is how news outlets call election results when it's too early to know for sure. I just saw one website call one primary with 57% of the vote and another with 55%; it's too early to know for sure, so why are they claiming that's the result?

It really kooks like another "Dewey Defeats Truman" moment could happen any day now.

For those who aren't aware about what happened back in 1948, here are a few articles:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/chi-chicagodays-deweydefeats-story-story.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Defeats_Truman
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/todd-andrlik/dewey-defeats-truman-the_b_119351.html

Hmmm... for a second there I thought you were going to spout off about the lack of 3rd party bathrooms at the polling stations.

To be fair, good statistical analysis requires some number crunching, and in 1948 there weren't yet any computers up to the task.

<span class="bold">1952 was a whole different matter</span>.

It was just as bad a long long time ago.

But they can write two articles then. Or at least get 2 visits from readers. So twice the ad revenue. In a few years you'll have ''social experiment prank gone sexual'' news reports.

Well to be fair, the Emperor had a huge campaign war chest and some very good campaign managers. His slogan "Make the galaxay great again" really resonated with a lot of planets. There was also his plan to build a fleet of Death Stars and make Endor pay for it. Plus he could get through dozens of campaign stops a day as his stump speech was just him saying "You will vote for me!" While waving his hands.

They actually can, in most cases, call the vote early because of how voting districts are set up. When they say things like "55% of the vote in" they aren't saying 55% of the actual votes themselves are in, they are saying 55% of the voting districts are in. Since some districts contain a greater portion of registered voters than others, it is relatively easy to predict a result based on which districts have reported. Not to mention, there is still a ton of gerrymandering going on these days, so even unreported districts are pretty easy to predict.