History
Decision Desk HQ, originally named Ace of Spades Decision Desk, was founded in 2012 by Brandon Finnigan as an alternative to what he deemed "slow" election calls by the Associated Press. [4]
It has called major races since the 2012 United States elections, and it first became known for calling the upset defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor during his reelection bid to Virginia's 7th congressional district in 2014. [5]
In 2020, Decision Desk HQ was considered one of nine "official sources" for election results by Twitter [6] and provided election results to The Economist , BuzzFeed , Vox , and Business Insider . [1]
Decision Desk HQ was the first major election reporting organization to call the 2020 United States presidential election for Joe Biden. [1] The call was made shortly before 9 a.m. ET on Friday, November 6. [7] It made this call after projecting that Biden's lead in outstanding mail-in ballots from Pennsylvania left incumbent Donald Trump with no realistic path to win Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes. McCoy told Vox that the great majority of mail-in ballots from Pennsylvania were from heavily Democratic areas around Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. According to McCoy, Biden was winning the mail-in vote in those areas by a margin large enough to make his lead in the state insurmountable. By Decision Desk HQ's accounting, adding Pennsylvania to Biden's total gave Biden 273 electoral votes, three over the threshold to make him president-elect. [8] Vox, who partnered with Decision Desk HQ, called the election for Biden shortly after. [9] Statistician Nate Silver praised Decision Desk HQ's call and hoped other sources would follow suit. [10]
In November 2021 Decision Desk HQ acquired election news site Elections-Daily.com. [11] It also partnered with Europe Elects during the German and French elections of 2021 and 2022.
It did call the Missouri Congressional District 1 Democratic primary wrong, when Cori Bush beat incumbent Lacy Clay by almost three points. [12] Two years earlier, it miscalled a closer general election in California's 21st Congressional District for David Valadao who was beaten by Democrat T.J. Cox. [13]
During the 2022 United States elections, Decision Desk HQ provided election data to Nexstar Media Group owned media outlet NewsNation, ultimately calling control of Congress on November 15, 2022, 6:13 pm EST, a day before other media outlets. [2]
In November 2023 Decision Desk HQ announced a partnership with Nexstar Media Group owned The Hill and NewsNation for 2024 United States elections coverage. [14] Decision Desk HQ reprised providing election data to NewsNation, and was the first to call the 2024 United States presidential election for Donald Trump. [15]
In May 2024, Decision Desk HQ announced a partnership with Ballotpedia to provide real-time election results coverage for local elections in the United States. [3]
On March 31, 2025, Nexstar announced a continuation of its partnership with Decision Desk HQ for the 2025 and 2026 United States election coverage for NewsNation and The Hill. [16]
Staff
Scott Tranter: Majority owner of Decision Desk HQ and its director of data science. [18] [19] He is a co-founder of the political data firm Øptimus Analytics [20] and previously served as Director of Data Science for Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign. [21]
Drew McCoy: President of Decision Desk HQ. [22] Under his leadership, the organization has partnered with major media outlets for election data and was the first to project Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, calling the race on November 6, 2020, before other networks. [23]
Michael Pruser: Director of Data Science at Decision Desk HQ. [24] He oversees the organization’s election data analysis and systems, and has been noted for closely tracking voter registration trends and other electoral insights cited by national political analysts. [24]
Geoffrey Skelley: Chief Elections Analyst at Decision Desk HQ. He previously served as a senior elections analyst at FiveThirtyEight (ABC News), where he covered U.S. politics and elections. [25] [26] Before that, he was an associate editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, where he contributed to the publication’s ratings and analysis of congressional and gubernatorial races. [27]
Zachary Donnini: Data scientist at Decision Desk HQ. [28] [29] He graduated from Yale University in 2025, where he majored in Statistics & Data Science and Economics. [30] He joined DDHQ in 2022 and works on vote-count collection and real-time election forecasting models. He co-authored an article published in the Harvard Data Science Review detailing the team’s live-election predictive modeling framework for calling races as results come in. [31]
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