Election Coverage: What Goes Into Calling A Race On Election Night?

Early voting got underway in North Carolina on Thursday, and already, more than 1 million people have cast ballots, a record for the start of voting in that state.

For many this presidential election, the attention will go to the coverage waiting to see when the races will be called in different states.

News On 6 is going up close at 4 p.m. with CBS News' Anthony Salvanto to find out how that process works.

How will the CBS News data desk cover election night, and how should we watch it?

Salvanto: We're going to show you everything we see coming in, in real-time. We're going to tell you if states are toss-ups if they're leaning toward one candidate or another, and then ultimately, a projection. There are seven key battleground states. I'll give you an example from Georgia because that's one of the first ones that close on election night. One of the things we look for is how the votes have shifted as they come in compared to the past. In 2020 what we saw in Georgia was a lot of rural counties shifting towards Donald Trump from 2016 but a lot of Metro Atlanta, in this case, shifting toward Joe Biden compared to how they had voted in 2016 when we see those consistent patterns at the decision desk, it starts to give us a sense of which way the race might be going. So that's number one. Number two is, we want to look at where votes are coming from in terms of turnout. I'll give you an example from Pennsylvania. You're going to see this map filled in. I'll go back to 2020 for a moment. You'll see areas of red, you'll see areas of blue, but votes come from, often very populated areas where Democrats do well, you're going to have to wait to see what kind of turnout you get there. What I'm going to do is take the state. In the case of Pennsylvania, more votes come from Philadelphia. More votes come from Pittsburgh. You'll want to see if Democrats hit their turnout marks there, or if Donald Trump can get a consistent pattern across those rural areas, not as many voters, but consistently win one after another. So that's another way that we look at things at the data desk, and we'll bring it all to you in real-time.

What actually goes into calling a race?

Salvanto: One of the other things that we look at is looking at who wins each battleground state, and when you're talking about calling a race. Let me go back to Georgia as an example. You want to look at how the votes have shifted over time. So here's a map of Georgia. Here's how it broke down in 2020 where you had Metro Atlanta, a lot of blue areas for Democrats, and rural areas red for Republicans. Okay, you're going to want to see those counties fill in. One of the things to look at, if I turn the state on its access, is where the votes are coming from. These higher bars mean that more votes are being cast into place. So for example, in and around Metro Atlanta, Fulton County, in this example, right? You got a half million votes. Democrats run up the score in places like that, whereas in rural counties, don't have as many votes. But Donald Trump did well last time. Might be expected to do well again. Can he consistently perform well across those counties? That's one way we do the analysis.