For the past 25 years, Americans have been waking up early to watch the news media make the final state decisions needed to send a presidential candidate to the White House and to find out who controls Congress. I used to have to wait.
Moments like this on election night 2000, when America watched NBC’s Meet the Press host Tim Russert discuss what was going on in America late into the night, led to It led to a common language of states being red states and Democratic states being blue states. Florida.
With Kamala Harris and Donald Trump virtually tied in the polls and a handful of battleground states likely to be contested, it is highly unlikely that we will know the winner of the presidential election on election night.
So when will we know who won the US election?
Well, it depends on how close things turn out to be. Four battleground states – Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – have absentee voting processes in place that can take several days to complete. But a decisive victory for Harris in other battleground states would be enough to declare her the winner. Other results will take longer.
Why would a U.S. news organization make a call like this?
The press will call the winners. They do not determine the winner. Elections office workers who count the votes and certify the election results determine the winner. This certification occurs days and sometimes weeks after the election.
News outlets report the moment when it became clear from the election office’s announcement that the mathematical results of the vote tally indicated a winner.
“Our standard is absolute certainty,” said David Scott, head of news strategy and operations for The Associated Press. “We will not declare a winner until we are 100% sure that no successor candidate can catch up.”
The Guardian also followed in the footsteps of the Associated Press in calling for an election.
How do news organizations make calls?
The Associated Press and other election night news outlets, including CNN, NBC, ABC and Fox News, maintain “decision desks” that use models to determine how the vote count will unfold state by state. is predicted. Some companies now rely on decision desk headquarters, an independent organization created specifically for this task.
“News organizations are more sensitive about making early calls because they don’t have to take calls back like they did in 2000,” said Mike Wagner, a professor who studies elections at the University of Wisconsin. .
Decisions about when to call are made by statisticians, not newscasters.
“It wasn’t Sean Hannity who made that decision,” Wagner said. “It’s not that Rupert Murdoch made that decision early on. It’s the people in the room doing the analysis and deciding whether or not an election can be called.”
Calls to different networks may have different timing because each uses a model independent of the others. Different analysts may reach their conclusions at different times.
When did you find out your 2020 results?
Joe Biden was declared the winner on Saturday, November 7, four days after the election. On the same day the media called Pennsylvania and Nevada, the president passed the electoral college threshold. Both Michigan and Wisconsin convened the day after the election, but Arizona did not convene until November 12, North Carolina until November 13, and Georgia did not convene until November 19 after a recount.
Will the results be faster or slower than in 2020?
It depends on each state’s margins. According to the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy, states with margins above 0.5% generally see results sooner than they did in 2020. They reached this conclusion because there will be far fewer mail-in votes than in 2020, allowing states to count them quickly. Additionally, three states expanded pre-distribution of mail-in ballots before Election Day, which did not occur in 2020 (Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan), and three states moved the deadline for mail-in ballots to arrive earlier than in 2020 (North Carolina). , Nevada). and Pennsylvania).
In a recent report, Protect Democracy said the best guess is that results will be released in Michigan and Wisconsin within a full day after polls close, the same speed as in 2020. He also expects results to be faster in Pennsylvania than in 2020, when results took longer to be released. 4 days. Nevada’s muster time will be the same or faster than in 2020, when it took four days, and Arizona’s muster time will be the same as or faster than in 2020, when it took nine days. The organization estimates North Carolina and Georgia will both be invited earlier than 2020.
What could prolong the results?
If a state’s margin is less than 0.5% or if some states require recounts, the outcome could be lengthy. News organizations typically do not call states until the results of the recount are known.
For Arizona and Nevada in particular, McCoy said, “It’s very unlikely that anyone will call these races on election night.” “That’s the way these states have functioned for a very long time, and that’s highly anticipated.” It’s not about getting ahead of the curve and making predictions too close to a decision. So you’re just waiting for the votes to come.”
