Comment on How AP uses expected vote instead of ‘precincts reporting’ when determining a winner

By Robert Yoon, Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s usually possible to determine who won an election before the vote counting is 100% complete. But doing so requires determining how many ballots still need to be tabulated at any point in the vote count, and that’s not as straightforward or clear-cut as you might imagine. In fact, it’s only gotten more complicated as elections have evolved, making traditional methods of tracking vote count progress less reliable. What happened to ‘precincts reporting’? For years, the most common way news organizations kept track of the progress in the vote count on election night was to calculate the percentage of precincts that had reported their results.