PALO ALTO, Calif. — For decades, news organizations have refrained from releasing early results in presidential battleground states on Election Day, adhering to a strict, time-honored embargo until a majority of polls there have closed.
Now, a group of data scientists, journalists and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs is seeking to upend that reporting tradition, providing detailed projections of who is winning at any given time on Election Day in key swing states, and updating the information in real time from dawn to dusk.
The plan is likely to cause a stir among those involved in reporting election results and in political circles, who worry about both accuracy and an adverse effect on how people vote. Previous early calls in presidential races have prompted congressional inquiries.
The company spearheading the effort, VoteCastr, plans real-time projections of presidential and Senate races in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It plans to publish a map and tables of its projected results on Slate, the online newsmagazine.
The company will make its projections by looking at who is actually turning out to vote, and then processing that data through a method known as predictive turnout modeling. The process is similar to how presidential campaign war rooms operate on Election Day, when they track turnout by likely supporters so they can adjust get-out-the-vote efforts accordingly.
“It’s what campaigns do,” said Ken Smukler, the founder of VoteCastr. “We’re flipping up the kimono and letting people see what campaigns do on Election Day.”
Providing real-time updates will be a drastic departure from standard election reporting that television networks, national newspapers and The Associated Press have rigidly adhered to for decades. Many news organizations refrain from publishing exit poll data about the likely winners in a state until a majority of polls there have closed. (Exit polls are based on surveys of voters as they leave polling stations, and they are considered a polling gold standard because only people who voted are questioned.)
Though not legally bound to do so, news organizations have kept this information under wraps for fear of suppressing turnout and affecting down-ballot races if the presidential election were called before voting in most states had ended.
“Politicians from Western states have been very critical of any attempt to project election outcomes and report election outcomes before voters in their states have had a chance to cast their votes,” said Joe Lenski, executive vice president of Edison Research, which conducts exit polling for leading news organizations on election nights.
