How U.S. News Organizations Will Call the Midterms: AP and DDHQ Systems, With First Calls at 6 p.m. ET on November 3
UNITED STATES, November 1 — On Tuesday night, newsrooms across theU.S. will call winners in one of the country's most closely contestedmidterm election cycles in recent years, long before all the votes arecounted. Reuters on November 1 laid out how the calls are made: mosttelevision networks and digital outlets rely on two providers for votecounts — the Associated Press or election-data firm Decision Desk HQ(DDHQ).
The first calls will start soon after polls begin to close in theUnited States, first with Indiana and Kentucky at 6 p.m. ET (2300GMT), and shortly after in Georgia, South Carolina, Vermont andVirginia at 7 p.m. (0000 GMT on November 4). In certain races theremay be an instant call if much of the voting has already taken place.
The AP, a nonprofit newsroom supported by member newspapers, hascounted votes in every U.S. election since 1848, working with anational network of reporters and election officials to verifyresults. For the 2026 midterms, the AP said it would deploy more than4,000 reporters at county election offices and local pollinglocations, gathering and providing data to the decision desks at ABCNews, CBS News, Fox, CNN and NBC News. ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC also relyon research firm SSRS, which acquired exit-polling company EdisonResearch in 2025. When making calls, the AP uses vote totals andestimates how many votes remain uncounted based on past votingpatterns and early-vote data. It calls a race only when the trailingcandidate cannot catch up.
DDHQ collects vote counts from official state sources, usuallysecretaries of state or state election departments. Its clientsinclude NewsNation, the Hill and Newsmax, and it recently signed up X,the social network owned by Elon Musk. It uses automated software torepeatedly check official election websites and collect newly postedvote totals in addition to using reporters on the ground. DDHQ saysroughly 80% of all votes are processed by pulling data directly fromofficial election sites, or by manually monitoring election sites. Theremaining counts are collected by reporters. It calculates thepercentage of ballots counted by dividing the votes reported byelection officials by its estimated total turnout for a race. Itdetermines remaining votes by subtracting reported votes from thisoverall turnout estimate, which is refined on election night usingactual data. Final projections require unanimous team agreement and asign-off from the head of data science, Scott Tranter. "We'repreparing to have several thousand people working on election night togather data," Tranter told Reuters.
Outlets differ in approach. The Wall Street Journal and MS NOW willrely solely on the AP for race calls, while Fox News and CBS News willmake their own projections based on the AP vote count, exit polls,early-vote totals and their own statistical modeling. Fox's decisiondesk will be making its own calls in all statewide races as well asthe calls for control of the House and control of the Senate. The NewYork Times relies on AP calls for most contests but independentlyreviews competitive races using precinct-level data and its Needlemodel. It may make a call before or after the AP. Bloomberg does notmake its own race calls. For election results, it uses establishedthird-party sources. Reuters will also be citing the race calls fromother news organizations. The Washington Post did not respond torequests for comment on how it will call races.
Low public trust complicates race calls for news outlets. While morethan 60% of Americans have some confidence in news organizations toreport accurate election results, only 32% have high confidence, withDemocrats more trusting than Republicans, an October poll for theMedill Local News Initiative and the Alliance for Trust in Mediafound.
Race projections can be wrong, though retractions are rare. In 2025,DDHQ withdrew a projection in the Seattle mayor's race. Earlier thisyear, DDHQ withdrew its call in the Democratic primary for a specialelection in New Jersey's 11th Congressional District after ElectionDay vote counts shifted the race away from its initial projection. In2018, after a projected winner fell behind in California's 21stCongressional District, AP posted on its race-call account that it wasretracting the call because Democrat T.J. Cox had taken the lead inthe vote count.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 华盛顿特区一处投票站内，选务官员与选举观察员交谈（2024年资料图）。CC BY-SA 2.0，欧安组织图片，经Wikimedia Commons。 / An election official speaks with observers at a Washington, DC polling station (2024 file photo). CC BY-SA 2.0, OSCE photo, via Wikimedia Commons.
