The New York times reports: “Joseph R. Biden Jr. won Massachusetts’ 11 electoral votes”. I read a little more of the page and learned that this fact was reported with 3 percent of the vote counted. In other words, Biden won 2 percent of the votes and that was enough for the NYT to say that he won the state election. Why not report “Biden won” at 7:01 am, then?
Why is the NYT calling Virginia for Biden when Trump has ~58% of the vote with ~40% counted?
I think that the professionals can do this by looking at which precincts have reported their results. In Northern Virginia, for example, they probably know that at least 70 percent of the voters are reliable Democrat voters due to working for the government, being a government contractor, etc.
(So I wouldn’t have a problem with a newspaper saying “We predict Candidate X will win…”. But to say that Candidate X actually HAS won, as the NYT does above, seems premature until votes are actually recorded.)
but its a projection right >? i found this type of reporting to be a bit confusing.
(In India, the election commission’s website has the most up-to-date data on the actuals (no projection) . is there something similar there? google is showing me ap press results, which again seem to be projections).
I was watching NBC. It said the California polls closed at 8pm (CA time), and it called the state for Biden at 8:01. Likewise for Oregon and Washington. Their charts shows 0% of votes counted.