Press. voanews.com
For decades, major U.S. media have refused to release real-time voting
data on election day, fearing it could influence voter decisions or hamper
turnout. But a data startup company called VoteCastr is teaming up with two
media outlets to try to break that trend on Tuesday. And not everyone is happy
about it.
Beginning at 8:00 a.m. EST, VoteCastr will begin issuing projections of
which candidate will win key battleground states, where the race is likely to
be decided. VoteCastr is relying on hundreds of field workers who will monitor
turnout in key precincts in Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio,
Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
So, for instance, if voter turnout is stronger than expected in a rural
part of Iowa expected to be friendly to Donald Trump, that may suggest a better
chance of victory for the Republican candidate. It is a significant diversion
from the current media practice, by which outlets follow a self-imposed embargo
to not release any state projections until the polls have closed in those
states.
The theory is that if voters see that their state is likely to go for
one candidate over another, they may be influenced to either change their vote
or not vote at all. Some polling experts also question whether the rolling
projections are even likely to be reliable, because they depend so heavily on
voter turnout figures.
One obstacle is that on election day, voter turnout varies over time,
according to Nate Cohn, who writes The Upshot column for The New York Times. "Younger
voters don’t usually vote in the morning, and many voters in 9-to-5 jobs might
surge to the polls in the evening," Cohn said in a report on Monday.
"The VoteCastr model makes no effort to adjust for this," he
says. "It will treat turnout as if it's uniform throughout the day." But
VoteCastr, as well as the two media outlets - Slate and Vice News - which will
publish the projections, have defended their model, even if they acknowledge it
is not perfect.
"When it comes to who might win, the emphasis should be on
might," said a Slate article describing the VoteCastr projections.
"There are too many unknowns for us to be able to say with confidence that
what we think is happening in the present will continue to happen in the
future."
And as for the question of whether the data may influence voters, those
behind the project say they aren't concerned. They say voters already have been
inundated with data, and many may already know how their state is likely to
vote. "The role of journalists is to bring information to people, not
protect them from it," said Slate chief editor Julia Turner.
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