Media projections

[Tirnam]

One thing that strikes me when I'm watching American and European election nights is how it is really difficult for American media to have quick and trustable projection.

A few examples: in France the media work with pollsters, the pollster look at some selected precincts and based on the early results in those precincts, give to their media partner, in basically an hour, a precise projection of the final results which have a very small margin of error (in the last regional election, Ipsos-France 2 projections had a margin of error of less than 0.5 points)

In Austria last week, 10 minutes after the polls close, and with some early results, he ORF projected a win for Van der Bellen with 53.6%, at the end he won with 53.8%

Also in Italy, 45 minutes after the polls close, LA7 had a projection of a No victory with 59.2%, the No won with 59.1%

Meanwhile, in the US, we have to wait hours, and tons of result to have a projection. The networks didn't call Ohio for example until 80% of the vote was in, while Trump won it by 8 points. I remember in 2012, in the middle of election night, with a good part of the results in Virginia reported, Chuck Todd was saying that their model had Obama and Romney in that State within 1 point, in the end Obama won it by 4.

How to explain those differences? If Europeans can call and project the final result fast and safe, why Americans can't?

[Make My Bank Account Great Again]

Keeping viewers in suspense keeps their eyeballs glued to the television and boosts ratings.

That's why it took all the media outlets forever to have "Donald Trump elected President" as their headline even after it became painfully obvious that he was gonna win barring some miracle.

[RI]

In a lot of states in the US, that type of approach wouldn't work well given the frequency of absentee/mail voting (wherein such ballots may arrive days after Election Day and/or may be counted separately and display different patterns than the in-person Election Day vote), provisional ballots, in-person early voting, and other non-traditional mechanisms which sometimes comprise the majority of ballots cast in a state.

In addition, the media has become quite skittish about projections post-2000, and the motivation exists to keep the election in suspense as long as possible for viewership reasons.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

We actually do have something like that.  Each network sends three reps from their Decision Decks to a giant meeting of the analysts with the exit pollsters and all the data during the day on Election Day.  They then break at 5 Eastern to go back to their networks.  I heard that one of the reps from NBC was expecting a Clinton win slightly larger than Obama's in 2012 when he left the meeting.

[Tirnam]

In a lot of states in the US, that type of approach wouldn't work well given the frequency of absentee/mail voting (wherein such ballots may arrive days after Election Day and/or may be counted separately and display different patterns than the in-person Election Day vote), provisional ballots, in-person early voting, and other non-traditional mechanisms which sometimes comprise the majority of ballots cast in a state.

I know, and I understand the difficulties involved by all this possibilities. Especially in States like Washington for example,  but in Austria they have also postal absentee ballot, and they manage to have a good estimate of the final result with 700,000 ballots by mail counted the day after.

We actually do have something like that.  Each network sends three reps from their Decision Decks to a giant meeting of the analysts with the exit pollsters and all the data during the day on Election Day.  They then break at 5 Eastern to go back to their networks.  I heard that one of the reps from NBC was expecting a Clinton win slightly larger than Obama's in 2012 when he left the meeting.

Yes, the exit poll, and I understand that an exit poll (especially an early exit poll) can be wrong. But once you have some real votes counted, you should have a quick idea of the final result (compare the swing, watching what's in, what's left, ...)

[100% pro-life no matter what]

In a lot of states in the US, that type of approach wouldn't work well given the frequency of absentee/mail voting (wherein such ballots may arrive days after Election Day and/or may be counted separately and display different patterns than the in-person Election Day vote), provisional ballots, in-person early voting, and other non-traditional mechanisms which sometimes comprise the majority of ballots cast in a state.

I know, and I understand the difficulties involved by all this possibilities. Especially in States like Washington for example,  but in Austria they have also postal absentee ballot, and they manage to have a good estimate of the final result with 700,000 ballots by mail counted the day after.

We actually do have something like that.  Each network sends three reps from their Decision Decks to a giant meeting of the analysts with the exit pollsters and all the data during the day on Election Day.  They then break at 5 Eastern to go back to their networks.  I heard that one of the reps from NBC was expecting a Clinton win slightly larger than Obama's in 2012 when he left the meeting.

Yes, the exit poll, and I understand that an exit poll (especially an early exit poll) can be wrong. But once you have some real votes counted, you should have a quick idea of the final result (compare the swing, watching what's in, what's left, ...)

The NY Times did have a live probabilities thing this year that was slightly slow to move because it started at a 84% chance for Hillary, but it showed a certain Trump win hours before the networks called it.

[Kantakouzenos]

A few things nobody mentioned that might answer this question.

For one, I think everything is done on a state by state basis, meaning results in one state won't be used to extrapolate the results in another similar state or area.  To give an example, if Indiana is called for the Democratic presidential candidate before polls close in Ohio (something that would probably only happen in a landslide Democratic victory) they still wouldn't call the race in Ohio, despite Ohio being similar to Indiana demographically, but less Republican leaning than Indiana is.  Why that is?  I don't really know.  Also, I could be wrong on this point.

Secondly, unequal poll closing times.  With a large geographic area, and no federal guidelines coordinating the state’s poll closing times, the poll closing times vary quite a lot.  The earliest will usually be Eastern Kentucky, and most of Indiana closing their polls at 6:00 PM eastern standard time, ending with the Aleutian islands in Alaska closing theirs at 1:00 AM eastern standard time.  With everything being done on a state by state basis, this guarantees that process takes longer.  Also, some states have multiple poll closing times (like the aforementioned Kentucky and Indiana), and even if it is pretty obvious that a state will be won by a candidate before the other polls close, the networks won't make projections until the rest of the states polls close.

A third reason is that lines are a lot more common at many polling places.  I heard that in most European countries, you basically never have to wait in line to vote.  In America, you the average time you will spend in line to vote is 14 minutes, with 5% of people having to wait an hour or longer.  Worth mentioning is that precincts with long lines one year will probably have long lines the next year, so getting results from key precincts could end up taking a long time. 

Also, although it can’t be done as quickly as in other countries, the house of representatives can and very frequently has been projected early on before a majority of individual districts have been projected for a party. 

[Oldiesfreak1854]

The reason American news media is so bad at calls is because there are such intense competitive pressures between the networks to get the big calls first.  Likewise, they rely heavily upon exit polls rather than actual vote tallies.  Both are factors in the Florida 2000 debacle.