunday morning, August 16, 2026:

The row that matters is the only one that moves the needle: Donalds at 98 cents. That is not the market forecasting a close win — it is the market saying the Republican nomination is essentially spoken for and the remaining two cents are rounding, not doubt. The Democratic side reads the same way from the other direction, with David Jolly at 99 cents while the rest of the field — Shevrin Jones, Jason Pizzo, Gwen Graham and four others — sits at a single penny, and Jerry Demings at zero. When two primaries are priced at 98 and 99, the interesting question is no longer who wins them; it is what those nominees are worth against each other in November. Our Florida GOP governor primary verdict walks through how an AI panel priced Donalds' board against the market, and the state's marquee Senate primary is broken down in our Ashley Moody Florida Senate primary steelman.

Wyoming: The One Governor Primary Still Trading As A Contest

Wyoming closes two hours after Florida, at 9 p.m. ET, and it is the night's one headline governor race the market has not put away. Kalshi's Republican board:

Eric Barlow at 80 cents is a clear favorite, but 80 is not 98 — the board is pricing a roughly one-in-five chance that Megan Degenfelder, at 19 cents, is the one giving the concession-or-victory speech. In a deep-red state where the Republican primary is the election that decides the governorship, that gap is the real contest of the night west of the Mississippi. This is the Wyoming race to actually watch the returns on when the count starts at 9 p.m. ET, because it is the only headline governor board where the closing time and the calling time might sit far enough apart to matter.

Alaska: A Nonpartisan Primary That Decides The Field, Not The Winner

Alaska is the outlier in every way that counts for this page. It closes last, at 12:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday, August 19, and it runs a nonpartisan top-four primary: every candidate for an office appears on one ballot, and the top four advance to a ranked-choice general in November regardless of party. That means there is no single "primary winner" to price on Tuesday — the vote sorts the field rather than crowns a nominee. So the market that exists is already looking past the primary to the November governorship, and it is the widest board of the three:

Tom Begich at 50 cents is the closest thing to a coin flip on any board this week — the market gives him even odds to win the governorship in November and splits the rest of the field behind him, with Bernadette Wilson at 26 cents next and Treg Taylor at 10 the only others in double figures. Read that against Florida's 98-cent near-certainty and you can see why Tuesday plays out as three separate nights: one state where the primary settles nothing that was still open, one where a real primary contest gets decided, and one where the primary only sets the November table and the count runs long past the point most of the country is watching.

Worked Example: What A 98-Cent Favorite Actually Means

Here is how to read any of these numbers without a finance background. A Kalshi contract pays $1 if the answer is yes and nothing if it is no, so the price in cents is simply the market's probability in percent. Byron Donalds at 98 cents means traders, collectively betting real money, see about a 98 percent chance he is the Republican nominee — a near-certainty, not a nail-biter.

Now contrast that with Alaska's board, where the top name sits at 50 cents. Same math, opposite meaning: 50 cents is the market saying it truly does not know, an even-money question with the other half of the probability spread across the field behind him. The skill in reading these markets is not memorizing candidates; it is noticing the difference between a 98 and a 50 and understanding that both are the crowd being honest — one about a race it considers over, one about a race it considers wide open. A casual reader sees "favorite" on both boards and assumes they are the same kind of bet. The prices are quietly telling you they are nothing alike.

Where To Follow Every Race After Tuesday

Tuesday's primaries are three data points in a midterm cycle the markets are pricing every day, and they feed directly into the bigger boards: whoever emerges in Florida, Wyoming and Alaska becomes a name the November markets have to value. Our 2026 midterm election odds hub tracks the night's returns and the races they set up, while the chamber-level stakes are priced in our House control verdict and the full balance-of-power breakdown that puts every race on one board. And if elections are only one corner of your interest, the free expert picks today board is where our analysts post their daily plays across every sport, free.

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