The Associated Press (AP) provides the data that you find in the U.S. election results feature on Google. AP is a trusted source of information on election night, with a history of accuracy dating back 175 years.
AP collects and verifies U.S. election results in every county, parish, city, and town across the country. It covers races down to the legislative level in every state and this year will declare winners in about 5,000 contested races.
Learn more about AP’s role in elections.
Types of U.S. election data
Google features data from AP to provide you with up-to-date information on current election results. When you search for election results on Google, you might find information from AP like:
- Vote counts and percentage reporting
- Important: To estimate how much of the vote has been counted, AP uses information from voter turnout in recent elections, advance voting, and early returns after the polls close on the day of an election. Depending on the election contest, this information will be available at the state, county, and U.S. congressional district levels.
- Learn how AP counts the vote.
- Number of delegates awarded for US presidential primary contests
- AP’s decision team allocates delegates won by candidates according to the rules set by the Republican and Democratic parties, based on the outcome of their state party conventions, caucuses, and primaries.
- Notable races, which AP designates based on publicly available polling, historical voting trends, and analysis by AP’s decision team.
- State ballot measures with their descriptions and results
- Candidates, including their name, image, and party affiliation
- For the U.S. presidential primaries, AP’s decision team selects candidates to include in the national summary view based on their potential to win delegates. Factors assessed include campaign activity in the early voting states, performance in public polling, political history and name recognition among voters, debate appearances, and fundraising.
- Important: You might not find images for every candidate. AP strives for comprehensive candidate image coverage and uses an AP photo or a headshot when provided by the campaign.
A few tips:
- On the national view, candidates are listed in order of delegates won. On the state view, before results are available, notable candidates as determined by the AP are listed in alphabetical order by first name, followed by additional candidates listed in alphabetical order by first name. Once results begin to be reported, candidates are listed in order of percent of vote won among counted ballots.
- Some write-in candidates may appear in the Google Search election results feature even if they are not on the ballot for a given state, if the AP determines that candidate is expected to garner enough write-in votes to impact the outcome of an election, and write-in votes are eligible to be counted for that candidate in that state.
- The state view shows one contest per party at any given time during the presidential primaries. If there are multiple contests for a party in the same state (for example, both a primary and a caucus on different dates), with potentially different candidates on the ballot or different delegate allocation rules per contest, the state view shows the candidate and results information of the first contest until the day before the second contest.
- For General Election results for U.S. House and U.S. Senate, the balance of power between the Democratic and Republican parties is shown at the top of the page. This section represents seats that have been called by AP and seats that have been identified by AP as sure to be won by a specific party. Seats held by independent senators who caucus with a party are included at the bottom of this section. The balance of power reflects the party affiliations of candidates and officeholders at the time of the election.
How often the data is updated
Data changes rapidly when election results are coming in and is updated roughly every minute. As results come in, election data may be temporarily unavailable in Search due to a variety of reasons, like vote counting not having started yet or AP waiting on results from state election officials. Within Google’s election results feature, the latest results are updated across all the sections at roughly the same time, with an occasional difference of up to 30 seconds in updates between sections, leading to potential temporary differences in the results displayed across the feature.
Once most results are in, AP will continue to update vote counts to reflect the latest data from state election officials. For example, AP will show adjusted vote counts after recounts are complete, and will show certified vote counts as certified results become available across counties, contests, and at the state and county levels, and for individual contests for all states and the District of Columbia. AP will stop updating vote counts after state certification. Although some sources may show slightly different vote counts due to mixed sources or incremental updates, AP provides results in this way to ensure data integrity and consistency. Learn more about AP’s process for counting the vote and calling races.