Election Watchers Be Warned: Notorious New York Times Needle Might Not Go Live

The notorious New York Times election needles are seared into the memories of many voters, but whether these forecast barometers will go live Tuesday evening is unknown due to a strike of tech workers at the publication.

As one user on social media platform X said after chief political analyst Nate Cohn announced he was unsure whether the feature would be on the New York Times site on election night: “We need a needle on whether there will be a needle.”

The New York Times introduced the needle in 2016 when its dramatic swing away from predicting a likely win for Hillary Clinton induced anxiety and criticism from many following along. In 2020, the state-level prediction for Georgia flipped toward Joe Biden as votes were tallied on election night. The blue-to-red ombre half circle spans from a very likely Democratic win on the left to a very likely Republican victory on the right.

As results come in, an algorithm behind the needle, which starts pointing directly upward, uses the hard results, plus information about voter trends, to shift one way or the other, raising heart rates and spurring flurries of page refreshes. It takes into account who tends to vote early versus on Election Day, whether urban or rural counties are reporting higher percentages and other historical trends that can make early vote counts more unreliable on their face.

That feature may or may not be available as swing states projecting razor-thin margins start reporting results on Tuesday night.

Although the striking tech workers don’t have a hand in the New York Times prediction model, Cohn said, they usually maintain the algorithmic infrastructure that feeds data to the needle and handle technological issues across all of its other data pages quickly on election nights.

“The needle is a huge data load, it’s more brittle [than results pages], and we’ve only published it a handful of times (v 1000s of results pages),” Cohn wrote on X. “There will be bugs and it could be hard to debug.”

He said it could run smoothly, allowing the needles to publish like normal, but added, “There are good reasons to bet against it.” Any bugs will make it likely that the New York Times won’t turn the needles live, given the tech workers strike.

Members of the NYT Tech Guild walked off the job on Monday, about two years into unsuccessful negotiations between union leaders and management on a contract for the employees, according to Axios. They’re alleging unfair labor practices and asking for higher wages as part of the deal.

The strategically timed strike comes about two months after the guild, which represents about 600 data analysts, software engineers and designers, authorized a plan to halt work this week.

Regardless of whether the needle appears online, the New York Times has assured readers it plans to periodically run the prediction model internally and release written updates on its live blog, reflecting what the needle indicates.

Some voters are calling the tool essential to avoid casting doubt on results as they come in.

“Will be a lot of misinformation in the absence of a needle,” @SpencerHakimian replied below Cohn’s thread.

Others are urging fellow stressed-out voters to avoid content based on the NYT’s data — including the potential makeshift needle-based updates — to avoid crossing the virtual picket line.

“Don’t cross the picket line and look at the @nytimes needle (or the narrative version of the needle if they can’t get it to work),” @Handle4Adam wrote.

Tech Guild members outside the NYT’s office on Tuesday are pointing out exactly which functions can’t run without them — and hoping the absence of the elections needle could move the needle on negotiations.

“If you want a needle, we need a deal!” signs on the picket line read.