The American presidential election is unique in the way its results are announced. Unlike India, where votes cast in state and central elections are counted on a fixed day and the official results are published by the Election Commission (EC), in the US it is the media that announces the winner – a process which is called ‘Calling the Choice’. There are two reasons for this: first, the question of who won the American presidential election will not be officially answered until a few weeks after election day, and second, in the United States, where elections are held, there is no central or federal EC by the states.
To bridge this gap between Election Day and the final official announcement, media organizations – including the Associated Press news agency – step in to compile the results and “declare” a winner.
However, calling the election is not a poll – it is a completely different exercise, based not on a survey but on actual vote counting data.
Why is the official process long?
Since there is no central election office in the United States, this task falls to the states, each of which has its own standards and processes to follow. State and local governments begin counting votes after voting ends on Election Day, which this year is November 5th. This is a complicated task in itself, because unlike India, where voting ends the same day it begins, American states can receive mail in voting even in the days after Election Day. Once the count is complete, each state takes time to certify the results. California, for example, typically takes a month — until December — to tabulate and publish the official vote count.
Another complexity that makes the American system unique is the formal process of electing the president through an electoral college, the composition of which is essentially the basis for electing the president. The president-elect will not be announced until January, two months after Election Day.
A gap that needs to be filled
“This is a gap in the Constitution left by the founders that AP sought to fill just two years after our company was founded. Then, as now, it was important that Americans have an independent, nonpartisan source for the big picture of the election – most critical of the very important news about who won,” AP Vice President David Scott said in an early statement Article published by the news agency last month was quoted.
AP, then a newspaper cooperative that had been founded two years earlier, called for a presidential election for the first time in 1848. According to their assessment, media organizations declared presidential winners in subsequent years, and the first formal collaboration took shape in the 1960s. AP and three networks – ABC, CBS and NBC – formed the National Election Pool (NEP) to compile the results.
AP eventually broke away from this group in 2016 and founded APVoteCast to independently poll the electorate. Broadcasters in the NEP used data and analysis from polling firm Edison Research to read and call the election.
How it’s done
As states tabulate their results, AP conducts its own vote count for each state race using on-site reporters and analysts. According to the AP, 4,000 “vote count reporters” will be deployed to election offices and precincts across the U.S. this year.
According to the AP, reporters turn their results to 800 “voting workers” who feed the vote counts into AP’s standardized format. The same clerks are tasked with entering results from official sources online, such as county and state election websites. In some states, they also monitor automated data feeds provided by election officials.
There will be at least two to three verification checks. Clerks are trained to ask reporters questions if precinct results or vote totals look unusual. The system reports any unusual results or statistics to the clerk who submits the vote count. For example, if a candidate is reported to have received more votes than the county’s electorate, the system will notify the clerk of an error, AP says. Vote counts reported by journalists are cross-checked with official online sources to determine whether they are being reported. However, this review is limited to states that continually update their vote counts. AP has a “decision team” that includes “race callers” who work closely with “analysts” for races in the states that will decide the presidential election.
Before a race is called, this team examines how many votes are left to count. Aside from the vote totals they know, the team tries to estimate each county’s overall expected turnout based on several factors. These can range from voter turnout in previous elections to early voting trends in a particular area. This team also tracks mail-in ballots when that information is made public by states or counties.
Explaining the process, AP says on its blog: “AP does not make predictions or name obvious or likely winners. Unless our race participants can say definitively that a candidate won, we do not engage in speculation… All of these reports and …” The analysis aims to determine the answer to a single question: Can the trailing candidates catch up with the leader ? Only when the answer is a clear “no” can the race be called.
Therefore, “calling” the election may take some time – not as long as the official election – but several days. In the 2020 presidential election, AP declared Joe Biden the winner four days after the vote. The current contest between Vice President and Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump is expected to be even tougher, and therefore the “decision” could take just as long, if not longer.