How media decision desks declare history

• Former President Trump and his GOP allies have also in recent election cycles spread disinformation and denied legitimate results.
• Follow Axios' live coverage featuring reporting and analysis from across the country.

State of play: Networks employ decision desks to make race calls using real-time results and exit poll information.

• Exit poll questionnaires ask voters a variety of questions, including who they supported in various races, and collect demographic data, used to weight polling and understand how different groups of Americans voted.
• For the National Election Pool, a consortium of media networks that works together for exit polling operations, at least one "interviewer" is sent to each selected polling place, per NBC. This year, that means interviewers will be stationed at 600 different polling locations.
• When election results depend on razor-thin margins, it takes longer to determine a winner, Costas Panagopoulos, a Northeastern University political science professor, told Axios. Panagopoulos worked on NBC News' decision desk from the 2006 to 2020 cycles.

ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC coordinate through the National Election Pool, which receives exit poll and vote count data from Edison Research, a firm specializing in election data.

• As election cycles become less predictable and modern challenges arise — like growing rates of nonresponse or delays in processing ballots — pollsters have had to adjust in how they capture representative data, said Panagopoulos, who now works with Edison Research.

Zoom in: The 2024 presidential race could come down to a sliver of voters in a handful of key swing states.

• "You really do have to wait until you have an accurate sense of what the vote count looks like because any information based on survey data, like the exit polls, as good as it is, is still going to have some error associated with it," Panagopoulos said.
• He continued: "And that uncertainty, if it's a very slim margin, can be sufficient to make a wrong decision or not be able to make a decision."

Flashback: Decision desks have in the past made controversial calls that end up making unintended headlines.

• The 2000 election is the oft-cited cautionary tale of failed exit polling and race calling.
• Networks, using calculations from the since-disbanded Voter News Service (a consortium formed by the major news networks and the AP), first called the state of Florida for Al Gore over George W. Bush. They later declared the race "too close to call."

Observing exit polls and sample swing precincts in the vital Sunshine State, TV networks prematurely called the state for Gore, NPR reported.

• A consequential Supreme Court ruling to end Florida's recount and declare that no alternative recount method could be established in the necessary timeframe ultimately determined the outcome for Bush.

Two decades later in 2020, Fox called the state of Arizona — a key battleground state again in 2024 — for Biden, far ahead of other networks and the Associated Press.

• Even though Fox was ultimately correct, the decision sparked questions among other outlets and angered Trump and his supporters.
• While the AP called Arizona a few hours later, it wasn't until nine days after Election Day that the other networks' decision desks (CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC) called the state for Biden.

By the numbers: When Fox made the call, Biden was ahead by 8.5 percentage points, with an estimated 73% of the expected vote counted, per the New York Times. To win, Trump needed to take about 61% of those remaining votes.

• In the end, he won 59% of the remaining vote — a much larger margin than anticipated based on pre-election data.

The intrigue: The head of Fox News' decision desk predicted it would take days for the network to call the race this year.

• "The over/under is Saturday," Arnon Mishkin told Politico Magazine. "Which was when the call was made last time. Which is when Pennsylvania is likely to come in."

In the last election, former President Trump falsely and prematurely declared election victory, pledging to go to the Supreme Court to stop votes from being counted.

• Trump's victory declaration was premeditated, Axios reported at the time.
• He planned to say he won if it looked on the map like he was "ahead," which is not enough to trigger an election call.

What we're watching: It's very possible the country will not know the winner of the race on Election Night.

• Panagopoulos posed two scenarios: If a "strong partisan tilt" emerges early in the evening, Americans could know right away.
• Or, he continued, "it'll be a protracted process that could take, I would say, up to at least a week to resolve itself."

Go deeper: Why 2024 could see another "red mirage" and "blue shift"