when the media want to call a race without calling it
Biden Edges Closer to Victory (NYT)
Biden Increases Lead (Fox)
Biden Inches Closer to Victory (WP)
Biden Moves Closer to Presidency (WSJ)
Biden Nears Election Victory (Bloomberg)
It's awesome for their ratings to keep everybody on edge like this. Meanwhile, the productivity of white collar workers plunged this week.
-----
It sounds like AP will call the race when Biden's lead in Pennsylvania reaches 0.5%, which would avoid an automatic recount? Perhaps this will finally happen today. But it is also possible they're all waiting to make the final call until it is mathematically impossible for the outstanding ballots in the remaining uncalled states to change the outcome, in order to avoid charges of bias from Republicans.
This is a higher standard than usual -- mathematically impossible -- and it would be applied arbitrarily to the remaining uncalled states merely because calling any one of them would also call the entire race.
Mathematically impossible means even if all the remaining outstanding ballots went for Trump, which is plainly an unrealistic standard. Lots of states were called the moment their polls closed, because everybody knows they aren't swing states. My own state of Maryland, for example, was immediately called for Biden.
I've never paid so much attention to this "calling" process before, because it's never been so SLOW before, it would happen before I had time to dig into the details. This time it's like I'm playing one of those web-based incremental games. Except I have nothing to do with the outcome, I'm just trying to model an incremental process, and discovering that the media calls are entirely arbitrary. Now that we're at the national tipping point, the media executives are telling their analysts, "Let's be totally fucking sure about this." And the analysts are saying, "We are totally fucking sure about this." And the executives are saying, "Bring me more data first. We have to be totally fucking sure about this." And the analysts bring more data, and the executives want still more.
-----
I'm trying to post a link to a Business Insider news story that calls the race for Biden, and LJ is blocking me from doing so.
I've never had anything like this happen before. Sure, Business Insider is a clickbaity site, but I don't have evidence that they make shit up, I wouldn't classify them as "spam". No more biased than any other news site. Weird. The only time I've ever hit a censorship block with LJ, in my 20 years of using LJ, is when I'm trying to link to a news story that "prematurely" calls the race for Biden.
Dreamwidth had no problem with the link, read this post over there for the link.
Biden Increases Lead (Fox)
Biden Inches Closer to Victory (WP)
Biden Moves Closer to Presidency (WSJ)
Biden Nears Election Victory (Bloomberg)
It's awesome for their ratings to keep everybody on edge like this. Meanwhile, the productivity of white collar workers plunged this week.
-----
It sounds like AP will call the race when Biden's lead in Pennsylvania reaches 0.5%, which would avoid an automatic recount? Perhaps this will finally happen today. But it is also possible they're all waiting to make the final call until it is mathematically impossible for the outstanding ballots in the remaining uncalled states to change the outcome, in order to avoid charges of bias from Republicans.
This is a higher standard than usual -- mathematically impossible -- and it would be applied arbitrarily to the remaining uncalled states merely because calling any one of them would also call the entire race.
Mathematically impossible means even if all the remaining outstanding ballots went for Trump, which is plainly an unrealistic standard. Lots of states were called the moment their polls closed, because everybody knows they aren't swing states. My own state of Maryland, for example, was immediately called for Biden.
I've never paid so much attention to this "calling" process before, because it's never been so SLOW before, it would happen before I had time to dig into the details. This time it's like I'm playing one of those web-based incremental games. Except I have nothing to do with the outcome, I'm just trying to model an incremental process, and discovering that the media calls are entirely arbitrary. Now that we're at the national tipping point, the media executives are telling their analysts, "Let's be totally fucking sure about this." And the analysts are saying, "We are totally fucking sure about this." And the executives are saying, "Bring me more data first. We have to be totally fucking sure about this." And the analysts bring more data, and the executives want still more.
-----
I'm trying to post a link to a Business Insider news story that calls the race for Biden, and LJ is blocking me from doing so.
I've never had anything like this happen before. Sure, Business Insider is a clickbaity site, but I don't have evidence that they make shit up, I wouldn't classify them as "spam". No more biased than any other news site. Weird. The only time I've ever hit a censorship block with LJ, in my 20 years of using LJ, is when I'm trying to link to a news story that "prematurely" calls the race for Biden.
Dreamwidth had no problem with the link, read this post over there for the link.