Early voting began in North Carolina on Thursday, and more than 1 million people have already cast ballots, a record for early voting in that state.

For many, this presidential election will be focused on news coverage, waiting to see when the races will take place in different states.

News On 6 will be talking to Anthony Salvanto of CBS News at 4 p.m. to find out how that process works.

How will CBS News’ data desk cover election night, and how should we watch it?

Salvanto: We’re going to show you everything we see coming in, in real time. We’re going to tell you whether states are making a toss if they’re leaning toward one candidate or the other, and then finally a projection. There are seven major battlegrounds. I’ll give you an example from Georgia because it’s one of the first to close on election night. One of the things we’re looking for is how the votes have shifted as they’ve come in, compared to the past. What we saw in Georgia in 2020 was that many rural counties shifted to Donald Trump from 2016, but a lot of Metro Atlanta shifted to Joe Biden in this case, compared to how they had voted in 2016 when we started seeing those consistent patterns at the decision office give us an idea of ​​which way the race could go. So that’s number one. Number two is, we want to look at where the votes are coming from in terms of turnout. Let me give you an example from Pennsylvania. You will see this card filled in. Let me go back to 2020. You’ll see red areas, you’ll see blue areas, but the votes often come from densely populated areas where Democrats are doing well. You’ll have to wait to see what kind of turnout you get there. What I’m going to do is take over the state. In the case of Pennsylvania, more votes come from Philadelphia. More voices are coming from Pittsburgh. You’ll want to see if the Democrats get their turnout numbers there, or if Donald Trump can get a consistent pattern in those rural areas, not as many voters, but consistently winning one after another. So that’s another way we look at things at the data desk, and we bring it all to you in real time.

What does it even mean to call a race?

Salvanto: One of the other things we’re looking at is looking at who wins each battle state, and when you’re talking about calling a race. Let me go back to Georgia as an example. You want to look at how the votes have shifted over time. Here is a map of Georgia. That’s how things went wrong in 2020, when you had Metro Atlanta, a lot of blue areas for the Democrats and red rural areas for the Republicans. Okay, you’d like to see those counties filled out. One of the things you have to look at, if I put the state on access, is where the votes are coming from. These higher bars mean more votes are cast. So for example in and around Metro Atlanta, Fulton County, in this example, right? You have half a million votes. Democrats score higher in such places, while in rural counties they do not have as many votes. But Donald Trump did well last time. It can be expected that things will go well again. Can he perform consistently well in these provinces? That’s one way we do the analysis.