Spectrum News is committed to providing our audience with accurate, factual information, along with the context and analysis that allows them to understand election results and develop informed opinions.

And as a network of local news organizations supported by a national team, we are committed to not just covering the national contests but also the state and local races that are critical to our democracy.   

Spectrum News partners with the Associated Press for federal, state, as well as some local election results. The AP has a careful, established process for counting votes, verifying the data and declaring projected winners on election night and in the days and weeks afterwards. It has been doing this work for more than 170 years. Projected winners are declared based on actual election data, collected by a network of 4,000 freelance vote count reporters who work with local election commissions nationwide. The AP does not speculate but waits until it can say definitively which candidates are projected to have won, based on vote count, polling research, and other data.

To understand how many votes have been counted, the AP uses a new measure called “expected vote”. The expected vote is the percentage that has been counted out of what the AP estimates will be the eventual total number of votes cast in a given race.

Read more about how the Associated Press counts the vote and calculates expected vote.

Occasionally, our local political journalists will gather data directly from local election officials in races not covered by the AP. Spectrum News also will project the winners for local races, in consultation with their editorial leadership, using data from the AP or directly from election commissions. 

Our multi-platform coverage will be led by our local Spectrum News 1 teams.