How Will News Networks Decide Their 2020 Presidential Election Calls? -Kyle N

    It's become a common election night tradition in the United States: Turning on the TV and seeing news networks tally votes as the 50 states report their vote totals. But unlike any election prior, the 2020 Presidential Election has the capability to be uncalled for days, weeks, or even months. This is due to the record amount of mail in ballots being submitted, and potential for record vote totals. Nearly 100 million ballots will be cast prior to election day, double the amount of 2016. 

    Decision Desk HQ, a startup company which will be providing live results and projections to major companies this week, will be facing a lot of pressure. DDHQ Political Data Scientist Scott Tranter explained last week that “It’s an election with lots of misinformation and heated rhetoric, so getting this wrong is a big deal.” Their team, much like the other teams projecting the election, will be tracking every piece of data regarding voter turnouts and precinct reports. That in itself would be challenging for a Presidential election, but they will also be doing this for Senate and Governor elections. 

    Their process begins with hundreds of 'stringers' who physically pick up county vote totals and report them to the DDHQ system. And for certain counties who electronically publish their results, DDHQ will be automatically be receiving those. This is because while accuracy is crucial, so is speed. Decision desks across the country will be hoping to call the race first, gaining them attention and potentially new business in the future. The data submitted is then subdivided into hundreds of spreadsheets for every individual election race. From there, the data has to be 'cleaned'. This means manually checking for duplicates and errors in the data. This cleaned data can then be analyzed by DDHQ's half-virtual and half-in-person team. The team tracks data as it comes in throughout the night, and determines if any of the races can be called yet. DDHQ Team members are trained to sift through up to 5 of these determinations per minute! This is all in an effort to beat competitors and provide accurate projections.  

So on election night, or likely the nights following, when TV stations start making projections for election races, you'll have a better understanding of the scramble behind the scenes to make it possible. 

Sources:

https://www.theday.com/storyimage/NL/20201031/NWS21/201039902/EP/1/1/EP-201039902.jpg&MaxW=800&q=62

https://decisiondeskhq.com/

https://cnu.edu/wasoncenter/_images/posts/2019-07-01-2020-election-forecast.jpg