Is it possible to know who VTCed a question before the five vote limit is reached?

Question

Is it possible to know who voted to close a question before the five vote limit is reached?

Answer 1

Kind of, as long as the question is in the Close Vote Queue. If you are able to find the review item*, you can see the responses other people had to that review. However, this won't show if people voted to close outside of that review.

As mentioned by Alexander O'Mara and Glorfindel, close voters might leave automatically generated comments such as "Possible duplicate of {Post title}." Be careful, though—some of these comments might be left by users who merely flagged the post, and not by actual close voters.

In reality though, why does it matter? You should never need to know who voted to close.

^{*There are several ways to do this. If you find somebody who you think reviewed the question, you can go to their review history. If you are in the review queue yourself, there is a chance you'll come across the question. As mentioned by Shadow Wizard, you can see the full review history if you have Moderator Tools privileges. If SEDE has been updated recently, you can use a query like this one to find all review items for the post.}

Answer 2

Not directly, but you might be able to find some clues.

If a duplicate or custom close reason is used, you might be able to see their associated comment (unless it is deleted). It may be that person just flagged it though, if they don't have close vote privileges.

Alternately, if you have access to the review queue, you might be able to find some of the votes in the review history page.

Unless it's actually closed though, I wouldn't worry about it. Nothing actually happens until enough people vote to close it, which may never happen if people don't agree.

Answer 3

Usually, it is not possible.

There might be some evidence in the question's timeline; if there is a Close Vote review going on, you can see the reviewer's actions. (Still, it's possible to close-vote a question during a review, and retract your vote later.)

Another possible piece of evidence is an (auto-generated) comment left by the first user to close-vote as a duplicate, or a custom off-topic reason.

Answer 4

As a moderator, you can see this, but that link is not available for non-moderators.