How NewsNation/Decision Desk HQ called Pennsylvania for Trump
( NewsNation ) — NewsNation was the first outlet to call the race in Pennsylvania for Donald Trump and as a result, was also able to call the race to the White House for Trump, immediately after.
NewsNation's race call partner has issued a statement on how this call was made. Read the full statement below:
Decision Desk HQ's Statement on Our Pennsylvania Race Call
Decision Desk HQ projects that former President Donald Trump has won Pennsylvania and its 19 electoral votes, enough to elect him as the 47th President of the United States. How we made this race call:
We deeply value information-sharing and transparency so the public knows they can trust our results. At the time of this race call , 93% of the vote in Pennsylvania was in – including mail-in ballots and Election Day votes. The data showed:
In Philadelphia County and collar counties, including Bucks County, Montgomery County, and Chester County, President Trump was over-performing his 2020 results by more than 5% in each county.
President Trump was over-performing his 2020 results in rural counties across Pennsylvania by more than 10%.
Despite matching President Joe Biden's 2020 margin in the Pittsburgh area and surrounding Allegheny County, Vice President Kamala Harris's vote percentages were insufficient to overcome former President Trump's gains elsewhere across the state.
Bellwether counties, including Erie County, Centre County, and Monroe County, all went for President Biden in 2020, but flipped to President Trump in 2024.
Decision Desk HQ has more than a decade-long track record of making accurate, independent, and transparent race calls – including our calls for President in 2016 and 2020 – and we have continued that record in this election cycle. Ahead of the election, ours was the only major forecasting model to accurately predict this election's result. Before making any race calls, we deploy our peer-reviewed model to assist in our analysis and review the calls with our Director of Data Science and team of election analysts. We will not call a race until it meets all of our requirements. Ultimately, when making our race calls in 2024 as in previous cycles, we followed the data and our accurate prediction models and reached the same conclusion as the election results.
Learn more about our process for accurately calling races.
