SACRAMENTO COUNTY, Calif. — Media outlets reporting different numbers of electoral votes for former Vice President Joe Biden has confused some people. The discrepancy is because different outlets use different data from third-party organizations.
Kim Nalder is a political science professor at Sacramento State, director of the Project for an Informed Electorate, explained the process to ABC10.
“The networks and different media organizations contract with different organizations on the ground to do some of that work,” Nalder explained.
Many news outlets, including ABC10, get data from the Associated Press (AP). The AP is also used by NPR, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and many other newspapers.
The three big tv networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS, as well as CNN, all use an organization called the National Election Pool.
Nalder said traditionally these organizations use information from exit polls, telephone calls, and local demographic information to make predictions.
“As the day goes on they integrate the actual results into their findings,” Nalder said. “It’s a very complicated thing to do and obviously the stakes are very high for the companies that are contracted to do this work. Because if they get it wrong, they won’t have any businesses two years from now.”
This year though, a complicating factor is not knowing how many votes to expect.
“The piece that’s difficult this year is we don’t know how many are outstanding necessarily when they’re coming in the mail,” Nalder said. “There could be way more than usual. It’s a huge turnout election. And so it’s more difficult to make those calls.”
The high numbers of people who came out to vote also complicate things.
“This election is unique in that it’s record-setting turnout,” Nalder said. “So just the numbers are different and a lot of the calibration is done with historical figures within that particular precinct.”
Nalder said she understands people feeling stressed about the uncertainty
“Election officials are very careful and meticulous and that’s a good thing in democracy,” Nalder said. "We want every vote to count. If we don’t know today who exactly who is president of the United States that’s OK, as long as we do in time for the electoral college to vote.”
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