I’m watching CNN at the moment and I am seeing a lot of coverage of partial results. For example, they just highlighted that Biden is leading in Kentucky with 8 percent of the vote in. They are also running through a slew of counties reporting 20 percent of the vote or less. They have heavily caveated these numbers, but this kind of coverage is probably just not necessary. While we’ve talked a lot about the risks of partial results at FiveThirtyEight, most viewers are probably not familiar with all the differences in what types of votes get reported when. These very-partial-vote analyses are ripe for manipulation by partisans as well. We need to hold off on drawing any real conclusions until full counties are reporting. We can indeed look at small counties in Kentucky to give us a sense of the shift from 2016, but in order to do that, we need all the vote in.
