How Election Night Race Calls Work: 4,000 AP Reporters, Two Vote Counters and the First Calls at 6 P.M. Eastern
Before a single Texas result is projected Tuesday night, an army of stringers will phone in county totals to the Associated Press - the same count American newsrooms have used since 1848. Reuters explains the machinery Houston viewers will be watching.
HOUSTON - When a network projects a winner on Tuesday night, the call will almost certainly trace back to one of two vote counts. Reuters reported Sunday that most American news organizations rely on the Associated Press or the election-data firm Decision Desk HQ, and that the AP - which has counted votes in every U.S. election since 1848 - will deploy more than 4,000 reporters at county election offices and polling places to gather the 2026 midterm results.
The outlets split on what they do with that count. ABC News, CBS News, Fox, CNN and NBC News all take AP data; Fox's and CBS's decision desks make their own projections from the AP count, exit polls, early-vote totals and statistical modeling, while the Wall Street Journal and MS NOW - covering its first midterms since separating from NBCUniversal's cable portfolio - rely solely on the AP for race calls. The New York Times uses AP calls for most contests but independently reviews competitive ones. The AP's own rule is conservative: it calls a race only when the trailing candidate cannot catch up, estimating the percentage of ballots counted against its estimate of total turnout.
The night starts early and far from Texas. The first calls can come soon after polls close in Indiana and Kentucky at 6 p.m. Eastern - 5 p.m. in Houston - followed at 7 p.m. Eastern by Georgia, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia, with instant calls possible in races where most voting already happened early. Decision Desk HQ, the other major counter, requires unanimous agreement from its team and a final sign-off from its head of data science, Scott Tranter, before a projection goes out.
The caution is earned: projections can be wrong, and every desk Reuters surveyed builds its process around not being the one that gets it wrong. For Harris County voters, the practical translation is simple - the county's own count, posted by the Clerk's office, is the record; the calls on television are estimates built on top of counts like it, and in a close Texas race they may not come until the county numbers are nearly complete.
