Why does vote counting on election night seem all over the place?

Vote counting—as it’s reported in news coverage and online—can seem confusing. Counting votes takes time and is being done in different places, so it is hard to have a clear picture until counting is completed. Any results reported on election night are unofficial.

To understand unofficial vote counts in the news media, voters should know that:

• Different places count ballots at different speeds. Variations in policy, staffing levels, vote-counting equipment, and the volume of ballots affect how fast ballots are counted.
• Reports of “vote totals” increase in steps because ballots are counted and reported in batches. Election workers organize ballots into groups called batches. All ballots in a batch are processed, counted, and reported together.
• Some vote totals are reported from individual polling places, while others are reported by central election offices. In some places, election workers count and post updates at polling places. But in other places, results are only available from the central election office. If a media outlet has posted a reporter to a polling location, they get the update as soon as it is posted. This creates a small increase in the vote totals. If outlets must wait for the report to be added with other precinct results at a central election office, increases in vote totals will be larger and may happen less frequently.
• Different jurisdictions have different methods of communicating results to the public. Some jurisdictions have a website that displays unofficial results in real time as they become available. Many other jurisdictions rely on periodic reports—online or sometimes still on paper—which are communicated by local reporters. Vote counts in these jurisdictions might appear to increase sharply when an updated report is released.
• Occasional human errors in the entry process for unofficial results must be corrected. Human errors are often typos or simple miscommunications—the kinds of mistakes that happen every day in every type of work. They do not indicate any problem in the counting process, just a mistake in entering numbers on a website. Vote reporting systems have quality control checks that identify these errors. When a number is corrected, the unofficial vote count will change to reflect the accurate value. And official results are checked even more carefully in the days or weeks after Election Day.

For additional information:

• Associated Press, “How AP counts the vote”
• Bipartisan Policy Center, “The Results You See on Election Night are Always Unofficial”
• Bipartisan Policy Center, “How Media Outlets Call Races from Unofficial Election Results”
• Brennan Center for Justice, “Roadmap to the Official Count in the 2024 Election: Reporting Unofficial Results“