The Polls—And the Stock Market—Are Open on Election Day

While trading floors in other countries sit empty during election days, the United States takes a different approach.

On Tuesday, Americans headed to the polls to cast ballots for a variety of elections, including one for president of the United States. All the while, markets and other businesses generally remain open.

This makes the United States an outlier among other members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which includes many industrialized democracies such as Australia, Germany and Japan. About 75% of OECD members hold elections on the weekend when markets are closed, according to a 2018 analysis by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank.

Other nations, like South Korea, open polls during the week, but make elections a national holiday, the analysis found.

Various efforts to move U.S. elections to the weekends or make Election Day a federal holiday have so far come up short. But proponents aren’t giving up: U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo introduced a bill in February that would turn Election Day into a federal holiday. She and other supporters argue opening polls when many people are off work would bolster turnout.

Meanwhile, analysts are digesting corporate earnings calls rife with references to the elections, according to an analysis from FactSet, an analytics company. More than 36% of corporate conference calls held from mid-September through October mentioned the elections, making references more prolific now than during the last presidential election, FactSet said.