Good morning,
I hope you’re keeping well,
Since you are now all experts in the intricacies of the US political system, I’ve got a few things on those lines today, just whilst it is still all fresh ✨ (promise it’s worth a read)
Anyway, C’mere to me…
Down with the kids
AOC Twitch Streaming 🎮🇺🇸
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of New York, also the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, and who just got re-elected in a landslide victory over her Republican challenger, has made a name for being very social media savvy, especially compared to the majority of her colleagues.
In the lead up to the election and in an effort to encourage more young people to vote, she played and streamed a few rounds of the viral online game “Among Us”, all whilst discussing key issues and the importance of getting out and voting.
“She also, very quickly, became one of the platform’s biggest broadcasters: her stream peaked at 435,000 viewers around the time of her first match, according to Twitch.
That peak viewership puts her broadcast among the 20 biggest streams ever, according to the third-party metrics site TwitchTracker, and much higher if you’re only looking at broadcasts from individual streamers.”
(read more - The Verge)
There is such thing as ‘being down with the kids’, and then there is actually going and hosting a twitch stream whilst playing a viral game and breaking streaming records, AOC is just so cool.
Interesting
Who actually calls the election? 📈
The Associated Press?
With different media outlets ‘calling’ states earlier than others, who actually decides who has won the election? - this came up in conversations with friends and I was curious enough to look it up…
There was certainly confusion going around when tallies of electoral college seats looked different depending on where you got your news. This can be particularly misleading, as in the US it is, unfortunately, common for people to only engage with one main media source.
In short, the election has still not been ‘officially’ tallied in every state, it has just been called by all major broadcasters and their decision desks. However, this is very reliable, close to certainty, especially when they all independently agree with each other.
“It’s an important service that greatly speeds up our knowledge of who’s won what, without having to wait for the final tally from state authorities, which in some cases can take a while to count. All of these outlets have an excellent track record for accuracy, but in the rare cases it goes wrong, it can go very wrong — as in 2000, where every major service called Florida for Al Gore early on, only for it to become clear the race was a squeaker.”
(read more - VOX)
The Associated Press you might, like me, have thought was the ‘official’ vote counting authority, but no this is simply their reputation proceeding them and I must clarify that they are like all the other decision desks simply making predictions so that the people don’t have to wait for every single vote to have been tallied and audited by state officials.
However, The Associated Press have been calling US elections since 1848, now with a huge team all around the country, massive data resources and experience, strict transparency and an impeccable track record too, hence why they are so trusted. Also, since the US does not have an electoral commission, the media has always had to provide that role in tallying and reporting the results from each state to the people.
“Race calls made by other organizations have no bearing on when AP declares a candidate the winner. Our decision team does not engage in debate with any campaign or candidate. Should a candidate declare victory – or offer a concession – before AP calls a race, we will cover newsworthy developments in our reporting. In doing so, we will make clear that AP has not yet declared a winner and explain the reason why we believe the race is too early or too close to call.”
(read more - The Associated Press)
“A race caller in each state examines the counts with an analyst at the A.P.’s politics team in Washington to determine when a winner can be declared. Two editors sign off on every call, Ms. Buzbee said. And when the time comes to name the winner of the presidential race, The A.P.’s Washington bureau chief, Julie Pace, has to sign off.”
“Other outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and Fox News, will use election data from The A.P. to help them make their determinations. Google will use the The A.P.’s election reporting for real-time results on its search page, as well as for a panel on YouTube. (ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC make their own calls, but will share information as members of the National Election Pool, a group that uses data from Edison Research.)”
(read more - New York Times)
The professionals that make up decision desks at broadcasters often have PhDs in political sciences and are not influenced by the opinions or biases of their networks.
“For instance, Arnon Mishkin, Fox News’s decision desk leader, is known as a straight shooter by observers across the political spectrum, not beholden to the right-wing figures at his network. Fox News aggressively called Arizona for Biden on election night”
(read more - VOX)
Decision Desk HQ, setup in 2012, is the new kid on the block but also has an impeccable track record using a slightly different decision basis than the others. In fact, Decision Desk called the race on Friday morning, the day before everyone else…
Hindsight is a wonderful thing though, and it’s hard to ever say if they were just ‘that good’ or if they just got lucky that a risky call was correct, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.
Smile 😊
Saved 📷
Think 🌊
On a galactic scale, amber and pearl are far rarer than gold and diamonds because they require life.
That’s all 🤙🏽
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Guy