El escrutinio terminó esta noche.

Escrutinio is a masculine noun. In general it can mean close examination or scrutiny, but in news and political contexts it very often means the counting of votes or the official tally.

So in Spain, this sentence would commonly be understood as something like the vote count ended tonight.

Terminó is the preterite, which is used for a completed action seen as a whole.

That fits here because the sentence presents the ending of the count as a finished event:

• El escrutinio terminó esta noche = the count finished tonight.

If you used terminaba, that would be the imperfect, which usually gives background information, describes an ongoing situation, or suggests something habitual. It would not sound as natural here for a single completed ending.

The accent mark shows both pronunciation and meaning.

• terminó = he/she/it ended or you ended (formal usted) in the preterite
• termino = I end in the present

So the accent is important: it tells you this is a past-tense form, not a present-tense one.

In Spanish, time expressions like hoy, mañana, esta noche, el lunes, and ese día usually do not need a preposition when they tell you when something happens.

So Spanish says:

• terminó esta noche
• llegó ayer
• empieza mañana

Using en here would sound unnatural in standard Spanish.

Because noche is a feminine singular noun, and the demonstrative has to agree with it.

• esta noche = this night / tonight
• este día = this day
• esta semana = this week

So esta matches the gender and number of noche.

Usually, yes. In many contexts, esta noche is the natural equivalent of tonight.

Depending on context, it can sometimes be understood more literally as this night or this evening/night, but in a sentence like this, tonight is the most natural English rendering.

Yes, that is also possible in Spain.

In Peninsular Spanish, the present perfect (ha terminado) is often used for events connected to a time period that still feels linked to the present, such as hoy, esta mañana, or esta noche.

So both can appear:

• El escrutinio terminó esta noche
• El escrutinio ha terminado esta noche

The difference is more about how the speaker frames the event:

• terminó = a finished past event
• ha terminado = a finished event with a stronger connection to the present moment

Yes. Spanish word order is more flexible than English.

For example:

• El escrutinio terminó esta noche. = neutral order
• Esta noche terminó el escrutinio. = puts more focus on when
• Terminó esta noche el escrutinio. = possible, though less neutral

The original sentence is a very natural, straightforward way to say it.

No. Here terminó refers to el escrutinio, which is the subject of the sentence.

In Spanish, verbs in the third person singular can refer to:

• he
• she
• it
• usted

In this sentence, it is clearly it ended, because el escrutinio is a thing/process, not a person.