How the media got smarter about calling elections

THERE’S A LOT WE CAN’T KNOW for sure before election night: who will vote, who will win, who will refuse to concede. But no matter what happens, we do know that the media—specifically, the Associated Press and the major TV news networks—will play an outsize role in calling the results days before all the votes have been counted.

This has been the norm in America for more than a century. But in recent weeks it has become a point of contention, with Donald