How The Inquirer is reporting the results of Philadelphia’s 2023 general election

Philadelphia elections have changed a lot since the last time the city elected a new mayor.

The dramatic expansion of mail voting has brought major changes to how voters cast ballots, how votes are counted, and how election results are reported.

Still, The Inquirer’s mission remains the same: to provide the most accurate and up-to-date information as possible. That includes letting you know when a race has been called by The Associated Press; providing the latest vote counts, along with contextual information to help understand those numbers; explaining the vote count as it occurs; and covering any developments that arise.

Here are some key things to know about how we’re reporting the results of the Nov. 7 general election, which includes an open mayoral seat; City Council races; row offices; and judicial contests.

The Inquirer’s results page is powered by data from the Associated Press. Those numbers are usually updated right after the Philadelphia City Commissioners, the office that runs elections, releases new vote totals to its website.

Results for other races across the state, including the statewide judicial races, are compiled by the AP through a combination of methods, including having workers across the state calling in county election results as they come in.

The AP provides Philly’s results as vote totals without further breakdown. Results for citywide races such as for mayor are given as citywide totals; City Council district races are given as district-level totals.

To call races, The Inquirer relies primarily on the AP, which has a long track record of accurately declaring winners in even the closest of elections.

Those race calls aren’t a projection of a likely outcome. The AP only declares a winner when it’s clear a candidate has won.

“If our race callers cannot definitively say a candidate has won, we do not engage in speculation,” the AP says in its guide to its process.

The AP said it plans to call:

For races on the Philadelphia ballot that the AP does not call — including row offices and the ballot question — The Inquirer will declare a winner only if it is certain of that result, based on on-the-ground reporting of the vote count and reporters’ and editors’ analysis of the voting patterns. When the result is still uncertain, our goal is to report on the results and contextualize them so readers can make sense of the numbers.

It’s important to remember that race calls are unofficial declarations from news organizations. That doesn’t make them unreliable — the AP was 100% accurate in calling the presidential and congressional races in every state in 2020. It just means the final official result takes time.

Votes always take time to count, which is why Pennsylvania’s vote certification doesn’t occur until 20 days after Election Day.

Philadelphia has far fewer mail ballots than in 2020, and the vote count should be significantly faster. Most votes cast this election should be counted within a few hours of polls closing. That’s partly because most votes will be cast in person, with those results reported on election night. Elections workers will begin counting mail ballots at 7 a.m., when state law allows them to start, and run their vote counts around the clock until they’re done.

The use of new electronic poll books will also speed up the count.

But a small number of votes won’t be counted for days.

There will be a number of paper ballots that have to be manually adjudicated, with county elections boards deciding what to do with them. In the past, for example, officials have had to decide what to do with ballots that voters returned to the wrong county.

There are also always some votes that need to be counted by hand because of issues with the ballots themselves, such as having stray marks or coffee stains on them. There are provisional ballots, too, which counties can’t start counting until Friday.

And overseas and military ballots can arrive up to one week after Election Day if they’re postmarked in time.

When we present election results, you’ll see a percentage of expected votes that have been reported. That gives a sense of how far along in the vote count we are.

Those expected vote counts come from the AP, and those estimates change throughout the night. They become more accurate as votes are counted, giving a clearer and clearer picture of how much is left. The numbers will shift, going up or down as the expected vote count is adjusted.

That doesn’t mean something nefarious is going on — it just means the AP is updating its estimate to reflect new information. If the percentage of expected votes counted suddenly goes down, for example, all that means is the AP has increased its estimated vote total.

We use that expected vote number to present each candidate’s vote share. So in the first moments after polls close, if only 1% of the expected votes are in, we won’t say that a candidate has won 50% of the vote so far — that would be misleading. Instead, we’ll tell you the candidate has won 0.5% of the expected vote so far.

One thing you won’t see: the term “precincts reporting.” In the past, when 95% or so of Pennsylvania’s votes were cast in person, knowing how many precincts had reported their in-person results was a handy way of knowing where the count stood. Now that a significant portion of votes are cast by mail, we’re using the expected vote count instead.