How Does the Media Call Elections? (And Should They?)

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The media has traditionally “called” election results as soon as polls close. Is this something they should continue to do?

As states certify their official election results, many questions linger about this unprecedented race for the U.S. presidency.

Some question whether there is evidence of voter fraud. Some ask if President Donald Trump will ever concede to President-elect Joe Biden. Still, others wonder if our divided country will ever recover.

But for some, the questions started on Election Day as media outlets around the country began calling states for Trump or Biden early in the evening as election numbers were just starting to come in.

There is a perception in the current political climate that these calls were made prematurely—or worse, irresponsibly.

But were they really?

An Educated Guess

Simply put, a media race call for any given candidate is just that network’s best-educated guess, as the Poynter Institute explains. It’s not in any way legally binding.

A news outlet calling a race also in no way indicates that particular outlet’s preference for who should win.

Most major news stations and newspapers take their cue from larger news agencies such as The Associated Press (AP) or Reuters, for example.

Local news stations generally will not call a race for a national candidate until the AP does. However, larger media outlets such as CNN or Fox News have their own methods for determining which candidate will come out on top.

But even when the AP makes a call, it does not mean the vote tally is official.

States aren’t required to certify their results on Election Day. On the contrary, most have days or even weeks to certify results.

According to Ballotpedia, Delaware had the earliest deadline this year: Nov. 5, just two days after Election Day. Maryland, Missouri, and New Jersey have the latest on Dec. 8.

The Electoral College votes on Dec. 14. This vote will determine the final outcome of the presidential race, at which point the results will be official.

But How Can They Even Know?

The ballot for the 2020 presidential election.

In certain cases, a candidate or party’s history of winning a state makes a race “eligible to be declared as soon as polls close,” according to the Associated Press. In those states, the AP uses AP VoteCast to confirm the win.

Due to concerns that in-person exit polling was becoming less accurate, The Associated Press left the National Election Pool after the 2016 election.

The National Election Pool delivers results of exit polls that are conducted by Edison Research.

Those conducting the exit polls use written questionnaires at polling locations to determine which candidate people voted for, Journalist’s Resource explains. Edison also conducts phone surveys in advance of elections.

After leaving the National Election Pool, the Associated Press developed AP VoteCast in 2018. The AP works with NORC, a research organization at the University of Chicago, to conduct survey research to account for a rise in the number of votes cast ahead of Election Day.

That said, the AP will not declare a winner in a race before all polling locations in the state have closed.

The Associated Press has conducted a vote count in every U.S. presidential election since 1848, according to its website.

The organization’s vote count is conducted via “stringers” across all 50 states who collect votes from local officials, such as county clerks. Other data is collected via Associated Press journalists gathering results from the jurisdiction’s websites, as well as electronic feeds provided by the states.

Most of the race callers at AP are familiar with the states for which they declare winners, and most have been calling races for years. Working with AP reporters, they track race coverage contributed by AP customers and member organizations.

The AP race callers consider more than just vote totals; they also study the incoming vote count, types of ballots cast (such as mail-in or in-person), and the remainder of votes to be cast in a given jurisdiction.

Editors at AP’s Decision Desk sign off on all race calls.

According to the Associated Press, AP VoteCast has been helpful during the coronavirus pandemic, when so many voters cast ballots early in the 2020 general election.

Fox News, along with NPR, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and others, also uses the University of Chicago’s research, according to The Washington Post.

Fox’s system is known as Fox News Voter Analysis. At Fox, the Fox News Decision Desk makes the race calls for the network.

ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC belong to the National Election Pool — the organization the other networks left after 2016, according to Journalist’s Resource.

Dewey Defeats Truman

Stephen Bates, associate professor at the Hank Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, told Top Class Actions that media outlets reported the race calls accurately in this tumultuous election season.

“On the whole this year, the media seemed accurate in calling election results—more accurate than pre-election polls,” Bates wrote in an email to Top Class Actions.

Polling ahead of Election Day this year showed results that did not bear out when the votes were counted—Biden won by a much narrower margin than what polling had predicted, according to NPR.

But news outlets have made mistakes.

Perhaps the most famous was the 1948 declaration by the Chicago Daily Tribune that New York Gov. Thomas Dewey had bested Harry S Truman in the race for the White House.

Obviously, the U.S. never had a President Thomas Dewey.

The Tribune’s editorial page had dismissed the candidate, but polling appeared to show over and over again that Dewey would be the victor.

But another factor in the Tribune’s decision to call the race and print the “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN” headline was closer to home: The paper was forced to go to press hours ahead of its normally scheduled deadline due to a printers’ strike, according to a Tribune report.

The second edition of the paper showed a headline changed to “DEMOCRATS MAKE SWEEP OF STATE OFFICES,” according to the Tribune, but the damage was done.

Media outlets generally are not in any danger of facing legal repercussions over their reporting of election results.

“I can’t think of a circumstance in which a legitimate news outlet would get in legal trouble for wrongly reporting the outcome of an election,” Bates told TCA, “especially if it’s a good-faith error as opposed to a knowing lie.”

Early Race Calling: A Form of Voter Suppression?

The expected 2020 Electoral College Map.

That said, a media race call has the potential to have an effect on election results.

A candidate who is falling behind could see the call and decide to concede, according to Poynter. And in a presidential election, if the party in power switches, that media race call and a concession could speed along the transition to the new administration.

A faulty call also was made in the much-discussed and analyzed the 2000 presidential election.

TV networks were sued in the aftermath of the race that pitted Republican Texas Gov. George W. Bush against Democratic Vice President Al Gore, according to an AP article published Nov. 14, 2000.

The lawsuit accused the networks of discouraging Florida Panhandle voters by projecting— erroneously—that Gore would win the state.

However, pollsters and news outlets aren’t the only ones who can make mistakes.

“In 1980, President Carter conceded before polls on the west coast had closed, and there were reports of voters leaving the lines and going home, to the possible detriment of candidates for lower offices,” Bates explained. “So it’s not just journalists; it can be politicians, too.”

But SHOULD they make the call?

Despite the care taken to accurately report election results, some people still maintain media outlets shouldn’t call races because it can contribute to a muddy picture of where things stand—or potentially discourage voters before polls close as argued in Florida in 2000.

Robert Robb, a columnist for the Arizona Republic, argues news outlets’ reports of election results aren’t official, anyway, so their value is also in question.

Robb points to the AP and Fox News calls of Arizona for Biden — Fox called it late on election night; the AP followed on the morning of Nov. 4 — as evidence of media companies unjustifiably announcing winners instead of simply reporting returns as they become available.

Biden clinched Arizona more than a week later, on Nov. 12.

The days of election results being tabulated in time to make the evening’s newscasts or the next day’s front page are gone.

But people still want — and expect — to know what’s happening at any given time.

As the Associated Press points out, people don’t want to wait until after the Electoral College votes in mid-December to find out the results of the election. As the world has moved into a 24-hour news cycle, the pressure has been on the rise for media outlets to make the calls — accurately, but early.

“Media organizations have always felt pressure to be first with the news, especially with live events like elections,” Bates explained.

“The competitiveness increased with the rise of 24-hour cable news and now with the internet. The people running media organizations, I think, on the whole, are responsible professionals. It’s humiliating to get it wrong.”

Do you think the media should continue “calling” elections? Why or why not? Tell us what you think in the comments below.