At 2pm the polling stations will close and only then will votes start being counted. It might be late into the evening before definite results for the whole country will be published. Five years ago, during the last national elections, final results came out at 11pm. Fortunately, there is no need to wait this long to get a general idea of where things might stand this year. For the smaller districts, the final results will be available before that, and RTL will have first projections up in the early hours of the evening.
These first projections are not exit polls, where voters are asked which party they voted for after exiting their polling station. This would be complicated in Luxembourg as you can vote for up to 23 people and you could mix and match between the different parties. Therefore, the survey company Ilres has deployed over 100 correspondents that need to be at their designated polling station at 2pm by the latest. They will phone in the election results as soon as either the president declares them, or they are displayed at the polling station.
As soon as the data is available, the German partner will calculate the most probable results for the different districts. Katharina Beckmann from Kanter Public explains that they draw a sample for each district which is selected according to special criteria. So that it is spread across the country and its different regions as well as being spread party shares. Ultimately it should be a small reflection of the population of the result at that time.
It is difficult to know when exactly the first projections will be available. But for the smaller districts you can expect that to be between 6 pm and 7 pm. Whereas for the centre and southern district it may be around 7 pm to 7.30 pm. But there could be delays, if for example there needs to be a recount at certain polling station. Furthermore, there were more absentee ballot votes and more candidates on the lists this year. This could also have an impact on when exactly the first projections are published.
