Why are news outlets reporting different US election results?
Some news organisations say Biden won Arizona, while others have yet to make a call. How do they make decisions?
The state of Arizona being called for Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden by some, but not all, news organisations has raised questions about how and why media outlets make their decisions.
Many news outlets base their US election decisions on data collected by The Associated Press news agency.
Arizona and its 11 electoral votes were called for Biden by the AP in the early hours of Wednesday with 80 percent “of the expected vote counted [and] Biden was ahead by five percentage points, with a roughly 130,000-vote lead over Trump”, the news agency said in its guide to the states it has called.
Fox News, which has its own “decision desk” that analyses AP data and makes determinations of its own, called Arizona for Biden earlier in the evening, reportedly angering the campaign of US President Donald Trump and his supporters.
As of Thursday morning, Fox News showed Biden on 264 electoral votes, six shy of the 270 required to win the presidency. But other outlets showed Biden on 253, with Arizona still in the undecided columns of states.
Fox News is not the only channel which uses its own decision desk to make projections. NBC, ABC and others have their own decision desks.
These desks – along with the AP – play an important role in the 2020 presidential election, which remains on a knife-edge.
Biden currently leads in Arizona by about 68,000 votes and 88 percent reporting, according to the AP. Wisconsin, another swing state, has been called for Biden with a razor-thin margin of roughly 20,000 votes.
Things are even closer in Georgia, which has yet to be called, with Trump leading by about 13,000 votes and 99 percent reporting.
The Trump campaign has already filed lawsuits to stop vote counts and promised to demand recounts in these close states.