Decision Desk HQ
Decision Desk HQ is an American website that focuses on reporting election results in the United States. The website was founded in 2012 by Brandon Finnigan as an alternative to what he deemed "slow" election calls by the Associated Press.[1] The company's president is Drew McCoy.[2] Decision Desk HQ uses an application programming interface (API) to get election results at the same time as they are published on websites provided by election officials.[3]
Type of site | Election results |
---|---|
Available in | English |
Created by | Brandon Finnigan |
URL | decisiondeskhq |
Commercial | Yes |
Registration | No |
Current status | Online |
In 2020, Decision Desk HQ was considered one of nine "official sources" for election results by Twitter[4] and provided election results to The Economist, BuzzFeed, Vox and Business Insider.[2] Decision Desk HQ was the first major election reporting organization to call the 2020 United States presidential election for Joe Biden.[2] It made this call after projecting that Biden's lead in outstanding mail-in ballots from Pennsylvania left incumbent Donald Trump with no realistic path to win Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes. McCoy told Vox that the great majority of mail-in ballots from Pennsylvania were from heavily Democratic areas around Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. According to McCoy, Biden was winning the mail-in vote in those areas by a margin large enough to make his lead in the state insurmountable. By Decision Desk HQ's accounting, adding Pennsylvania to Biden's total gave Biden 273 electoral votes, three over the threshold to make him president-elect.[5]
See also
References
- Smith, Ben (September 25, 2014). "A Right-Wing Truck Dispatcher Is America's Fairest New Election Night Vote Counter". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved November 6, 2020.
- Nover, Scott (November 6, 2020). "Meet Decision Desk, the First to Call the Election for Joe Biden". AdWeek. Retrieved November 6, 2020.
- Steiger, Kay (March 3, 2020). "How Vox calls elections, explained". Vox. Retrieved November 6, 2020.
- Gadde, Vijaya; Beykpour, Kayvon (October 9, 2020). "Additional steps we're taking ahead of the 2020 US Election". Twitter. Retrieved November 6, 2020.
- Prokop, Andrew (November 6, 2020). "Why Decision Desk called Pennsylvania, and the presidential race, for Joe Biden". Vox. Archived from the original on November 6, 2020. Retrieved November 7, 2020.