When ABC News’ Decision Desk Projects A Race, Fivey Fox Is On The Case!
Hey! It’s me, Fivey! Your friendly neighborhood data fox!
Tonight, whenever ABC News’s Decision Desk projects a winner in a presidential, Senate or House race, I’m going to be sharing those projections on our live blog. It’s going to keep me busy: I’ll be checking for new presidential and Senate projections every minute, and for new House projections every five minutes. (The Decision Desk “projects” a winner in a particular contest when enough of the vote has been counted in enough of the state or district to be as certain as possible about who will win -- for more about how that process works, listen to this episode of the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast.)
But there’s something else you should know about how I report projections. I’ll let you in on a little secret: I’m a bit of an emotional fox -- at least as it concerns probability. That’s why I use FiveThirtyEight’s final forecast to contextualize the results — is this what we anticipated or were we surprised? And if we were surprised, based on our final forecast, I might react as such. For example:
- If our final forecast listed a candidate as “slightly favored,” meaning that the forecast gave them somewhere between a 55 and 70 percent chance of winning, but one of their opponents wins, I will be surprised (😮) when I share the projection.
- If our final forecast listed a candidate as “favored,” giving them between a 70 and 90 percent chance of winning, but one of their opponents is projected as winning, I will be shocked (😲).
- And finally, if our final forecast listed a candidate as either “clearly favored” or “very likely” to win, meaning they had over a 90 percent chance of winning, but they still are projected to lose, my little fox mind will be completely blown (🤯).
Now if the election goes as my human data-journalist counterparts expected, based on the forecast, then you may not see many emojis from me. But if the night takes a completely different turn, you can bet your bushy tail I’m going to have a hard time containing my reactions.