NYT ‘Needle’ Predicts 84% Chance of Trump's Victory With 285 Electoral College Votes

New York: As final result declaring winner of US Presidential elections 2024 is still awaited, famous election result predictor, New York Times’s ‘Needle’, projected an 84 per cent possibility of Donald Trump 's victory with about 295 electoral college votes based on its data at 10.30pm on Tuesday (9am IST, Wednesday).

‘Needle’ oscillates as fresh data that comes in is analysed in real-time and makes projection it considers valid at that time. A little before 10pm, it showed Trump at nearly 290 seats before swinging down five to 285 at 10pm and rising 30 minutes later to 295.

progsticator makes longer-range projections beyond those made by or media outlets by combining incoming polling trends with demographic and historical data.

At 10pm, electoral college votes that have been called by media were 198 for Trump to 112 for Kamala Harris . New York Times was struggling with its computers owing to its union of techlogy workers being on strike over pay and working conditions.

Ackwledging problem, newspaper wrote, “Publishing Needle live on election night relies on computer systems maintained by engineers across company, including some who are currently on strike.”

“How we display our election forecast will depend on those systems, as well as incoming data feeds, and we will only publish a live version of ‘Needle’ if we are confident those systems are stable, it said. 

On election eve, newspaper’s poll had given Harris a 3 per cent lead over Trump.