How To Watch Coverage of the 2016 Presidential Election Returns

Ian Kerr
November 6, 2016 (Updated 7am MST - November 8)

Before you turn on your TV set Tuesday, you need to ask yourself three things:

1) Are you an eligible voter or can you become one via same-day registration?
2) Have you yet to vote?
3) Are the polls open in your jurisdiction?

If the answer to all three of those questions is YES, then get off this website and go vote.
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The following is meant to help Election-Night (or, if you’re watching from the Eastern Hemisphere, Election-Morning) viewers interpret the Electoral Vote scoreboard as it unfolds. If you’re not familiar with the workings of the U.S. Electoral College system, consider reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States).

The table below reflects an approximation of the Electoral Vote scoreboard at various times of the night (and early morning, with reference to U.S. Eastern Standard Time).

TABLE 1 – Approximate Electoral Vote Count at various Time Points

My data – 

A) Poll-closing times for each state

B) The state’s electoral vote counts, and

C) The odds for given candidates to carry each states (treating parts of Maine and Nebraska as “states” in their own right) per http://fivethirtyeight.com as of 6am Eastern Standard Time, Monday November 8. Consult that website for its methodology of developing their odds.

The following table indicates which candidates are most likely to be declared projected winners and the various states and approximately when.

TABLE 2 – Approximate Times At Which States Would Be Projected For Various Candidates

Note – Maine {ME} and Nebraska {NE} award two EVs for their states At Large (AL), then one for each Congressional District; ME has 2, NE has 3. Numbers in parenthesis that follow these state codes represent the number of the Congressional District(s) encompassed in a particular projection; "(AL)" means "At Large".

My methodology –

1) Whichever candidate the odds indicated to have the best chance of winning each state, I eventually credit that candidate with the requisite number of electoral votes.

2) In the Clinton and Trump columns of the table above, you will see postal codes of certain states appearing BEFORE the forward slash {/} and some appearing AFTER.

3) If the odds data indicated any candidate to have better than an 86% chance of carrying a particular state, I believe the networks will declare that candidate to be the projected winner of that state within 5 minutes of the poll-closing time of that state. These are the states in the Trump and Clinton columns with postal codes placed BEFORE the forward slash.

4) To the extent the odds are not as good as 86% for a candidate, I believe the networks may wait for more data to declare projected winners there (they may not wait so long; I’m being conservative). Those states initially appear, at their poll-closing times, in the Too Close column.

5) At the approximate time when the media will make projections for these initially-Too-Close states, the postal code for that state will appear in two places: a) in the Clinton or Trump column, but AFTER the forward slash AND b) in the appropriate “Shift: 'Too Close' to _____” column.

6) I have chosen to vary the time interval between the poll-closing time and the approximate time the projection would occur according to these variables: a) how close the odds are {closer = longer}, b) recent history of long queues of voters in line at poll-closing time, especially in urban areas {i.e. Ohio}, c) varying degrees of difficulty in vote-counting {i.e. Virginia has 95 counties and 38 cities doing vote-counting}, and d) past experience {i.e. 2012} of how long it takes projections to occur when there is a close result (I used this article, which described some of the 2012 timeline of when networks projected winners of various states: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/nbc-news-declares-obama-winner-387191).

How I plan to use this data

Again, this is an approximation of the Electoral Vote counts for each candidate at various times of the night based on 1) a respected oddsmaker’s calculation of the probable outcomes and 2) my not-terribly-scientific view of how those outcomes will manifest themselves during Election Night coverage.

When I watch election coverage Tuesday, this table should help frame the answers to questions like:

A) “Who’s ahead or who’s behind right now?”
The answer isn’t just the raw electoral vote total – it’s the total relative to what might be expected at a point in time. If Trump is ahead by a count of 160 EV to 120 EV for Clinton at 9:05 pm EST on Tuesday, it may be a mistake to say Trump is “ahead.” It's more truthful to say he’s “performing as the oddsmakers expect.”


B) “What are the surprises? And what do the surprises mean?”
The vote count will differ from the tables above for two general reasons – 1) one candidate bucked the odds and won a state unexpectedly or 2) the media projected a winner in a state earlier or later than the approximation called for. The first surprise is more consequential than the second.

NATURE OF 11/7 UPDATES -- Due to changes in odds:
Moved FL, NC and NV to Clinton from Trump
Changed projection times for AK, CO, IA, ME(AL), ME(2), NE(2) & WI.
NATURE OF 11/8 UPDATES -- Due to changes in odds:
Moved ME(2) to Clinton from Trump
Changed projection times for AZ, GA, ME(AL), MN, NE(2) & VA.