Pennsylvania is particularly difficult because by law local election offices cannot open envelopes and begin counting mail-in ballots until Election Day. Another battleground state, Wisconsin, has similar restrictions, and full results may not be reported until early Wednesday morning.
Some states allow absentee ballots to be counted up to 10 days after Election Day. Nevada is the only battleground state with significant delays. Mail-in ballots can be accepted until the Saturday following Election Day, as long as they are postmarked by Nov. 5.
A legal battle over which votes should be counted could delay the results. A number of lawsuits are currently pending in many battleground states regarding the consolidation of certain ballots, including late-arriving and overseas votes.
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In states like Florida in 2000, where a three-digit number separates the two candidates, the outcome may be determined by military absentee ballots or, in some cases, provisional ballots. . Typically, only about half of provisional ballots are counted, but close races will likely see a mad scramble by political teams to find the people who voted to “cure” those votes. This typically requires providing proof of identity and registration to the court. Election office.
Which state will be the first to show results this year?
News organizations will likely first call some East Coast states where one candidate has a clear advantage over the other.
“Obviously, there are some states that basically convene at full adjournment,” said Drew McCoy, president of Decision Desk Headquarters. “Some will be called as the first votes begin to come in and they are in line with historical precedent.”
What are “Red Mirage” and “Blue Shift”?
The terms “red mirage” and “blueshift” refer to the same phenomenon, where Republican candidates appear to have a lead early in the night, but that advantage disappears as the vote count progresses.
In 2020, voting by mail was heavily favored by Democrats, while Republicans were much more likely to vote in person. As of noon Wednesday, the day after the election, Donald Trump had an 11% lead, but Joe Biden’s lead increased over the next two days as election officials counted 2.7 million mail-in ballots. It was reversed. The Associated Press and other news organizations know how many absentee ballots were returned by voters and how many were requested by registered Democrats, and Biden withheld his candidacy until those votes were counted.
On the Friday before Election Day, Wisconsin had received more than 1 million absentee ballots, with more expected.
“The two most populous counties don’t finish counting until 1 or 2 a.m.,” Wagner said. “And under cover of darkness, hundreds of thousands of votes were collected, and that happened in two of the most liberal counties in the state. Democrats always collect large numbers of votes in the middle of the night in Wisconsin. By law, they cannot be counted until then. Even if they’re doing things as asked, it’s a petri dish for conspiracy theories.”
The opposite happens in Arizona, where mail-in ballots received before Election Day are counted and reported first. In 2022, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly held a 20-point lead over Republican Blake Masters at the start of the night. In the end, Kerry won by five points.
However, mail-in ballots received on Election Day cannot be processed until after the polls close. In 2020, that was a significant number, about 320,000 votes in Maricopa County alone.
Why is this so complicated? Why doesn’t the country add up all the votes to see who has more votes?
Note: In presidential campaigns, the national popular vote does not determine the outcome. Each state counts votes separately. With two exceptions: Nebraska and Maine, the winner of the state, whether he won by 537 votes out of about 6 million votes cast, as in the 2000 Florida presidential election, or by 1.5 million votes. wins all of that state’s electoral votes. -Vote Difference By 1984, Reagan had won California.
Each state is allocated a number of electors based on the number of House districts it has, plus two additional votes to represent the state’s Senate seats. Washington, D.C. has three electors, even though there are no voters in Congress.
He needs 270 electors to win.
In 2020, Biden won 51-47, a margin of about 7 million votes. The electoral vote was 306 to 232, with approximately 57% of the electors winning.
When will we know who controls Congress?
Individual parliamentary races will be announced once the votes are counted, but since there are 435 electoral districts across the country, there may be some races in which voting will not be possible on election night. McCoy said it may not be clear for some time which party controls Congress, depending on the number of parties.
“There’s always one or two races that are incredibly close and there’s just a recount and some other process,” McCoy said. “The key is to wait for the data and see what it tells us, not to get ahead of it. That’s our number one rule: never let data come to the fore.”
