A question that will be asked again and again on election night is, “Who won?”
WASHINGTON – One question will be asked again and again on election night: Who won?
The Associated Press will answer that question for nearly 5,000 contested races across the United States and up and down the ballot, from presidential and state elections to a variety of local offices.
The AP has been collecting voting results and declaring winners in elections for more than 170 years. This fills an important information gap of up to a month between election day and the official certification of the results.
What does it take to determine the winners? A careful and thorough analysis of the most recent available voting figures and a variety of other election data, with the ultimate goal of answering this question: are there circumstances in which the trailing candidate can catch up? If the answer is no, the leading candidate has won.
Race calls are based on demonstrable facts, primarily from the AP’s vote count, which is compiled by state and local elections offices across the country.
As more and more ballots are tabulated beginning on election night, the AP will monitor incoming votes at the county level and analyze who is in charge and which areas the votes are coming from.
At the same time, the AP is trying throughout the night to determine how many ballots have not been counted and from which areas. State and local election officials do not immediately know on election night exactly how many votes have been cast in each election. Determining how many are left has become more complicated because of the growing number of mail-in ballots arriving after Election Day, which is Nov. 5 this year.
This means that there are usually no official and exact figures of outstanding votes to rely on once vote counting begins. As a result, the AP estimates turnout in each race based on several factors and uses that estimate to track how many of the votes have been counted and how many remain.
The AP is also trying to determine how the ballots counted so far were cast and what types of votes — such as mail-in ballots or in-person Election Day ballots — remain.
This is because the method a voter chooses often appeals to who he voted for. Since the issue of voting by mail became highly politicized during the 2020 election, most mail-in votes nationally have been cast by Democratic voters, while most in-person votes on Election Day have been cast by Republicans.
In many states, it is possible to know which votes will be counted first based on previous elections or plans announced by election officials. In some other countries, the votes counted so far are clearly indicated by type.
This helps determine whether an early lead is expected to shrink or grow. For example, if a state first counts votes cast in person on Election Day, followed by mail-in votes, this indicates that an early Republican lead in the vote count may shrink as more mail-in ballots are tabulated. But if the reverse is true and ballots are counted first, an early Republican lead could be the first sign of a comfortable victory.
The AP’s analysis to determine the winners also relies largely on other election data, especially long-standing voting trends in a given area. Past election results show that states and counties with a long history of lopsided Republican or Democratic victories tend to continue the same voting patterns from one election to the next.
Even in closely contested races, comparing current voting patterns with those from previous races can provide important clues.
For example, if a Democratic candidate performs a few percentage points better in all counties that reported votes in a state that a Democrat previously won by a narrow margin, that could be a sign of a more comfortable Democratic victory. But if the Republican performs a few percentage points better, that could indicate an extremely close race or even a flipped result.
Major changes in an area’s voting patterns, which differ substantially from statewide trends, are certainly possible, but tend to take root over the span of multiple elections. This helps analysts understand whether a candidate’s lead is an expected outcome or a sign of a tight race. It also helps determine whether remaining uncounted ballots are from areas that would likely benefit one candidate over another.
Demographics can also shed light on vote counts. For example, shifts that differ from statewide patterns could be explained by a shift among a specific group, such as Hispanic voters or white voters without a college degree.
Another tool available to AP’s decision-making teams is AP VoteCast, a comprehensive election survey across 50 states that provides a detailed snapshot of who voted in an election and what was on their minds when they voted. Data from AP VoteCast makes it possible in some cases to call non-competitive or less competitive races when polls close or shortly thereafter with the first release of votes.
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