Why it's become harder to project presidential winner on election night - Harvard Gazette

"The media had a vulnerability in understanding the changing nature of how elections are actually run," said Stephen Ansolabehere, reflecting on Florida's razor's edge results, which exposed the networks' reliance on outdated statistical modeling.

"Five years later, Ansolabehere joined a team of social science Ph.D.s charged with improving data journalism and election forecasting for CBS News. I've been there ever since for every midterm and presidential election as well as the primaries," he said.

"That election exposed a lot of administrative failures in the U.S. electoral system - from voting machines to registration to management of polling places. But the networks relied on the same old statistical models to ingest data - and then they just put that out."

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