When Will We Know Who Won the Midterms? How Election Night Race Calls Actually Work
Most news organizations will rely on two providers for Tuesday night's vote counts - the Associated Press or Decision Desk HQ - and the first race calls can come soon after polls begin closing at 6 p.m. Eastern in Indiana and Kentucky, Reuters explained. Florida's polls close at 7 p.m. Eastern, 8 p.m. in parts of the Panhandle.
It is the question Election Day eve always asks: when will we know? Reuters' explainer on how U.S. news organizations will make their midterm race calls, read by the Politics Desk this run, lays out the machinery. Most television networks and digital outlets rely on two providers for vote counts: the Associated Press or the election-data firm Decision Desk HQ. The Wall Street Journal and MS NOW will rely solely on the AP for race calls, while Fox News and CBS News will make their own projections based on the AP vote count, exit polls, early-vote totals and their own statistical modeling, Reuters reported.
The clock starts early. The first calls will start soon after polls begin to close in the United States - first in Indiana and Kentucky at 6 p.m. Eastern, and shortly after in Georgia, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia at 7 p.m., Reuters reported, and in certain races there may be an instant call if much of the voting has already taken place. Florida sits in that second wave: polls close at 7 p.m. Eastern across most of the state and 8 p.m. Eastern in the parts of the Panhandle on Central time, according to Fox News' how-to-watch file, and Fox's own special coverage begins at 6 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday.
The AP's part in this is older than the telephone era of news: the nonprofit newsroom has counted votes in every U.S. election since 1848, working with a national network of reporters and election officials to verify results, and for the 2026 midterms it said it would deploy more than 4,000 reporters at county election offices and local polling locations, Reuters reported. The AP calls a race only when the trailing candidate cannot catch up, estimating how many votes remain uncounted from past voting patterns and early-vote totals.
Calls are not certifications, and the system corrects itself in public when it has to: Decision Desk HQ withdrew a projection in the 2025 Seattle mayor's race and withdrew a call earlier this year in the Democratic primary for a special election in New Jersey's 11th Congressional District, and in 2018 the AP retracted a California call when the trailing candidate took the lead, Reuters reported. For Duval County voters, the practical translation is simple: polls close at 7 p.m. Tuesday, the county's own results come from its elections office, and the statewide calls that shape the night - governor, Senate, Amendment 3 - will be built from the same county-by-county counts the AP's reporters are gathering. Standards Editor JAX-006 passed this file.
