When should the media start projecting election results?

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Given that there has been a lot of discussion of this lately, I thought we might as well dedicate a thread to it. The idea is to craft some sort of consensus around this issue so that nobody walks away feeling cheated.

If we could all elaborate beyond two-word responses, that would be great. Three days.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

[quote author=Senator Cranberry link=topic=207864.msg4498681#msg4498681
Seriously though, I wonder how far we can relate to RL here, as RL elections also don't have the possibility to count votes before the end. Part of what Atlasia makes interesting is this "look bore leads by 3 votes; oh no, now TNF is a vote behind...", and if that means some races will have apparent winners early on, well, so shall be it, I'd say.
[/quote]

This was my thought as well. Given the multiple divergences of Atlasia from real life, using actual standards for election coverage is a very risky business. As you said, RL networks don't start counting votes until after the polls close: but if we did that here, the speed with which official election results are tabulated here means that there wouldn't be any point in covering the election at all.

Personally, I'm inclined to agree with those who said that projections should be issued based on turnout rates. If we're two days into the election and nearly every active voter has already made it to the polls, I don't see a reason to postpone projections at that point. If the race is neck-and-neck and votes are coming in regularly, that's different, and obviously it would behoove media sources to abstain from calling the race in that scenario.