How CNN, Fox News and other media outlets predict who wins the US election
When the Chicago Daily Tribune declared the wrong president in 1948 on its front page, a laughing US President-elect Harry S. Truman held up the newspaper in his hands—and the equivalent of a post-war meme was born.
That’s a headline the newspaper will never hear the end of; it pops up in stories at every US presidential election since 1948. And rightly so. It reminds media that accuracy always overrides a scoop.
As if on cue, it’s referenced again in the 2020 US election as news networks and sites track the voting and counting. The science behind making election projections has dramatically changed though. No matter how skewed a network is—like Fox News is for Donald Trump and CNN is so not (it’s not in love with Joe Biden either)—they still base their predictions on science.
Voter surveys, exit polls and data are pooled together and analyzed. Fox News and the Associated Press are partners and base their projections on surveys conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, one of the largest independent social research organizations in the US.
The Fox News Probability Meter uses this data to show the trends in key contests ahead of final results. “These are not projections of the outcome of races. Users should remember that probabilities might not align with the ongoing official vote count since the meter reflects expected votes not yet counted. The probability meter for the outcome of the national presidential contest uses Fox News Voter Analysis data and votes cast in states where polls have closed. In states where polls are still open, the meter only reflects pre-election polls available to the public.”
After a summer of racial tensions and riots in a pandemic, Americans voted like never before in recent history. In 2016, only 136.5 million voted; in 2020, almost 100 million voted even before Nov. 3.
On the other hand, news outlets CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS work with the polling firm Edison Research for real-time results and exit polling data for what is collectively called the National Election Pool.
The New York Times has the “Needle,” a semi-circular chart that “analyzes incomplete results to show who is on track to win an election. We will have needles for three battleground states, but unlike in 2016, we will not offer a single needle to tell you the overall likelihood of who will win the presidency. Why? The short version: mail voting.”
The needle swings to either the Democrat or Republican color as voting information come in.
But NYT is clear about what the needle does and doesn’t do: “The needle does not make race calls or offer definitive statements. As always, race calls or projections will be made by organizations like the Associated Press, CNN and Fox News.”
In an interview with CNN’s Brian Stelter and the network’s Washington bureau chief Sam Feist, the two discussed how CNN projects races and why it’s different this year.
Feist said, “Local officials across the country at the county, city, township level, or sometimes at the state level, they count and publicly report the votes. And then all across the country, the National Election Pool and the Associated Press, for that matter, send out reporters to learn about and report the votes.”
The science of making election projections has dramatically improved, but the waiting is the same—votes will have to be counted, and it will be longer in this election.
This data then goes through analysts before being broadcast by anchors.
Stelter mentioned that networks compete “do not compete to be the first to announce projections. I feel like in the year 2000, there was a concern that that did happen.”
(The US election in 2000—between George W. Bush and Al Gore—went down as one of the most controversial in US history, which was decided by the Supreme Court when it ordered the halt of the Florida recount.)
Feist said, “I really can assure you that the decision teams at the networks are not in a competition with each other. They're largely in sync with each other. One network may be slightly ahead in one state, one network may be slightly ahead in another state, but it's really the votes that drive the decisions. When there's enough votes in a particular state to give the decision team the confidence that that person is going to win, then they can announce a projection. So, you will not see a race this year, nor should you, and that's a good thing for the public.”
Why are news outlets concentrating on just a handful of states?
Many states historically vote Republican or Democrat at every election cycle, but there are some, called “battleground states,” that could swing either way on Election Day.
CBS News reported that these handful of states could decide the 2020 presidential election with only a small margin of votes. This explains why Trump and Biden concentrated their campaigns and resources in these states.
Two days before the election, on Nov. 1, CBS listed 13 battleground states, namely, Arizona , Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Nevada, Texas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.
Texas probably illustrates why they are called “swing states.”
CBS News reported, “The state appears to be divided by voters who prioritize the economy, and those that are disheartened by the president's performance and racial rhetoric. In September, voters in both Florida and Texas said the president would do a better job handling the economy, and many more Texas voters said Mr. Trump's economic policies would help their family's financial situation.
“However, Hispanic Texas voters' support for Biden is widespread and cuts across generational lines. Six in 10 Hispanic likely voters in the state, young and old, currently support Biden.”
Why 2020 is a very different election for the US
The simple answer is mail-in voting. Because of the pandemic and fears of going out, standing in line for hours at voting precincts, millions of Americans opted to vote by mail.
CNN’s Feist said, “It takes longer to count mail-in ballots. They have to be opened. They have to be processed. Some states don't begin processing mail-in ballots until Election Day, so it could take a little longer. But I really believe that if we don't have a winner on election night, there's a very good possibility that we're going to know the answer on Wednesday or Thursday because the vast majority of votes will have been counted by then.”
Two other factors: Early voting and an increase in voting.
The Guardian put it down to “sharp political divisions among Americans amid the coronavirus pandemic. In a country where even mask-wearing to prevent the spread of Covid-19 has become a partisan issue, many want to limit the risk of infection by avoiding packed polling places on Tuesday.”
Before the polls opened on Nov. 3, 100 million Americans had already cast their votes—out of 239,249,182 age-eligible voters if all were registered.
In contrast, only 136.5 million Americans voted in 2016 when Donald Trump defeated Democratic frontrunner Hilary Clinton. Trump won 306 Electoral College, Hilary Clinton won 232.
But in popular or individual votes, Clinton won by almost 3 million—65.8 million to Trump’s 62.9 million.
Banner photo by ABC News