With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.
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Notes -
Does the US media release exit poll results soon after polls close, or is the "calling" of states entirely based on partially counted results?
In the UK the national exit poll drops a few seconds after polls close at 10pm, so we know the results to within 20 seats or so before any votes are counted. Obviously the exit poll isn't always accurate - the exit polls in 1992 predicted a hung Parliament rather than a small Tory majority - but the actual error was only 30 seats. (The UK only has one race to count in each constituency, so we can count by hand overnight and the only results that aren't in by breakfast time are where multiple recounts were needed and a few Scottish seats where it isn't safe to transport ballot boxes in the dark on iffy rural roads.
As a keen election watcher from the UK timezone, I would stay up for an exit poll and then catch the real results on Wednesday morning my time (2-3am EST). I suspect we will know if PA is the tipping point state by then. We won't know which way it is going to tip because there isn't an obvious Dem bias to the postal votes the way there was last time.
Typically there will be exit polls, but with an increase in mail in voting, they are less and less accurate. in PA at least there will be around 2 million postal ballots to count, which is lower than 2020 by about half a million. About 20% of registered voters are using mail in ballots. So far about 56% are from Registered Democrats and 32% from Registered Republicans (although that of course does not mean that is who they are voting for). But mail in ballots are likely to lean Democrat still, by around 2 to 1 or perhaps slightly less.
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Partially counted results, but they are at least smart enough to weight the partial count by source precinct, so when Trump's solidly winning the rural Wisconsin in-person votes but the Milwaukee mail-in vote count hasn't been finished they're still not going to call the state for Trump.
Well, they're probably not? There's always tension between "if we call a state first we get a lot of attention" vs "if we call a state too early we might horribly embarrass ourselves". Fox called Arizona for Biden in 2020 with 73% of the votes counted and a 8.5 point Biden lead, despite the expectations for uncounted votes heavily favoring Trump, and Biden only ended up winning by 0.3 points. I'm not sure whether the takeaway from that by 2024 media is going to be "we might also piss off a lot of people and risk having to backpedal embarrassingly if we call it that close" or if it's going to be "they got away with it last time so we might want to play the odds too".
By far the most serious embarrassment I can remember was Florida in 2000. Networks called Florida for Gore before voting in the panhandle region of the state (which is in a different time zone) even closed, then had to retract the call, then called it for Bush, then had to retract that call - after which point Gore, who had already called Bush to concede, retracted his concession.
I also remember CNN's refusal to call Ohio for Bush in 2004, even though it was clear by the time I stopped watching the results that Kerry had no chance of winning. It was a lot less close than 2000 Florida.
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The whole calling of states thing is a mix of exit polling, turnout analysis, guesswork about the outcomes in other similar areas, and early results. It's a lot of sausage making, it's normally correct, but it has a tenuous relation to concrete facts.
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The over/under from the pros is basically Saturday as when we will know. Usually actually “calling” a state is based on some decent statistics, not infallible but a state being “uncalled” is typically rare.
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