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“It is Easter, and I’m the bunny, and I’m happy about it.” NewsNation political editor Chris Stirewalt is excited for Tuesday night, telling The Independent that he’ll be able to “nerd out” over the “fun-sized election” because of all the data he’ll be given by voting analysis firm Decision Desk HQ. “These guys have demonstrated cycle after cycle after cycle that they have the thing,” Stirewalt said of the data group that NewsNation is once again partnering with to provide election results for Tuesday’s key elections. The upstart cable news channel, which has seen steady viewership growth in recent months, drew headlines last year when it used data from Decision Desk HQ to become the first television network to call the presidential election for Donald Trump. NewsNation projected Trump as the victor at 1:22 a.m. E.T., beating Fox News – which partnered up with the Associated Press and National Opinion Research Center – by 25 minutes. ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN – all of whom had used Edison Research for their vote count – didn’t call the race for another few hours and were still at 266 electoral votes for Trump when he delivered his victory speech around 2:30 a.m. E.T. Earlier this month, the AP announced that it would “provide its gold standard U.S. elections results” to all of the major broadcast networks and most of the cable news channels. This came months after the news organization created a standalone business unit to build its elections business. The AP has since said it has seen a 30 percent increase in its customer base since the 2024 election cycle. While the other networks switch to the AP, which has an extremely strong track record of election accuracy, NewsNation will be the only major television outlet to buck the trend. By sticking with Decision Desk HQ on this special election night, which will feature New York City’s mayoral contest and gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, NewsNation is looking to preview how it will handle next year’s midterms. According to the network, its approach is to rely entirely on independent data and transparency when it comes to election results – and to take the middleman out of the equation. This means that the results won’t necessarily be filtered through network executives and producers before being shared with viewers. Instead, according to both NewsNation and Decision Desk HQ, the projections will be posted simultaneously on the data firm’s social media accounts and on NewsNation’s airwaves. “Look, at the end of the day, I call the race,” Scott Tranter, director of data science for Decision Desk HQ, said. “I don't get a call from a client. There’s no network president calling me up or an executive producer saying, ‘Wait for commercial.’ When the data says we should call the race, we call the race.” Saying that he likes that Decision Desk HQ is “accountable,” Stirewalt said he looked forward to questioning Tranter on air about how the firm is analyzing the voter data and then having the opportunity to “nerd out during the coverage.” Stirewalt, who was notoriously fired from Fox News in 2021 after defending the conservative network’s early and accurate call of Arizona for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, also brought up Fox’s decision to switch to AP in order to tout Decision Desk. “I was at Fox when Fox made the daring and correct decision to leave Edison and go with AP Votecast,” he said. “The AP and the National Opinion Research Center product was a quantum leap ahead of Edison, and it was a great move, and that's what enabled us to call 2020 as fast and with the accuracy that we did.” Calling the AP’s elections data a “superior product,” Stirewalt added that he’s “also glad that we're not in it, yeah, because what we have is better and different” as Decision Desk HQ has repeatedly demonstrated “they have the thing.” “We went into 2024 saying, right is more important than first, but first and right is really good,” Stirewalt continued. “First and right is the best one. Right is essential, but first and right is really delicious, and they delivered again.” Praising the firm for its “transparency,” Stirewalt said there are “no hidden ball tricks going on here” with Decision Desk HQ, insisting that “it is in our interest to have decisive elections” when it is all said and done. “We don't like to say we're the fastest,” Tranter declared. “We like to say we're the best at collecting data. If that leads us to being the fastest, that's great. The nice thing about our record is it is very public, right? Everything I say, you can go look up, and if we screw up, it's in public. And if we do well, it's in public.” While Tuesday’s elections aren’t going to be as crucial as next year’s midterms or the 2028 presidential race, they could offer up a hint of where the electorate is nearly a year into Donald Trump’s chaotic second administration. Besides the New York mayor’s race that sees an up-and-coming democratic socialist taking on an establishment figure trying to return to political relevance, there are two hotly contested gubernatorial match-ups in Virginia and New Jersey, not to mention an attorney general’s contest marked by controversy. On top of that, California is voting on a ballot measure to adopt a congressional map drawn by Democrats, a response to GOP-led redistricting in other states. “This is a fun-sized election in which we have races that are going to tell us a great deal about what voters are thinking one year into Trump 2.0,” Stirewalt said. “It’s going to tell us a lot about where voters’ heads are.”
