Votes That Count and Voters Who Don't: How Journalists Sideline Electoral Participation (Without Even Knowing It)

For decades, journalists have called the winners of U.S. presidential elections—often in error—well before the closing of the polls. In Votes That Count and Voters Who Don’t, Sharon E. Jarvis and Soo-Hye Han investigate what motivates journalists to call elections before the votes have been tallied and, more importantly, what this and similar practices signal to the electorate about the value of voter participation.

Jarvis and Han track how journalists have told the story of electoral partic...