How AP is able to declare winners in states where polls have just closed

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Associated Press declared winners on Tuesday in some states where polls had just closed and in some cases before any votes had been released.

How is that possible?

While hotly contested races that take hours or days to count may attract the most attention, for decades the AP has called landslides or uncontested races at voting close time.

That’s what happened Tuesday, when the AP declared Vice President Kamala Harris the winner in California and Washington and former President Donald Trump the winner in Idaho when polls closed in those states at 6 p.m. 11 p.m. ET. The AP also declared winners when voting closed in earlier states, as well as in some US Senate and gubernatorial races.

The AP considers several factors and analyzes available data before deciding whether a winner can be declared when polls close in a given state. But AP will never declare the result of a contest until enough votes have been counted to make the winner clear.

Many calls for polls to close are for uncontested elections

Many of the races that are called just as the polls close are uncontested elections, where only one candidate appears on the ballot and is therefore the only possible winner of the race. Voters in some parts of the country live in multi-member districts for offices such as the state legislature, where more than one candidate is elected in a district. In these districts, an uncontested race is one in which the number of candidates on the ballot is equal to or less than the number of open seats in that district.

In the 2024 general elections, AP declares winners in nearly 2,000 uncontested races compared to about 4,500 contested races.

It is sometimes possible to declare winners at the close of polls in non-competitive multi-candidate races in areas where a political party has an established history of lopsided victories.

In these cases, AP analyzes multiple sources of available data to confirm the result. It includes the results of the AP VoteCast, a comprehensive survey of both voters and non-voters that determines who voted, how they voted and why.

The AP will not call a race when the polls close if AP VoteCast’s results indicate a departure from the state’s long-term political trends and voting history.

Only a small number will close the poll

AP VoteCast results will be available for all 50 states, though only a relatively small number of the least competitive races will be considered potential poll close calls. There is no AP VoteCast poll in the District of Columbia; therefore, none of the contests there will be called when the polls close, even though the nation’s capital has a long history of landslide victories for Democratic candidates.

For example, AP polls in the 2020 presidential election included Wyoming, a state that last voted for a Democrat in 1968 and which Donald Trump won over Joe Biden by 44 points; and Massachusetts, which last voted for a Republican in 1984, and that Biden won by 34 points over Trump.

A handful of states and districts have multiple poll closing times because they are in more than one time zone. In these cases, AP will never declare a winner before the closing time of final voting in that state or district. Florida, Texas and some others begin releasing voting results from most of the state shortly after polls close in the earlier time zone. Votes already counted from precincts in the previous time zones will also be taken into account in determining whether a winner can be chosen at the moment the final polls close.

Other election data AP takes into account include a precinct’s voting history from recent elections, voter registration statistics and pre-election day polls.

When the above data points confirm the expected result in a state where both major parties have a history of dominating elections, the AP may call the race as soon as voting closes.

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Learn more about how and why the AP declares winners in US elections at Explanation of the election 2024, a series from The Associated Press that aims to help make sense of American democracy. AP receives support from several private foundations to strengthen its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. AP is solely responsible for all content.