By Jaspreet Singh
Nov 1 (Reuters) – On Tuesday night, newsrooms across the US will call winners in one of the country’s most closely contested midterm election cycles in recent years, long before all the votes are counted.
Most television networks and digital outlets rely on two providers for vote counts: the Associated Press or election-data firm Decision Desk HQ.
Some news outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and MS NOW will rely solely on the AP for race calls, while others like Fox News and CBS News will make their own projections based on the AP vote count, exit polls, early-vote totals and their own statistical modeling.
The first calls will start soon after polls begin to close in the United States, first with Indiana and Kentucky at 6 p.m. ET (2300 GMT), and shortly after in Georgia, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia at 7 p.m. (0000 GMT on November 4). In certain races there may be an instant call if much of the voting has already taken place.
Low public trust complicates race calls for news outlets. While more than 60% of Americans have some confidence in news organizations to report accurate election results, only 32% have high confidence, with Democrats more trusting than Republicans, an October poll for the Medill Local News Initiative and the Alliance for Trust in Media found.
While most of the major TV networks all use the same AP vote count tabulation to make their calls, the ones who decide to call winners use a proprietary mix of their own data analysis, historical models, exit poll interviews and expert judgment to call races when they determine that they’ve become a statistical certainty.
Here’s how it works:
AP COUNTS AND RACE CALLS
The AP, a nonprofit newsroom supported by member newspapers, has counted votes in every US election since 1848, working with a national network of reporters and election officials to verify results.
For the 2026 midterms, the AP said it would deploy more than 4,000 reporters at county election offices and local polling locations, gathering and providing data to the decision desks at ABC News, CBS News, Fox, CNN and NBC News. ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC also rely on research firm SSRS, which acquired exit-polling company Edison Research in 2025.
When making calls, the AP uses vote totals and estimates how many votes remain uncounted based on past voting patterns and early-vote data. It calls a race only when the trailing candidate cannot catch up.
DDHQ COUNTS AND RACE CALLS
DDHQ collects vote counts from official state sources, usually secretaries of state or state election departments.
The firm uses statistical analysis, modeling and expert review to project election winners. Its clients include NewsNation, the Hill and Newsmax, and it recently signed up X, the social network owned by Elon Musk.
It uses automated software to repeatedly check official election websites and collect newly posted vote totals in addition to using reporters on the ground. DDHQ says roughly 80% of all votes are processed by pulling data directly from official election sites, or by manually monitoring election sites. The remaining counts are collected by reporters.
It calculates the percentage of ballots counted by dividing the votes reported by election officials by its estimated total turnout for a race. It determines remaining votes by subtracting reported votes from this overall turnout estimate, which is refined on election night using actual data.
Final projections require unanimous team agreement and a sign-off from the head of data science, Scott Tranter. “We’re preparing to have several thousand people working on election night to gather data,” Tranter told Reuters.
RACE PROJECTIONS CAN BE WRONG
Retractions are rare, but both the AP and DDHQ have withdrawn calls in the past.
In 2025, DDHQ withdrew a projection in the Seattle mayor’s race. Earlier this year, DDHQ withdrew its call in the Democratic primary for a special election in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District after Election Day vote counts shifted the race away from its initial projection.
In 2018, after a projected winner fell behind in California’s 21st Congressional District, AP posted on its race-call account that it was retracting the call because Democrat T.J. Cox had taken the lead in the vote count.
THE NEWS OUTLETS MAKING RACE CALLS
Fox’s decision desk will be making its own calls in all statewide races as well as the calls for control of the House and control of the Senate. It uses the AP vote count and applies its own analysis.
MS NOW, covering its first midterms since separating from NBCUniversal’s cable portfolio, will rely on the AP’s race calls.
The New York Times relies on AP calls for most contests but independently reviews competitive races using precinct-level data and its Needle model. It may make a call before or after the AP.
Bloomberg does not make its own race calls. For election results, it uses established third-party sources. Reuters will also be citing the race calls from other news organizations.
The Washington Post did not respond to requests for comment on how it will call races.
(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru. Editing by Edmund Lee, Michael Learmonth and Deepa Babington)
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