(NewsNation) — NewsNation was the first TV network to call the presidential race for Donald Trump thanks to its partnership with election forecaster Decision Desk HQ.
The call was made at 1:21 a.m. Eastern after Decision Desk HQ determined that Trump had won Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes.
The efficient, accurate projection came after months of preparation and was based on info from on-the-ground reporters, data scraping and remote monitoring of results.
“We are strategic about where we put people on the ground to get this data,” said Scott Tranter, the director of data science at Decision Desk HQ.
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He added: “Our race call and data science team does a lot of homework ahead of time so we know exactly what to expect.”
Tranter and his team noticed Trump was beating his vote goals in several key counties in Pennsylvania.
“[Harris] was hitting what Biden was hitting in 2020, but Donald Trump was doing better than that,” Tranter said.
When DDHQ called Pennsylvania at 1:21 a.m., 93% of the vote was in, and Tranter’s team determined that Trump’s lead was insurmountable. A few specific trends went into that decision:
- Trump was overperforming his 2020 results by more than 5% in Philadelphia County and nearby collar counties, including Bucks County, Montgomery County and Chester County.
- Trump was also outperforming his 2020 results in rural counties across Pennsylvania by more than 10%.
- Bellwether counties like Erie County, Centre County and Monroe County all went for Biden in 2020 but flipped to Trump in 2024
Earlier Trump wins in Georgia and North Carolina — which NewsNation and Decision Desk HQ also called ahead of all other outlets — signaled which way the electorate was leaning.
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“When you have those kinds of trends in multiple states, it’s a sure tell sign of where these things are going,” Tranter said.
Fox News called the race for Trump around 1:46 a.m. Eastern. Other cable networks like CNN and MSNBC called the race several hours later, shortly after 5:30 a.m. Eastern.
In 2020, Decision Desk HQ was the first major election reporting organization to call the race for President Biden. And in 2022, DDHQ was the first to call control of Congress.
“At the Presidential, Senate and congressional level, we tend to count [the vote] faster than our competitors, and then we can do the math faster to figure out who’s going to win,” Tranter said.
Trump now returns to the White House for a second term, becoming only the second president after Grover Cleveland to serve nonconsecutively.
Learn more about DDHQ’s process for accurately calling races.