Patrick Healyunobet, the deputy Opinion editor, hosted an online conversation with the Times Opinion columnists David Brooks, Ross Douthat, Michelle Goldberg and Tressie McMillan Cottom about election night and what will follow.

Patrick Healy: Happy Election Day! What do you think will happen?

Michelle Goldberg: I like the phrase lots of Democrats are using: “nauseously optimistic.” I’d bet on Kamala Harris winning, though I can’t tell how much of that is evidence and intuition and how much wishful thinking. On the evidence side, the J. Ann Selzer poll showing Harris three points ahead in Iowa was picking up something real happening among American women. Many are furious over the end of Roe and revolted by the hypermacho campaign Donald Trump is running.

Ross Douthat: I think Donald Trump will win, for reasons I elaborated on when Kamala Harris had a clearer advantage in the polls and I stand by now: Harris is a weaker-than-average candidate who is stuck defending a deeply unpopular incumbent administration, and I still expect — perhaps unwisely — that any substantial polling error will favor Trump. And we may get a presidential winner slightly faster than in 2020, but that might just be a fervent and foredoomed journalistic hope.

Healy: Ross, which swing states do you think could decide the election faster than in 2020? I’m keeping an eye on North Carolina, where polls close at 7:30 p.m. Eastern, and Michigan — two states that usually count votes expeditiously and where both Trump and Harris allies are on pins and needles.

Douthat: To those I’d add Virginia, where polls close at 7 p.m.; if it’s going to be a big night for Trump, we’ll see that in early returns there, even if he’s very unlikely to win the state outright. Conversely, Ohio could herald a big night for Harris if it appears close.

Goldberg: In Michigan, it’s striking that a Republican pollster there, whose most recent survey has Harris up by two points, has concluded, based on absentee ballots and early voting returns, that they were undersampling women, Black voters and people in Detroit. The story of this election could be that pollsters were so desperate to avoid underestimating Trump’s strength — a mistake of 2016 and, to a lesser extent, 2020 — that they overcorrected this time around.

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