How we declare winners

AP’s Decision Team is part of our Elections Analytics group, made up of deeply experienced political reporters and editors, data scientists, data analysts and public opinion researchers who are among the country’s most knowledgeable experts about the mechanics of U.S. elections. They are almost all employees who are focused on this work as their full-time assignment at AP, backed up by a small group of trusted outside professionals who have decades of experience working with us on elections nights. 

The work of the Decision Team begins months before the day of an election, as our decision editors and race callers study election rules and recount requirements and track changes and updates to election law. They work with AP’s political and government reporters to sharpen their understanding of campaigns and track coverage of races from AP member news organizations and customers. 

They also review and rely on information from the research staff that is part of the AP Elections Operations group. They know before polls close how each county and congressional district in a state has voted in past elections, the state’s past results for voting by mail and early in-person voting, and the state’s history of counting votes – how many are counted after polls close and how many are counted in the days after. 

Every election year, the Decision Team completes extensive training sessions and multiple  rehearsals designed to review and refresh the analytical skills required to make accurate decisions on election night. But the best preparation for general elections comes on the dozens of primary and special elections nights throughout the year. Put another way, if it’s a Tuesday in America, chances are the AP Decision Team is at work. 

AP’s Decision Team has a wide range of tools at its disposal to analyze the state of a race. They include AP’s vote count, which it has conducted in every U.S. presidential election since 1848.  

Race callers collaborate with analysts who focus on statewide races, such as those for U.S. Senate and governor, and elections for the U.S. House of Representatives. The decision editors on AP’s Decision Team sign off on every race call for president, U.S. Senate and governor, as well as races of significance for U.S. House. 

Together, they are looking at far more than just the overall vote totals. They study the incoming vote county by county. In states where the information is available, they look at the vote by type of ballot: cast in person at polling places, or in advance by mail or in person. They are also in constant contact with AP’s vote count team, in search of the latest information about what’s been counted so far and how many ballots may still be left to count. 

All this reporting and analysis is aimed at determining the answer to a single question: Can the trailing candidates catch the leader? Only when the answer is an unquestionable “no” is the race ready to be called.

AP’s vote count and race calls are broadcast and published by our member news organizations and customers around the world. Many news stories and broadcast reports will say a candidate has won an election “according to The Associated Press.” You can also find AP’s own coverage of elections at apnews.com. 

AP thinks it’s important to survey voters about their preferences to help tell the story of Election Day. As the ways Americans vote have changed, so too has AP’s approach to polling. AP used exit polling through the 2016 election and then developed AP VoteCast, which was designed specifically to account for the rise in votes cast before Election Day.  

In 2025, AP was part of the group of news organizations that worked with SSRS Inc. to develop The Voter Poll, an evolved approach to election research that combines traditional in-person exit poll methodologies with the approach pioneered by AP VoteCast to capture accurate, unbiased data that’s in step with how America votes. 

In a small number of states with a longstanding history of dominance by a single party, and where other data – such as an overwhelming advantage in registration, advance ballot returns and pre-election polling – points to a victory by that party, results from The Voter Poll may be the final data point that allows AP to declare a winner as soon as polls are closed. 

Beginning in 2019, AP’s Decision Team started the practice of formally declaring some elections as “too close to call.” The vote tabulation in such a race has reached its primary conclusion – all outstanding ballots save provisional and late-arriving absentee ballots have been counted – without a clear winner. 

Even when almost all ballots are counted, AP may decide not to call a race if the margin between the top two candidates is very close – generally less than 0.5 percentage points. On election night, AP may not call winners in races for state legislature if the margin is less than 2 percentage points or 200 votes.  

In all cases, we’re focused on the number of ballots left to be counted and whether there are enough to  allow the trailing candidate to overtake the leader. If an election has significant news value, such as one that would determine party control of a state legislature, AP will closely review the race and our estimate of outstanding votes to determine if  we can say with certainty who has won. 

AP considers races where tabulation remains active and ongoing to be “too early to call.” We will not say a race is “too close to call” if the vote tabulation is ongoing, regardless of the margin between candidates. That includes races where completing the vote count may take several days.

AP may consider whether a candidate has conceded a race when assessing whether to declare a winner, but does so with the knowledge that concessions can be, and have been, withdrawn. Concessions are not legally binding. We declare a winner when we are confident the trailing candidates – even those that may have already conceded – cannot catch the leader. 

To win control of the U.S. House of Representatives, a party needs to win 218 seats; to take control of the Senate, a party needs 51 seats – or 50 if the vice president is also a member of that party. AP says a party has taken control of a chamber only after declaring 218 winners for that party in the House, and 51 (or 50) winners of that party in the Senate. 

We do not use statistical models to predict which party will ultimately take control. Instead, we count race by race, seat by seat, all the way up to 218 and to 51. Only then will AP say definitively which party will lead each chamber in the next Congress. 

There are some elections in which the party of the winner is known before a race has been called. For example, if two Democrats are running against each other for U.S. Senate in a general election under California’s unique system. In those instances, when the party of all potential winners is indisputable, AP will include that party in the balance of power calculation. 

In some states, recounts are mandated if the margin between the top two candidates falls inside a set range established by law. In others, recounts may be requested if the margin falls inside of a set range. In others still, candidates can request a recount regardless of the margin between the top two candidates. 

Over the past several decades, recounts have rarely changed the outcome of an election. Since 2000, there have been at least 37 recounts in races for statewide office, with the outcome changing in three. All three races were decided by hundreds of votes and not thousands or tens of thousands. For that reason, after careful consideration and review, AP may decide to declare a winner of an election that will be — or is likely to become — subject to a recount. We will do this if we conclude a candidate’s lead in the raw number of votes is so large that a recount will not change the outcome. 

This happened in the 2020 presidential election. AP declared Joe Biden the winner in Wisconsin even though he led by less than 1 percentage point, a margin that under state law allowed President Donald Trump to request a statewide recount. While that percentage point margin was slim, the raw vote total was not: more than 20,000 votes separated the two candidates, a margin that a recount would not overturn. And, indeed, a recount did not – a review of the voting in the state’s two most populous counties returned a net gain of 87 votes for Biden. 

The standard for success at The Associated Press in declaring winners in U.S. elections is 100% accuracy. Our decision team does not call a race until they are certain the trailing candidate or candidates cannot catch the leader. AP aims to work quickly, so that no election in which the winner is clear is left uncalled, but never so fast that we risk calling a race before the outcome is certain. 

For the past several election cycles, AP’s accuracy rate in race calling has exceeded 99.9% across tens of thousands of races. When we make a mistake, it’s often due to incorrect results reported by election officials. In the exceedingly rare event of an erroneous race call, the last of which in a race for president occurred in a primary in 2008, AP withdraws the declaration in its data feed and quickly alerts our customers and audience to the mistake. 

Every AP race call is built on facts. We do consider partisan history of a state or race, fundraising, pre-election surveys and advance vote statistics, but we never declare a winner based on those factors alone, because an AP race call is never a guess. Our declaration are driven by the data, always, as we seek to tell the story of who America’s voters have picked to lead.