How do news organizations make their calls?
The AP and other election night news organizations such as CNN, NBC, ABC and Fox News maintain a “decision desk” and use a model to project how the vote count will unfold, state by state. Some are now relying on Decision Desk HQ, an independent organization set up specifically for this task.
“News organizations have gotten a lot more nervous about making early calls because they don’t want to have to take a call back like they did in 2000,” said Mike Wagner, a professor studying elections at the University of Wisconsin.
The decisions about when to call are made by statisticians, not news anchors.
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“It’s not Sean Hannity making that determination,” Wagner said. “It’s not Rupert Murdoch making that determination early. It’s the people in the room doing the analysis, making that determination about whether, whether the election can be called.”
The calls of different networks may differ in timing because each uses a model that is independent of others. Different analysts may make conclusions at different times.