Election night's most-crucial number is votes yet to be counted

Election officials in key battleground states and at The Associated Press are adopting a new measure aimed at estimating how much of the vote has yet to be counted.

With unprecedented mail-in voting this year because of the pandemic, the vote count will be more fragmented and results could be delayed in key swing states. That means the traditional number political analysts watched on election night — the percentage of precincts reporting — won’t capture the scope of the outstanding votes.

The AP plans to report results using an “estimated expected vote percentage” for specific races that includes all of the votes that the wire service expects to be cast, including mail-in ballots, provisional votes — ballots cast when a voter’s eligibility is questioned that are held for a period of days after an election to be checked — and military and overseas ballots.