Your Vote Counts 2020: How KBTX will report election results

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BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) - This Election Day, we’re tracking 128 local races in the KBTX newsroom, in addition to hundreds of others across the state and nationally.

For an election that’s been unusual in many ways, our process for gathering results and calling races won’t change much from the way you’ve come to expect. Our team of reporters and producers will be spread out across the Brazos Valley and Central Texas with candidates and election administrators to gather accurate results as quickly as possible. If you’re headed out to vote or support your favorite candidate tomorrow, you’ll likely see them in the field.

Beginning shortly after 7 p.m., we’ll share live results on KBTX.com and at the bottom of your TV screen during CBS national election coverage. Those results will be updated all night as each county’s elections office completes its unofficial count.

Results generally arrive in large chunks, often precincts or voting centers. In Brazos County, those first results will likely come in quickest—a dedicated reporter at the Brazos Center shares results with us moments after they hit the printer. Other counties share their results through phone, fax, email, and web.

We don’t know exactly how quickly we’ll see election night totals, and the time will probably vary by county. State officials say they expect the bulk of races to have complete unofficial counts on election night. Historically, it’s not uncommon to have counts outstanding in local races at the end of the night, especially those with districts that stretch into Harris or Travis Counties.

Nationally, you’ll see networks and major national news organizations like the Associated Press make projections about who is going to win major races. These projections have historically been made with a combination of exit polling and early vote totals.

At KBTX, we don’t project the winners of local races until it’s become mathematically impossible for a candidate to win with the remaining outstanding votes. You may, however, see projections for national races on KBTX or KBTX.com in races being projected by the Associated Press or CBS.

In fact, there’s an outside possibility that you could see a national race called on CBS before it’s called on KBTX.com, which draws national data from the Associated Press, or vice-versa. That’s because this year the Associated Press and Fox News have broken away from the exit polling shared by the major broadcast networks (including CBS) and created their own polling product. The Associated Press says their new solution, AP VoteCast, will help them better track the overwhelming amount of Americans that chose to vote early.

We’re monitoring every major news organization on election night, but you’ll only see a KBTX push alert on your phone when the Associated Press or CBS make an election projection. KBTX won’t report those projections if we’re not confident in their prediction and will attribute any national push alerts so you know who the projection came from and how they arrived at that conclusion.

One thing that won’t change on Election Day is our commitment to making the latest information available wherever you look. We’re starting the day live, as always, on Brazos Valley This Morning, and we’ll be here until the last local ballots are counted on election night.

Starting when our first results roll in after 7 p.m., updated election totals will be available on KBTX.com, the KBTX app, and at the bottom of your screen on KBTX.

Once polls close, Erika Fernandez will be live across our digital channels (KBTX’s live events stream, Facebook and YouTube) all night with the latest results, analysis from our panel of experts, live coverage from reporters in the field, and the thoughts of our local focus group as election results come in.

On air, Live at Five will be a full hour from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m., followed by CBS national election coverage.

We’ll have two local updates for you every hour during CBS coverage, at 24 and 54 minutes past the hour, followed by a super-size News 3 at Ten, which begins at 9:54 p.m. and runs until 11 p.m. We’ll continue to update local races all night until ballots are counted.

Complete KBTX Election Day schedule:

4:30 – 7 a.m.: Brazos Valley This Morning
7 – 9 a.m.: CBS This Morning
12 – 12:30 p.m.: News 3 at Noon
4 – 4:30 p.m.: First News at Four
5 – 6 p.m.: Live at Five (full hour)
6 – 9:54 p.m.: CBS News 2020: Election Night – America Decides
- KBTX updates will air hourly at 24 and 54 minutes past the hour
7 – 10 p.m.: News 3 Now on KBTX’s streaming platform
9:54 – 11 p.m.: News 3 at Ten
11 p.m. – 2 a.m.: CBS News 2020: Election Night – America Decides
- KBTX updates will air hourly at 24 and 54 minutes past the hour