A question about early voting and election night.

[techs]

Do the early voting results get released as soon as the polls close on election night? Would that mean if one candidate had a big advantage in early voting that the results would be highly skewed in the very first numbers posted?

 

[jpeyton]

Every station has a statistical model they will be using to crunch the data.

The station inserts the numbers from early voting, exit polling, and actual vote counts into the model.

The model spits out a prediction.

When that prediction falls clearly outside the margin of error for the model, the station will call that state for a candidate.

The models are highly complex. They take into account historical voting patterns, demographics (age, race, salary, sex), geographical voting patterns, estimated turnout numbers, etc.

 

[techs]

Ok, but on the t.v. screen I am going to see the early voting returns at like 8:01 (if voting ends at 8pm) right?

 

[jpeyton]

Originally posted by: techs
Ok, but on the t.v. screen I am going to see the early voting returns at like 8:01 (if voting ends at 8pm) right?

You might see more than just early voting numbers. States count votes as they come in all day long. They will have results from earlier in the day ready for release right after the polls close, in addition to early voting numbers.

 

[techs]

Originally posted by: jpeyton

Originally posted by: techs
Ok, but on the t.v. screen I am going to see the early voting returns at like 8:01 (if voting ends at 8pm) right?

You might see more than just early voting numbers. States count votes as they come in all day long. They will have results from earlier in the day ready for release right after the polls close, in addition to early voting numbers.

Oh, ok. I was just thinking if that at 8:01 a very large number of votes would show up and, if the early voting was heavily Obama, I would start celebrating way too soon.