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Desire Zohran Mamdani to be elected new york city Mayor? Who will be the next governor of New Jersey? Desire California Adopt new Congress map?
These are among the questions The Associated Press will answer when the news organization tabulates the votes and announces winners Tuesday in hundreds of races on ballots across the country.
This is the role that AP has played for almost 180 years, soon after its inception.
Determining the winner involves careful and thorough analysis of the latest available vote counts and many other election data. The ultimate goal is to answer the question: Are there any circumstances in which the trailing candidate can overtake the front-runner in the race? If the answer is no, the leading candidate has won.
Here’s a look at the AP’s role and its process for determining the outcome of elections, also known as calling a race:
Why does AP say race?
United States of America There is no nationwide body that collects and releases election results. Elections are conducted at the local level by thousands of offices, following standards set by states. In many cases, the states themselves don’t even offer up-to-date tracking of election results.
The AP fills this gap by compiling vote results and declaring winners in elections, providing critical information in the period between Election Day and official certification of results, which typically takes weeks.
collect votes
The AP’s vote count brings together information that would otherwise not be available online or scattered across hundreds of local websites until days or weeks after the election. Without national standards or consistent requirements across states, it also ensures that the data is in a standard format, uses standard terms and undergoes rigorous quality control.
The AP hires vote counting reporters who work directly with local election officials to collect results from the counties or precincts where votes are first counted. As results become available, these reporters present them by phone or electronically. If any results are available from state or county websites, AP will collect the results from there also.
In many cases, counties will update vote totals as they count ballots overnight. AP is continuously updating its counts as these results are released. In the general election, AP will update 21,000 votes per hour.
vote analysis
As votes come in, the AP will analyze the race to determine the winners.
One important thing the AP considers is how many ballots have not been counted and which precincts they are from. In cases where official or accurate counts of votes outstanding are not available, the AP estimates turnout in each race based on several factors and uses that estimate to track how much of the vote has been counted and how much remains.
The AP also tries to determine how the ballots cast so far have been counted and what types of votes, such as mail ballots or ballots cast in person on Election Day, remain.
This is because the method voters choose may be related to the party they voted for. As voting by mail has become highly politicized in the 2020 election, Democrats are more likely to vote by mail, while Republicans are more likely to vote in person on Election Day.
In many states, it is possible to know which votes will be counted first based on past elections or plans announced by election officials. In others, votes are clearly marked by type when issued.
This helps determine whether the opening edge is expected to decrease or increase. For example, if a state first counts votes cast in person on Election Day, then counts mail-in votes, this suggests that the early Republican lead may diminish as more mail ballots are tabulated. But if the reverse is true and mail ballots are counted first, the early Republican lead could be the first sign of a comfortable victory.
call race
In almost all cases, a race can be declared well before all the votes have been counted. The AP’s team of poll reporters and analysts will conduct a race as soon as a clear winner is determined.
In competitive races, AP analysts may need to wait until additional votes are counted or until specific information about how many ballots are left to count is confirmed.
Competitive races where votes are being actively tabulated – for example, in states where large numbers of votes are counted after election night – may be considered “too early to call”. If a race is so close that there is no clear winner after all ballots except provisional and late absentee ballots have been counted, a race may be “too close to call.”
The AP’s race calls are not predictions and are not based on speculation. They are declarations based on analysis of vote results and other election data that a candidate has emerged as the winner and that no other candidate in the race will overtake the winner after all the votes have been counted.
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The AP moves forward tabulating votes and calling races starting Tuesday night. View the results page and notes from the decision team here.