Decision desk
Decision desk are a team of experts that a US news organization assembles to analyze incoming data about election results and project winners on election day.
Decision desks use exit polling data as well as officially reported results as they come in, to project and then "call" the winners of elections on election night.
Exit polling data was gathered by Voter News Service which existed from 1990 to 2003, and which was disbanded due to disastrous mistakes in the 2000 presidential election and in the 2002 elections. Afterward they formed the National Election Pool which produced skewed results in the 2004 US presidential election and in the 2016 presidential elections.
Megyn Kelly was made famous when she walked backstage to Fox News' decision desk team during the broadcast of the 2012 US presidential election results, when Karl Rove contradicted the team's prediction that Obama would win.
Decision Desk HQ is an election-calling company founded in 2016 that grew out of a 2012 crowdsourcing effort led by truck dispatcher Brandon Finnigan, who had temporarily found a home on the Ace of Spades HQ blog before launching the company. Buzzfeed signed a partnership with Decision Desk HQ in 2017, which was its first major partnership.
