U-S On Edge As News Outlets Brace For Election Returns

It is unlikely Americans will go to bed on Election Day knowing who their next president will be. As polls show a dead heat between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris in the final days of the race, news outlets are preparing an anxious nation for the likelihood that election night will stretch into an election week.

Millions of US voters will head to the voting booth tomorrow to cast ballots in what appears to be a deadlocked presidential race. Various poll aggregators—see RealClearPolitics and 538—have former President Donald Trump leading by 0.1% or Vice President Kamala Harris leading by 0.9%, respectively, in national polls. Both figures are within the margin of error.  These polls capture national sentiment, not probabilities of Electoral College victory. Analyst Nate Silver gives Harris about a 75% chance of winning the national vote, but Trump a slight edge in winning the Electoral College. 

The outcome is expected to be determined by the results in a set of swing states—most notably Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina. See how voting patterns in these states have changed in recent elections.  More than 75 million early votes have been cast thus far—roughly 41 million in person and almost 35 million mail-in ballots. Data suggest even participation by party, though women outpace men by about nine points nationally. 

 Also at stake are 34 Senate seats and a number of competitive House districts, with control of each chamber up for grabs.

Most major media outlets around the country rely on a handful of organizations to crunch the numbers and make race calls. Among them: The Associated Press, the National Election Pool and Decision Desk HQ.

The AP, an independent news collective that has been calling elections since the 1800s, plans to deploy roughly 4,000 vote reporters to precincts across the country to be its eyes and ears as ballots are counted, said AP executive editor Julie Pace.

“With the way that misinformation has really, really flourished, and the speed at which misinformation moves, you’re going to see us do a lot more to pull back the curtain on now leading into the election, on what we’re looking at, as we are going to be looking at the vote and calling races and then coming out of those race calls, how we did it,” Pace told CNN.

How projections are made

Scott Tranter, chief data scientist for the startup voting data firm Decision Desk HQ, which is providing race calls to NewsNation, HuffPost, The Economist, Scripps and other news outlets, will have about 1,000 vote reporters working on election night, helping them project some 40,000 races.

“Everything from a mosquito control board race in South Florida to the presidential race in Pennsylvania and everything in between,” he said.

As votes are tabulated, projecting election winners becomes a math equation, Tranter said.

“How many votes does Candidate A have? How many votes does Candidate B have? All the way down to however many candidates there are, we determine how many votes are left, and if Candidate B, who is in second, is not determined to be able to get enough of the remaining vote left to overtake Candidate A, who is in first, then we’re ready to project a winner,” Tranter said.

At Decision Desk HQ’s headquarters in Washington, DC, at least three of their team of 15 race callers must agree with 99.9% certainty that a winner can be projected. Having deep historical knowledge of how counties and states have voted in the past will also help provide certainty in the rare case of an abnormality, Tranter said.

“One way we do that is voting trends in each of these different precincts and counties. If big vote movements happen that are not along with the trend, that raises a red flag in our system and something we go investigate,” Tranter said.