Will the NYTimes election needle be up to 2024 results?

Goodbye, Goodbye Needle.
Photo-Illustration: Grip

A way to quell the anxiety this election night? Don’t even have one New York Times dial pin to look at. The NYT election pin — along with Steve Kornacki, your terrified mother calling you, and the cigarettes you smoke even though you’re not really smoking these days — is one of the true icons of election night in the digital age. As states roll in, the needle, like a great, dull leviathan, inches toward the winning side. It is very scary. This year, however, it is Times‘tech workers is on strike over racial differences in pay and for job security, so the needle may not happen at all.

Nate Cohn, the chief political analyst at Times, wrote a thread on X about the needle in a post-strike world, noting that, like in this election (sorry), the presence of the needle was a throwback. “I don’t know if we will be able to release the needle,” he said. “There are good reasons to bet against it, although there might be scenarios where things run super smoothly; alternately we hit mistakes at the start and there’s no chance.” Not to sound too pessimistic, but “we’re hoping this might just go super smoothly” is not usually a winning plan for success during an American election. Maybe we should ask Ann Selzer if the needle moves?