Here's a short explainer on why the media isn't calling the race yet, even though it's obvious to everyone. There is nothing nefarious or ratings chasing there. It's just another covid thing. And it's out of anyone's control. First of all, what exactly is a "call"?

A "call" means a media outlet is staking its reputation on saying, yes, we know the results aren't final for a couple of weeks (they never are, regardless of covid). But based on our objective analysis, we are confident that XYZ will win this state/presidency.

For the calls to be so trusted, they have to be infallible. And they generally have been. Even if polls have been wrong a couple of times, calls made by these trusted entities have almost never been wrong. And by that I mean AP, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN, NYT, WaPo etc.

So how do they make sure these calls are accurate? They leave them completely to statisticians and their data. There's a bunch of quant folks with a lot of historic data and historic trends. A LOT of data. And they get the fresh data on the current election.

And, here's the most important thing, they are practically sequestered. They don't listen to any coverage. They don't know which other outlet has made what call. So statisticians in other outlets have no idea that AP and Fox have already called AZ for Biden. Or anything.

It's almost like sequestering a jury. All they have is historic data & incoming data. And they sit far away from the broadcast team. At the most, you can ask one of them to explain the call. But you can't influence it. Watch this epic moment from Fox 2012.

So how do they make the calls? To ensure rigor and no temporal influence, they generally decide call thresholds for each state based on past history before the results start coming in. They don't want to be influenced by the narrative.

For example, Tuesday night, with all the numbers, everyone thought Trump was winning. At that point the "why haven't they called it yet?" crowd would have said, duh, Trump ahead by 9% in Pennsylvania. Just call it already. And in any other year, they might have.

Because until this cycle, the time a vote comes in had never influenced who they are voting for. Until this year, whether someone voted early or on election day, or by mail, did not matter. So if you had a decent number of returns, you generally knew how it would end.

So when the decision desks were sitting and looking at the Pennsylvania data in 2016, they had all the historic data. Incoming data. They made the call at 85% votes in or so. Based on historic data about remaining districts voting red or blue, they called it for Trump.

The thing is, thanks to covid and Trump and GOP, there is no historic data. Never before have they polled during a pandemic (1920 was too early). Never before has a candidate and party stacked the counting process like the GOP did this time. Deliberately frontloading.

Plus they have no idea what the total votes are. Because Trump and Dejoy openly and blatantly handicapped the US Postal Service. Any other republican president, even Ted Cruz, would have taken care of this early and figured it out. But not Trump. So we have this dichotomy.

They know the results. They see the trends. They can feel it in their bones that Biden has this locked up. But they don't know anything beyond the pure data. They don't see anchors analyzing remaining votes. They have no idea what the news narrative is.

And they have no historic data, or rather, very limited historic data. So the threshold for making a call is higher. 2016 could be reasonably projected based on 12,08,04,00 etc data and the incoming votes. Which county breaks which way etc. 2020 is an outlier.

So they have to meet whatever thresholds they decided before making the call. And this year, they are super high. That they called Florida so early is purely because Republicans allowed mail ballots to be counted right away. Almost all votes were in. History mattered.

In these swing states, GOP did their best to undermine mail ballots, knowing that Trump created this division by voting method. And the difference in those two different sets of vote (in person vs mail) this time is huge. Unprecedented. No historic data.

And as anyone who's ever worked with forecasting models knows, if you have no real historic data, then you have to be even more conservative (statistically conservative, not politically) than usual. My guess is, the desks set high thresholds for these calls. Not met yet.

They'll call when they call . No one can really do anything about it. We don't know their thresholds. Bosses or anchors can barge in and demand a call. But that would undermine the process for the next time. So they aren't doing that. They're waiting. We are waiting.

If I were a cable news anchor, I would call PA and GA for Biden. But if I were locked in a decision room with only data, even looking at very trends like this, I wouldn't make the call. Sitting in that sequestered room, I have no historic data on 65 mn mail ballots.

Let me end with the reminder that media "calls" have no inherent legal, constitutional value. They are as valuable as we decide they are. And currently, the world has decided that even though the trends are clear, we would rather have a call before celebrating anything.

Great question. Conceding also has no legal meaning. It's just a losing candidate maturely and responsibly saying, yeah, I know that when the results come in next week, I will lose. So I'll just give in. It's analogous to a chess resignation. But... https://twitter.com/anvimal/status/1324829653710692353?s=19

... It is not binding in any way. They can just un-concede. That's what Gore did in 2000.

Also, people wondering why Fox & AP haven't reversed the Arizona call yet even tho everyone from Trump to Nate Silver wants them to. They can't. As in the bosses or anchors can't. It's up to the sequestered rooms who see the very tightening we do. Their prediction still holds.

As in, the stats gurus in those rooms are seeing the narrowing, factoring it in, looking at the remaining vote, running their models, and still seeing a Biden win. The minute their model flips, they will reverse the call. Very rare btw, call reversals. But it's all objective.

I mean obviously, a boss can go in and overrule the decision desk. But it'll be a horrible historic thing. One of the few institutions of our democracy untouched by Trump's dismantling endeavors is objective independent decision desks of even the most partisan entities like Fox.