AP Explains: What to expect on election night

Many races are won on election night, but it's not uncommon for it to take a few days – an in rare instances, a few weeks – for the Associated Press to declare a winner. That is because each of the 50 states determines its own voting rules, laws and procedures, including when polls close and when mail-in ballots are tallied, which means counting doesn't happen all at once. The Founding Fathers set up the Electoral College — a series of state elections to pick the president — to empower states in terms of their own elections processes. But they didn't stand up a centralized entity to count every citizen's vote. So every U.S. election night, The Associated Press counts the nation's votes, tallying millions of ballots and determining which candidates have won their races. It's been done that way since 1848, when the AP declared the election of Zachary Taylor as president. In 2020, the Associated Press was 99.9% accurate in calling U.S. races, and 100% accurate in calling the presidential and congressional races for each state. In the 2020 race, President Joe Biden was declared the winner four days after Election Day – at 11:26 a.m. ET on Saturday, Nov. 7. Stephen Ohlemacher, AP Election Decision Editor said he oversees and 60 analysts on election night, "and we declare the winners in about 7000 races across the U.S.." On election night, race callers in each state are equipped with detailed information from AP's election research team, including demographics, the number of absentee ballots, and political issues that may affect the outcome of races they must call. For years, AP has employed a full-time elections research team that works year-round to ensure the vote count team, the decision desk and newsroom know as much as possible about what to expect once Election Day arrives. And can pass that on to member news organizations and customers. "In many years, it takes a long time in various states to find out who won different elections," Ohlemacher said. "In the pandemic it did get more pronounced and that's because the increase in mail ballots. It also became more pronounced in more states. Winners may have been called, and concessions may — or may not — have been made, but voting itself is over when polls close on Election Day. There's still more work to do, as local election officials count and verify results through the canvass and certification process. That means that race calls are made before results are official. But the AP only declares a winner when it's certain that the candidate who's ahead in the count can't be caught. "At the AP, we follow the numbers. We call races without fear or favor," Ohlemacher said. "If the numbers say that a candidate has won and we can verify that the vote count is accurate, we declare a winner."