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As of the time of writing (around 11 pm Central Time on Nov 6,) there are currently still 3 races for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania for which the Associated Press has not called a winner. Specifically, districts 7, 8, and 10 aren't called yet. However, in all 3 of these, the AP is estimating that 99% of votes have been counted and one candidate is ahead by 1.4 to 2.0 percentage points, which seems to suggest that it is now mathematically impossible for the leading candidate to not win the race. The percentage of votes counted has been showing numbers that suggest impossibility or near impossibility of the race going the other way almost all day today.

Similarly, North Carolina's district 1 also isn't called yet, despite AP estimating 99% of votes counted with one candidate having a 1.8 percentage point lead.

Is there something special about Pennsylvania elections and/or North Carolina for U.S. House seats that I'm missing for why AP seems to be holding off so long on calling them when their own numbers seem to suggest that the result is certain?

Do they have an automatic runoff or ranked-choice voting or some such thing that would cause the AP to wait longer than usual to call the races? Or does their Decision Desk think there are more votes left to count than their numbers seem to suggest? Or some other reason?

In NC's case, no candidate is above 50%, so an automatic runoff or RCV might explain the situation if they have that, though in PA's case, all 3 of the races have one candidate well above 50%.

I looked at a lot of AP's Election Updates page, but I haven't seen anything addressing these House races (whereas they have released statements there explaining why they haven't called certain Senate and Presidential races.) There are a lot of updates there, though, so it's possible I missed something. Obviously, direct statements from AP would make a great answer to this question if I've just missed them.

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  • @264champagnebottlesonice AP is often pretty transparent about why they call or haven't yet called a given race, as well as their process for doing so. They have several updates on the link I just added to the Q explaining their call or lack of call for lots of different races, but I haven't seen anything addressing these.
    – reirab
    Commented Nov 7 at 5:41
  • It should be noted that calling a vote is not that big of a thing and is formally just an expression of confidence about a result, not a legally binding decision. The candidates in question can already party, but they won't have a job without the official result. I'm asking myself more what keeps some districts to take so much time to count from 99% of the votes to 100% of the votes. Is this maybe transporting ballots from very remote rural areas?
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Nov 7 at 7:20
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    @NoDataDumpNoContribution 99% basically is just equivalent to "we are not absolutely 100% done yet". There are ballots courts may have said need to be set aside and now need to be adjudicated if they are counted or not, mail-in ballots that are late arrivals which will or may be counted, ballots which had issues being tallied that may need to be further processed, etc. As long as there's something still to do in getting the exact tally, it's not 100%.
    – zibadawa timmy
    Commented Nov 7 at 8:06
  • @NoDataDumpNoContribution Very true, though, especially in the case of the House, where there are 435 seats, calling the different elections when they can safely be called is helpful for the general public and even the incoming politicians themselves to know what the outcome is both of those individual races and also overall control of the House. Sure, you can go district-by-district through all 435 of them, but that's not very convenient. :) But, yeah, for that last 1 percent, it's usually mostly stray cases that take longer like timmy mentioned. Mail-in, provisional, disputed, etc.
    – reirab
    Commented Nov 7 at 22:25

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I suspect in NC it's due to this

There are no automatic recounts in North Carolina, but candidates may request and pay for one if the margin is less than 0.5% of the total votes or 10,000 votes for statewide races or 1% for non-statewide races. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is eligible for a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

The remaining votes to be counted are not enough to change the result as it is (i.e. on this/first count), but it is enough to that it may trigger a recount. The margin so far is above the 1% recount threshold, but it could still theoretically dip under that after all the votes are counted.

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    Of course, AP routinely calls elections in e.g. Vermont or Oklahoma the instant the polls close (or shortly thereafter), with zero (or very few) precincts reporting, just because VoteCast tells them that the race is not going to be close. I think the difference is that, should they somehow manage to get one of those calls wrong, everybody will be so shocked by the upset (conservatives winning in VT or liberals in OK) that they won't even stop to ask questions about AP's methodology, whereas getting NC wrong is a worse look.
    – Kevin
    Commented Nov 8 at 0:18

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