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With the results of the 2024 U.S. elections coming in Tuesday evening, the New York Times' popular Needle predictor has not yet made an appearance -- a seeming casualty of a strike called Monday by the union representing tech employees at the paper.
The NY Times' Needle, first introduced in 2016, estimates the final outcome of an election based on partial election results. As more results come in, the Needle changes to signal the likelihood of the final outcome of a given race -- with "tossup" at the center position, with gradations marked "leaning," "likely" and "very likely" on either side for the Democratic and Republican candidates.
Or at least, that had been the plan for 2024. In an article on its website, the Times noted, "Publishing the Needle live on election night relies on computer systems maintained by engineers across the company, including some who are currently on strike. How we display our election forecast will depend on those systems, as well as incoming data feeds, and we will only publish a live version of the Needle if we are confident those systems are stable."
A rep for the New York Times did not respond to an inquiry about whether the Needle would make an appearance this year.
On Monday, The Times Tech Guild, which represents more than 600 engineers, data managers, designers, software developers and tech personnel at the paper, announced they had gone on strike after failing to reach a new contract with the New York Times Co. after "multiple rounds of intense bargaining." The union, affiliated with the NewsGuild of New York, accused the company of unfair labor practices. A company spokesperson said the New York Times Co. was "continuing to work with the Tech Guild to reach a fair contract that takes into account that they are already among the highest-paid individual contributors in the company and journalism is our top priority."
The union called out the Needle in its post on X Monday announcing the strike -- with the needle all the way to right predicting a "100% chance of a work stoppage":
According to the union, it's the first strike to coincide with a presidential election in the NewsGuild since the 1964 Detroit newspaper strike.
The Times said that if it is unable to present the Needle's live results, it plans to run its statistical model "periodically" and then publish updates in its live election blog about what they see.
According to the Times, the Needle does not use AI but rather "uses statistical modeling and other techniques."
"One of our principles is that journalists should understand what the Needle is doing, and why, at all times. There is a team of journalists reviewing the data that comes in and goes out of the model at all times on election night," the paper says. "If the journalists responsible for the Needle must sleep before the race is called, the Needle will be paused as well."