On Tuesday night, millions of Americans will be glued to their TV screens or refreshing their browser windows to see the latest election returns, all in anticipation of the final race call. (Although we won’t know the next president until a few days later.)
It may take some time to count the ballots, but news organizations don’t have to wait for each cast ballot to be counted before announcing a winner. They’re often able to announce who won without a full return, thanks to the work of what are colloquially known as “decision desks” — groups of political scientists, statisticians, pollsters and reporters who use mountains of data, statistical models and the like to see which candidates are where and who is. Ground reporting to understand how likely a candidate is to win a particular precinct, county or state.
Given the skepticism that former President Donald Trump has sown in both the election process and the media over the past eight years, it’s important to understand in detail how the processes for projecting and calling election results work, and why news consumers should trust those results. .
“Remember we don’t elect anyone,” Anthony Salvantowho oversees the network’s decision desk as CBS News’ executive director of polling and research, told Vox. “That’s what voters do. Election officials are reporting the polls, and what you’re getting from us and the network is an analysis of what they report, as well as our first-hand reports from talking to voters.”
How exactly do news organizations know who won?
To figure out who won an election, news organizations like Fox News, CNN, The Associated Press (AP) and others use a combination of election officials’ data, statistical modeling, and voter polls and surveys.
Raw vote counts come at the precinct, county and state levels and these help decision desks both to ensure that polling is in line with their expectations and to decide on tight contests. These expectations are shaped by statistical models based on history and other voter information such as geographic location, gender, age and more.
This year, there are two main measures that the news media will rely on for their projections.
AP and Fox News use a system called AP Votecastwhich debuted in 2018 and has been used in every national election since. In a change from past practice, Votecast does not rely on exit polling and instead uses large-scale online surveys of registered voters who are randomly selected. Probability samplingIn an effort to obtain the most accurate data from the most representative sample.
A different method is used by the National Electoral Pool (NEP), which includes ABC News, CBS News, CNN, and NBC News. The NEP relies on Edison Research to conduct three types of surveys: election day exit polls, in-person primary voting exit polls, and surveys of likely voters who will vote by mail to collect data, Rob Farbman, Edison’s executive vice president of research, told Vox. (AP and Fox News were part of this group, but left after the 2016 election.)
(Decision Desk Headquarters, A private company that contracts with news organizations including The Economist and The Hill — and in 2020, Vox.com — doesn’t use voter surveys and instead relies on proprietary statistical methods to project winners.)
Each outlet and organization develops its own criteria for interpreting these results
Sometimes, this can push one decision desk ahead of others, such as in 2020 Fox News decision desk chief Arnon Mishkin Arizona was called for President Joe Biden far earlier than any other news source, including the AP, or when Decision Desk HQ called the race far ahead of other experts.
Overall, though, when it comes time to make a call, “our decision team will examine all the models we’re running, consult with the network’s decision teams, and consider potential data issues to make sure our calls are likely to be wrong. Small enough,” says Farbman. “We usually don’t call unless we’re 99.5 percent confident in the call.”
Similarly, the AP does not call elections According to David Scott, the AP’s vice president and head of news strategy and operations, “there is no way to catch a candidate who is lagging until we are sure.”
The combination of inputs allows the services to accurately understand who won each About 5,000 elections are being held this yearFrom presidential races to local contests and ballot systems. And they can do it quickly without waiting for election officials to count each vote. That’s true even in a tight race (like what’s expected to be a presidential race), though calling them is a bit more complicated.
“If you get a very close race, you’re looking at where the outstanding votes are, the votes that haven’t been reported yet, and you’re looking at where the outstanding votes are coming from,” Salvanto, of CBS News, said. “Whether you’re looking at whether it’s a mail vote or an Election Day vote, if there’s any difference in the patterns you’ve seen by ballot type.”
Along the way, news organizations keep viewers up to date as polls close and votes come in, showing the public that the data used to make calls is accurate.
“If our models show it’s a toss up or it’s leading one way or the other, we’ll tell you,” Salvanto said. “We’ll show you, in real time, where the counted votes are coming in — from which counties, which areas of the state and where it’s still pending, where we know there are registered voters and we know there are still reports. Come, so the viewer can see the whole picture, the way we see it.”
Of course, these methods are not perfect. Very occasionally, news organizations get a nation wrong. The most dramatic example was in 2000, when News Network First called Florida for Al Gore. Errors happen — decision desks are manned after all — but when they do, organizations work to correct them as quickly as possible. Still, mistakes are incredibly rare, so come Election Day (and the days after) you can be sure you’re seeing the real results.
