In the last US elections, after the Associated Press (AP) and American cable news networks called the Presidential election in favour of Joe Biden, former president Donald Trump wrote on Twitter: “Since when does the Lamestream Media call who our next president will be? We have all learned a lot in the last two weeks!”
However, presidential elections in the US are as a rule called by the media. Why does this happen, and how do media houses call elections? We explain.
Long tradition
The AP, for many decades the gold standard for calling US election races, says unequivocally that it “declares winners” — it “does not make projections or name apparent or likely winners”.
The call made by the AP is independent and professional — “our decision team does not engage in debate with any campaign or candidate”, it says — and is almost never disputed.
“If there’s no way for the trailing candidate to catch up, no legal way, no mathematical way, then the race is decided, essentially,” Sally Buzbee, the AP’s executive editor, told The New York Times in an interview in 2020. “And if there is any uncertainty, or if there are enough votes out to change the result, then we don’t call the race.”
Has the AP always called US elections? What about other organisations?
The AP has been calling elections since 1848, when Zachary Taylor became the 12th President of the United States. Unlike in India, there is no central or federal mechanism to run the election in the US. “Outside of setting some broad guidelines, the Constitution leaves the details of actually running elections to the states, which means there are 51 (don’t forget the District of Columbia) different sets of rules on how to run elections,” an AP article says.
This means actual results may take weeks to be tabulated. Thus, it falls on the “decision desks” at American media organisations to “call” the election for one or the other candidate in every state and, ultimately, for the nation as a whole. Broadcasters Fox News, NBC, CNN, CBS, and ABC have their own decision desks.
“From 1990, most of America’s leading media organisations formed the National Election Pool (NEP), which uses exit poll data to supply press partners with live updates on all races contested on election night. The NEP still exists today, with a long-standing arrangement with market research firm Edison Research to supply data to the media outlets ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Reuters. In 2016, the Associated Press broke from this group to develop its own product called AP VoteCast, which is now used by several other outlets, including Fox News, NPR, PBS, Univision, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. DW declares results in line with the Associated Press,” a DW article says.
How does the AP make its determination of who has won?
In the 2020 general election, the AP tracked over 7,000 races, including the Trump vs Biden contest; Senate, House, and gubernatorial races; and thousands of down-ticket races. More than 4,000 freelance local reporters collected counts from every county in each of the 50 states and phoned in to the AP’s vote entry centres, where the data were assessed and cross-checked by some 800 clerks before being fed into the organisation’s central computer system, according to a report in The NYT.
In an FAQ posted on its website, the AP says: “AP’s race callers and Decision Desk are driven entirely by the facts… AP’s race callers are staff who are deeply familiar with the states where they declare winners… They… study election rules and recount requirements and track changes and updates to election law…[,] they work with AP’s political and government reporters[, and] review and rely on information from AP’s election research group.”
The AP’s race callers use tools including “AP’s vote count, which it has conducted in every U.S. presidential election since 1848”, and data from a wide-ranging survey of the electorate. “Race callers collaborate with analysts who focus on statewide races, [and] …editors at AP’s Decision Desk sign off on every race call for President, Senate and Governor.”
When is a race “too close to call”?
This is an expression that was heard repeatedly between November 3 and November 7, 2020 as the counting progressed. The AP says it “may decide not to call a race if the margin between the top two candidates is less than 0.5 percentage points”. Also, “AP may not call winners in races for US House if the margin is less than 1,000 votes and winners in races for state legislature if the margin is less than 2 percentage points or 100 votes”.
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump points at a campaign rally at PPL Center, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024, in Allentown, Pa. (Photo: AP) 
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