Numbers analysts hesitate to announce Biden as the winner. Why?

The stakes are high when the US media reports on the final outcome of the elections.

Americans were told it could happen. It could quickly turn into election week, not election day.

Now it all depends on the four tab states: Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.

Joe Biden continues to increase the lead in at least three of them. Most of the indications are that he will be the next president of the United States.

But still, most number crushers won’t officially confirm you as the winner.

Why it takes so long?

Who should you listen to?

In the United States, it is traditionally the American media that has chosen the winners of the elections.

The AP news agency and the television channels Fox News, ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN are considered the most credible.

Aftenposten’s own rule is that we can announce a winner if one of them does.

The analysis website Decision Desk HQ announced on Friday at 2:50 p.m. Norwegian time that Joe Biden, in its opinion, had won the presidential election. In Norway, TV2 has announced the same.

How are the votes counted?

The evaluations of the six media organizations are based, among other things, on previously counted votes and polls on Election Day.

But there is a lot of judgment, and the six media organizations make their individual assessments and calculations.

Therefore, we can sometimes experience small differences when the media selects the winners in different states.

When do they declare victory?

Both NBC News and ABC News say they will name the winner when their statistical model is 99.5 percent certain.

The AP news agency goes even further. All doubts must disappear before a winner is announced.

“When there is absolutely no going back for the candidate behind him, legally or mathematically, the outcome of the election is clear,” AP editor-in-chief Sally Buzbee said, according to The New York Times.

Why it takes so long?

1. Small margins and many votes remaining

In several of the tip states, there are very small margins that differ. This means that a greater proportion of the votes must be counted before one can be completely sure that the leading candidate cannot be recovered.

This is further complicated by the fact that there are still a large number of votes that have not been counted (see data box).

Provisional votes

Furthermore, there are still thousands of so-called provisional votes that have not been counted in various places. A vote that is provisional must be examined to see if it is valid before it can be recorded.

For example, a voter may have moved unregistered or forgot their ID on Election Day, writes NBC.

If the vote does not meet the requirements, it can be cast.

In Pennsylvania, there can be up to 100,000 provisional votes.

With very small margins in this year’s elections, it can be absolutely decisive how many of these votes can be counted.

3. Deadlines for voting by mail

Additionally, several of the tilted states have a later deadline for receiving votes by mail.

In Nevada, it is allowed to register postal votes up to November 10. This depends on being postmarked prior to Election Day on November 3.

In Pennsylvania, the same deadline was set for Friday, November 6.

Here, too, they were not allowed to start counting all mail-in votes until the very day of the election.

4. Extra care

Finally, it is also worth noting that the US media has made it clear that they will be more cautious this year.

There is a lot at stake. The cost of making mistakes can be costly at a time when the president continues to make allegations, thus far without evidence, of voter fraud.

On Twitter, statistics guru and FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver expresses sympathy for analytics teams. The margins are tiny.

According to him, the media must distinguish between outcomes that are “highly unlikely” and “almost completely unlikely.” The former is not sufficient to announce a winner, while the latter should be sufficient in most circumstances, Silver writes.

But when will the result come then?

You probably just have to be more discriminatory with the help you give other people.

The AP has warned that it may be several days before a winner is chosen in decisive Pennsylvania. If Biden wins this seesaw status, he will win the election.

In Nevada, the tellers have announced that it may still take several days to count all the votes. State authorities have given them a deadline of Thursday, November 12.

However, numbers analysts may decide to announce a winner here before then, even if not all votes have been counted.

While in Georgia they are preparing for a recount. The reason is very small margins. This could take several weeks, according to authorities.

There may also be a tally in Pennsylvania, but here Biden has started pulling out in the last 24 hours.

Why is Biden leading more at AP and Fox?

Both the AP and Fox News have placed Arizona on Biden’s column. They are currently the only ones. He has raised some eyebrows.

But according to the two media organizations, now Trump cannot catch Biden in the inflection state.

There are still many votes to count.

CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC use different numbers from AP and Fox. They work together to report election results in a scheme called the National Election Pool.

The AP, for its part, has its own reporters on the ground in every county in the country. These collect voice information as they enter. Fox News uses AP figures when making its own forecasts.