The Cost of Speed: Assessing the Failures of AP VoteCast in the 2020 Election

In the high-stakes theater of modern American election reporting, the race to be "first" has long been a primary driver of editorial decision-making. However, the 2020 presidential election brought these competitive instincts under intense scrutiny following the performance of AP VoteCast, the flagship polling project of the Associated Press and the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago. A retrospective analysis, detailed in the report Assessing APVoteCast2020, reveals that the decision to project Joe Biden as the winner of Arizona on Election Night was based on flawed data and an overly aggressive timeline—a move that stands as a case study in the perils of prioritizing speed over statistical rigor.

The Anatomy of an Early Projection

On Election Night 2020, the media landscape shifted when Fox News—and subsequently the Associated Press—called the state of Arizona for Joe Biden. While Biden ultimately secured the state, the timing of the call remains a point of significant contention among media critics and statisticians. The projection was made while a substantial portion of the vote remained outstanding and before the margin had stabilized.

The mechanism behind this call was AP VoteCast, a departure from traditional exit polling. Unlike conventional methods that rely heavily on interviewing voters as they leave polling stations, VoteCast incorporates a massive survey conducted in the days leading up to and including Election Day. In 2020, this model predicted a comfortable lead for Biden. Specifically, the pre-election data suggested a 6.2 percentage point advantage for the former Vice President. When the final ballots were tallied, however, Biden’s margin of victory had withered to a razor-thin 0.3 percentage points.

The discrepancy between the predicted 6.2% lead and the actual 0.3% victory highlights a fundamental failure in the predictive model. Had the VoteCast data accurately reflected the narrow margin, it is highly improbable that news organizations would have felt confident enough to declare a winner so early in the night.

Chronology of a Controversial Call

The events of November 3, 2020, unfolded with a sense of urgency that arguably compromised journalistic deliberation.

• Pre-Election Phase: AP VoteCast projects a "comfortable margin" for Joe Biden in Arizona, setting the stage for an early call.
• Election Night (Early Evening): Fox News, relying on their decision desk headed by Arnon Mishkin, observes a lead for Biden. At the time of the call, Biden held a nine-percentage-point lead.
• The AP Call: Three hours after Fox, the Associated Press follows suit. At this point, Biden’s lead had narrowed to five percentage points, but it remained sufficient for the AP’s internal metrics.
• The Following Days: As the remaining ballots—primarily those cast in person on Election Day, which skewed heavily toward Donald Trump—were processed, the "comfortable" lead evaporated.
• The Delayed Consensus: While Fox and AP held their ground, other major networks, including CNN and NBC, waited nine days before declaring Arizona for Biden, waiting until the vast majority of ballots were tabulated.

Supporting Data and Statistical Shortfalls

The failure of the VoteCast model was not limited to the presidential race. On the same night, the system projected that Democrats would maintain control of the House of Representatives while simultaneously expanding their majority by at least five seats. The reality was a starkly different outcome: Democrats retained control, but suffered a net loss of 11 seats.

When comparing these projections to the raw data, the flaws become apparent. Fox’s lead analyst, Arnon Mishkin, defended the Arizona call by claiming that 80% of the vote had been counted by 11:00 p.m. and that Trump would be unable to make up the deficit. Mishkin estimated that Trump would secure only 45% to 46% of the outstanding vote. In actuality, Trump’s share of the late-arriving ballots was significantly higher, causing the margin to shrink from 136,000 votes at the time of the call to a final difference of just 10,475 votes out of 3.4 million cast.

The data suggests that the analysts relied too heavily on the pre-election VoteCast poll, treating it as an immutable anchor rather than one variable in a complex equation. As Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight noted shortly after the election, the decision to call the state at all was professionally reckless given the tightening trends.

Official Responses and Institutional Doubling Down

Despite the overwhelming evidence that the predictive model was significantly off-target, the organizations involved have largely resisted characterizing the call as a mistake.

David Scott, the AP’s political editor, maintained that while the VoteCast poll was a "piece of the puzzle," it was not the primary factor in the decision. Even when confronted with the reality that the final margin was 20 times smaller than the predicted margin, Scott told NPR that he would not change the call if he had to do it over again.

Similarly, Sally Buzbee—then-executive editor of the AP and now a high-ranking editor at the Washington Post—offered a defense two weeks post-election. She stated that the results "generally matched the outcome that was estimated by AP VoteCast." Critics argue this statement is misleading; in statistical modeling, a 6% error in a contest decided by 0.3% is not a "match"—it is a failure of accuracy. By refusing to concede the error, the AP has arguably prioritized institutional reputation over the transparent self-correction that the public expects from news agencies.

Implications: The Dangers of "Speed Journalism"

The central question arising from this episode is: who is served by the rush to judgment?

The shift toward proprietary systems like VoteCast was driven by a desire for speed. In an era of intense media competition, the ability to "call" a state first is often perceived as a competitive advantage. However, as evidenced by the 2000 Florida debacle—where networks prematurely called the state for George W. Bush before retracting it—speed is the enemy of accuracy.

The Erosion of Public Trust

When media organizations prioritize being "first" over being "right," they gamble with the most valuable commodity in journalism: public trust. By presenting a projection as a fact, networks risk creating a false narrative that can influence public perception and fuel distrust in the democratic process. When those projections are later contradicted by reality, the damage to the credibility of the news media is long-lasting.

The Need for Reform

The 2020 election cycle proved that the current appetite for real-time certainty is unsustainable. The "VoteCast" model, in its current iteration, failed to account for the shifting demographics of the electorate and the increasing tendency for late-counted ballots to break in specific partisan directions.

For the industry to recover its standing, a few changes are necessary:

1. Increased Transparency: Organizations should disclose the weight given to pre-election polling versus actual vote counts in their projection models.
2. Increased Caution: The "wait and see" approach adopted by networks that called Arizona on November 12 should become the industry standard for close races.
3. Institutional Accountability: When models fail, as they did in the 2020 House projections and the Arizona presidential margin, news organizations should conduct and publish public post-mortems.

In conclusion, the AP VoteCast experience in 2020 serves as a cautionary tale. While the final outcome in Arizona was ultimately correct, the process used to reach that conclusion was flawed. Journalism is intended to be a reflection of reality, not a shortcut to a headline. If the industry continues to prioritize the pace of the cycle over the precision of the data, it will continue to invite the kind of skepticism that threatens the very foundation of democratic reporting. The goal of the newsroom should not be to call the race first, but to call it accurately—regardless of how long the counting takes.