How CBS News Projects Elections

CBS News uses a variety of tools to use to help us make projections.

• Day-of-election voter polls (often called "Exit Polls")

• Telephone polls of absentee and early voters

• Samples of precinct results from nearly all states
The Associated Press tabulated vote as it is collected from all U.S. counties.

CBS News processes this information with series of models that look at it by geographic region, past vote, registration levels and other precinct characteristics.

Projections are made when both the statistical models - and our experts - agree that we can make a "CBS News Projection" or a "CBS News Estimate."