A key to democracy’s success is the public’s confidence that election results are legitimate and accurate. This can only happen when all votes have been counted and certified. Every state has an official process for doing this, and it takes days or weeks to make sure all ballots have been properly counted.
This is important because prior research has shown that electoral expectations are shaped by partisan biases and the media’s aggregation of polling data (Kuru, Pasek and Traugott 2020; Madson and Hillygus 2024). When the outcome of an election is unexpected, it can exacerbate perceptions of fraud or irregularities, especially among voters who think their candidate lost. The unexpected loss of John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election, for example, fuelled conspiracy theories and allegations of widespread voter improprieties that tainted the election result (Gumbel 2008).
When news outlets collect data and analyse it, they can predict who will win each race. The data sources are unique to each outlet, but they may include the results of exit polls, the number of early in-person and mail ballots that have been cast, and patterns from past elections. Reporters can then track progress toward the completion of all votes counting and provide updates for each race.
When a news outlet is confident enough in its analysis to declare a winner, it makes a “call” of the predicted winner. Some outlets call races shortly after polls close, while others will wait until nearly all the votes have been counted.