Instead of listing how many voting precincts
are reporting, ABC News will tell viewers the
percentage of expected votes that are in so far,
said Marc Burstein, senior executive producer
who’s been in charge of ABC election coverage
since 2000.
“Our byword of the night is transparency,”
Burstein said. “We will tell people what we know.
We will tell people what we don’t know, and we
will tell them why.”
News organizations will still declare winners
in individual states much as they have done
in the past, using a combination of poll results
and actual vote totals. Again, the expectation is
these calls may be slower than in past years.
Producers say viewers should look to Florida as
an early bellwether, because of its importance,
efficiency in counting and early poll closing
time. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog said last
week that if Democrat Joe Biden wins Florida, his
chances of winning the presidency shoot up to
99 percent. If President Donald Trump wins the
state, his reelection chances jump to 39 percent,
what Silver calls essentially a tossup.
North Carolina and Ohio are other states where
relatively early results could give an indication of
how the night is going.
Perhaps.
“If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s to expect the
unexpected,” said Alan Komissaroff, Fox News
senior vice president of news and politics.
More reporting from outside of studios will
likely be on display, with news organizations
placing greater emphasis on voter integrity
issues and the possibility of legal challenges.