When the TV screen turns that familiar shade of blue or red and a news anchor says "The Associated Press has called this race," it feels official. Like, legally official. But here is the thing: it’s not. The AP isn't a government agency. It has no constitutional authority to decide who runs the country. Yet, for nearly 180 years, we’ve all basically agreed to wait for their word before we start the celebrations or the post-mortems.
Why? Because the United States doesn't actually have a federal body that counts votes in real-time.
Think about that. We have a massive, high-tech democracy, but there is no central "Department of Election Results" ticker tape running in D.C. on election night. Instead, we have thousands of local jurisdictions—counties, townships, parishes—all doing their own thing. The AP stepped into that vacuum way back in 1848, and they’ve been the unofficial scorekeeper ever since.
How the AP call the election works in the real world
It’s not just one person in a dark room staring at a map. Honestly, it’s a massive operation involving thousands of people. The AP has a "Decision Desk," sure, but they also have a literal army of local stringers. These are people who physically go to county clerk offices. They’re the ones watching the tabulators and calling in numbers the second they’re taped to a window or uploaded to a local server.
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The core question they ask isn't "Who is winning?" It’s "Can the person who is losing catch up?"
If the answer is a definitive, 100% "no," the race is called. If there is even a sliver of a mathematical path for the underdog—maybe from uncounted mail-in ballots in a specific suburban county—the AP sits on its hands. They don’t "project." They declare. There’s a big difference. A projection is a guess based on a trend; a declaration is a statement of fact that the math has reached a dead end.
The end of the traditional exit poll
You remember the old days when reporters would stand outside a library and ask, "Hey, who'd you vote for?" That’s mostly dead. Or at least, it’s not how the AP does it anymore.
Since 2018, they’ve used something called AP VoteCast. Traditional exit polls failed because they couldn't account for the massive shift toward early voting and mail-in ballots. If you only talk to people leaving a physical polling place on a Tuesday afternoon, you’re missing half the story.
VoteCast is different:
- It surveys over 100,000 people across all 50 states.
- It starts days before the election.
- It reaches out via mail, phone, and online panels.
- It interviews people who didn’t vote to understand why.
This data gives the decision team a "fingerprint" of the electorate before the first real vote is even counted. It’s why they can sometimes call a state the very second polls close. If VoteCast says a candidate is up by 20 points and that state has a 40-year history of voting that way, the math is basically finished before it starts.
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Why we trust a news agency with our democracy
It sounds a bit sketchy when you first think about it. A private news cooperative "calling" the leader of the free world? But the alternative is waiting weeks.
Official certification by state governments takes a long time. There are canvassing boards, signature verifications, and legal deadlines that stretch into December. In 2020, we saw exactly what happens when that gap between Election Day and certification is filled with silence. Speculation rushes in.
The AP acts as a stabilizer. They’ve got a track record of being 99.9% accurate. In fact, they famously refused to call the 2000 election between Bush and Gore when other networks did. They waited. They’re okay with being last if it means being right.
What happens when they get it wrong?
It’s rare, but it happens. Usually, it’s a tiny local race where a data entry error at the county level sends the wrong numbers through the wire. When that happens, the AP issues a "retraction." It’s painful and embarrassing for them, which is exactly why the bar for calling a presidential race is so incredibly high. Every analyst on the desk has to agree. There is no "majority rule" on the big calls; it’s a consensus or it's nothing.
The "Too Close to Call" Limbo
Sometimes, the AP will label a race "too close to call." This doesn't just mean it's a nail-biter. It means the number of outstanding ballots is greater than the margin between the candidates, and those ballots are coming from areas where the trailing candidate actually has a chance.
Take a look at the 2020 Michigan or Pennsylvania counts. People were screaming about "ballot dumps" in the middle of the night. In reality, the AP analysts knew those mail-in ballots were coming from heavily Democratic areas. They didn't call the race for Trump early because the math showed a "blue shift" was statistically certain. They waited until the math proved the "blue shift" was large enough to overtake the lead.
Real-world impact of the race call
The moment the AP calls the election, the world changes.
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- The Transition: The GSA (General Services Administration) often looks to these calls to begin releasing funds for the transition team.
- The Markets: Wall Street reacts instantly. Uncertainty is the enemy of the stock market, and a call provides a "settled" direction.
- Foreign Policy: World leaders start sending their "congrats" telegrams (or tweets) based on the AP's word.
It is a massive amount of power for a non-government entity. But it’s power earned through nearly two centuries of counting every single vote, county by county, in the middle of the night.
Actionable insights for the next election night
Next time you're sitting on the couch with a bowl of popcorn watching the maps, keep these things in mind to stay sane:
- Watch the "Expected Vote" percentage. If a candidate is leading but only 60% of the vote is in, the lead might be a total illusion based on which precinct reported first.
- Ignore the "Winner's Speech." Candidates can claim victory whenever they want. It doesn't mean anything to the math. The AP ignores it entirely.
- Check the "Explanatory Journalism." The AP now publishes "Why AP Called [State]" articles immediately after a call. Read them. They will tell you exactly which counties sealed the deal and why the remaining votes couldn't change the outcome.
- Don't panic over "Red Mirages" or "Blue Shifts." Different states have different laws about when they count mail-in ballots. If a state counts Election Day votes first, it will look redder than it is. If it counts mail-in first (like Florida), it might look bluer.
The AP isn't perfect, but they’re the closest thing we have to a definitive referee in a game where the players often try to make up their own rules. They don't call the election because they want a certain person to win; they call it because the math says the losing person can't win. And in a democracy, the math is the only thing that actually matters.
Keep an eye on the AP's official delegate tracker rather than social media rumors. If you see a "call" on Twitter but it's not on the AP wire, treat it as noise. The real work is happening in those county offices where the stringers are still drinking lukewarm coffee and waiting for the final tally.