AP and CBS will supply BBC News with race projections
The US midterm elections take place Tuesday, November 3, and BBC News said the results will shape the next two years of American politics. The broadcaster will follow election results and developments as the night unfolds on its website and app. It will also offer comprehensive text and video, a live page with the latest updates, reaction and analysis, and an interactive results service showing live vote-count updates for every state. Audiences worldwide can follow the latest developments across the platforms.
Election week will also see Americast become a daily podcast, with Justin Webb, Sarah Smith, Anthony Zurcher and Marianna Spring helping audiences make sense of the biggest moments.
Special coverage from Washington starts at 18:00 EST (23:00 GMT), with James Coomarasamy and Asma Khalid. The main election results program begins at 18:30 EST (23:30 GMT), once polls close on the East Coast, and will be broadcast live from Washington on BBC One and BBC News Channel. The program will also be available to watch on BBC iPlayer and BBC News YouTube.
Clive Myrie will host from the Capitol, while Sumi Somaskanda and Caitríona Perry will be in the Washington DC studio. Correspondents will report from battleground states. North America editor Sarah Smith and North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher will give their take from Washington DC, and BBC analysis editor Ros Atkins will examine key results as they come in.
BBC’s live page will carry the latest updates, reaction and analysis, while its interactive results service will show live vote-count updates for every state. Anthony Zurcher’s Politics Unspun newsletter will provide comprehensive analysis of all the results.
BBC identified AP news agency and its US news partner CBS as the two providers of election results. The partners will analyze incoming results data, and when they are confident that one candidate has an unbeatable lead in a particular race, they will project that candidate as the winner. BBC News will label those calls as projections.
BBC said its projections nearly always prove correct when all the votes are eventually counted. The projections are not official results: the final result comes when states certify the outcomes, a process that often takes days or weeks after election day.
Listeners in the UK can follow the broadcast on BBC Radio 4, while listeners outside the UK can hear the same broadcast on the BBC World Service. The Today programme on BBC Radio 4 will carry all the reaction to the night’s events from Washington from 01:00 EST (06:00 GMT) on Wednesday, November 4.
BBC Breakfast will present a round-up of the results on BBC One from 01:00 EST (06:00 GMT) on Wednesday, November 4, with analysis of what the results mean for Donald Trump’s final two years in office.
BBC is directing audiences to additional guides explaining what the US midterms are, introducing candidates in the seven Senate races to watch, examining where the midterms will be won and lost, and assessing how the US economy is doing under Trump.