The best way to show vote totals in perspective is by using “% of expected vote reported”.
With massive early voting nationwide and the advent of county-wide polling places in many areas, the concept of a “precinct reporting” percentage on election night is completely OBSOLETE. YET you are likely to see that TERM USED across the spectrum.
You can make a bet on it. In Texas, shortly after the polls close at 7:00 pm CT (or 7:00 pm MT in El Paso), there will be HUGE vote totals appearing on tv screens from Fox, CNN, MSNBC, etc. and websites like RealClearPolitics, Politico, NY Times, etc.
That’s because in places like Harris County (Houston) and Dallas County, there will literally be millions of counted early votes posted in the minutes shortly after the polls close. Yet these same sources will show paltry “% of precincts reporting” totals in the fine print of each state’s totals. That will be misleading and worse.
So-called informed sources like Rachel Maddow (MSNBC), Brian Williams (NBC News) and John King (CNN) will breathlessly exclaim some nonsense like: “this is still very early, only X percent of precincts have reported”.
Now, I expect John King and Brian Williams to be clueless, they are both dumb as rocks. But Rachel Maddow? She should know better, but she referred countless times to “precincts” in Texas on Super Tuesday last March — a concept that hardly exists any more in the biggest Texas counties.
More than 60% of the likely vote nationwide has already been cast — and those totals will largely be released at the county and state levels, often quite early on election night. So the question of how many individual precincts have reported their “day of” votes is completely immaterial. In key states like Florida, North Carolina and Texas, early voters probably will represent 80% or more of the total. And all those states report early voters quickly.
So what really matters is a sense of how much of the total projected vote (BOTH early and “day of” votes) has been counted in a given county and/or state — and of course how much more is thought to be OUTSTANDING. Those are projections, but they are very well informed projections based on turnout calculations.
That’s the kind of analysis that the REAL pros like Dave Wasserman of Cook Political Report, The Fox News Decision Desk, and local experts like Steve Schale (Florida) and Jon Ralson (Nevada) can provide.
In fact, it was the cool hands at the Fox Decision Desk who were accosted by Megyn Kelly in 2012 when they called Ohio — and this the entire race — based on expected votes not yet counted in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) vs. other red leaning counties with votes remaining to total. You’ll recall that Karl Rove threw a hissy fit on the air because the Ohio Secretary of State’s live total was a virtual dead heat at the time. But the Decision Desk stood its ground — and they were proven correct.
Dave Wasserman of Cook is probably the premier vote counter in the country. He’s famous for his “I’ve seen enough” proclamations — often long before AP and the networks call a race. Pay attention to what he is saying on election night, not the vacuous pretty boy (or girl) talking heads on the networks.