The Times said it wouldn’t offer a national guess due to uncertainty over the impact of mail-in voting, but feels comfortable projecting Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina because those states report the vast majority of their votes quickly, including mail-in ballots. The newspaper announced yesterday that it won’t have a needle predicting the outcome of the election, but will have needles specifically for the outcomes of Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina. This year, the Times will use the needle a little differently. Cohn argues that the needle just makes the kind of analysis that TV networks do more transparent.

Like the needle, the networks’ models understand that just looking at the raw counts of votes early in the night can be deceiving-they may come from a particularly Democratic or Republican part of the state. The TV networks that call elections use similar models to project who will win a state before all of the votes have been collected. Nate Cohn, one of the creators of the Times needle, points out that it isn’t anything new.

But the needle wasn’t stuck (heh) on its assumptions: If the actual results turned out different than expected, the model would then update its predictions for places with similar demographics, and the probability of Clinton or Trump winning would be adjusted accordingly. But the needle was ready to quickly update that probability.īefore the night began, the needle’s model estimated the likely vote in counties and precincts across the US, based on their demographics. That percentage was reasonable given how well presidential candidates with similar leads in the polls had done historically. The New York Times needle in 2016įour years ago, the needle gave Clinton an 85% probability of winning based on pre-election day polls that suggested she was ahead in the race. But the needle, which the Times has since used for US congressional elections, did what we should all do when we want to understand what the future holds: It started with an educated opinion about what would happen, and then it changed its mind. You can also read more about the report at The Upshot.As a result of those drastic swings, many election watchers maligned the needle (many still do). Go deeper: You can visit The New York Times to see the entire map. Paul, the cities themselves leaned Democrat, but the towns outside the city limits voted Republican. In areas like Detroit, Baltimore and Minneapolis-St. | Screenshot, NYTĮnclaves: The report showed there are ethnic and religious voting enclaves, too.įor example, Dallas Baptist University voted for Trump, even though the Dallas metro area leaned toward Clinton.Ĭities: Other major metropolitan areas showed a similar trend. This screenshot shows various pockets of red amid blue-leaning areas in Salt Lake County. The New York Times just showed off the 2016 presidential election as it’s never been seen before. West Valley City, Taylorsville and West Jordan showed mostly blue areas with little pockets of red in between, too. This screenshot shows Ogden and Salt Lake City as pockets in a sea of red. But pockets of blue appeared in Salt Lake County, as well as Park City and Ogden areas. What it shows about Utah: Utah voted overwhelmingly red across the state.

But small pockets still existed in those giant areas where results went the other way. Some areas show overwhelming support for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The New York Times' The Upshot put together an extremely detailed map of how every precinct voted in the 2016 presidential election. The New York Times just showed the 2016 presidential election as it’s never been seen before.

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