How The Times’s Home Page Comes Together on Election Night

“It’s about being prepared, but also being able to pivot,” said Justin O’Neill, one of the editors who programs the home page at night.

Election Day is five days away. Every day of the countdown, Inside The Times will share an article about how our election coverage works. Today, learn how the home page will come together on the big night.

On election night, news comes fast and furious. House and Senate seats flip, hundreds of local and state races are called, and the nation edges closer to learning who will lead it for the next four years.

New York Times journalists around the country will cover it all, filing dispatches from battlegrounds, analyzing and reporting real-time data, and putting all the chaos into context for readers.

The top news of the night — and there’s a lot of it — is displayed on The Times’s home page and in the Times app.

Programming the home page on any given day is no easy feat. A team of journalists across four cities and time zones (New York, Los Angeles, London and Seoul) is responsible for selecting the newsiest stories to populate the home page, while also keeping the page accurate, timely and engaging, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

And on election night, things are even trickier. The home page must seamlessly bring together work from different parts of the newsroom, including articles from political reporters; live results graphics and race forecasts from The Times’s election results team; and videos with reporters who break down what’s happening across the country.

“Elections are the most exciting nights in journalism,” said Steve Kenny, a senior editor who oversees news coverage and the home page at night. “I’ve been a part of them since 1980, and they never cease to be thrilling.”

This is how the home page comes together on election night.

A Plan, and Another Plan to Pivot

On Election Day, editors working on the home page in New York assemble on the second and third floors of the Manhattan newsroom around 3 p.m. Then around 6 p.m. — as editors wolf down gyros and baklava (preferred election night takeout) — the first race results begin to roll in. And the night truly begins.

“We always begin such nights with a plan, but the team is expert at remaining fluid — fielding requests from top editors through the night and responding when news breaks,” said Karron Skog, an assistant managing editor who oversees the home page.

As results from dozens of congressional races stream in (for race calls, The Times primarily relies on The Associated Press), home page editors write and rewrite headlines, reconfigure the order of content and add sidebars that contextualize big news moments.

As the night progresses, the home page editors in New York and Los Angeles are joined by colleagues in Seoul and London. Editors in each city communicate with one another in the messaging app Slack, and check in regularly on a continuous video call.

Home page editors are also in constant communication with journalists on the Politics team, who produce the bulk of the articles that appear on the page.

“They’re answering our questions, as well as helping us come up with headlines and framing that’s fresh and accurate,” said Justin O’Neill, the deputy home page editor at night, adding that good home page headlines are brief, fair, conversational and publish quickly — but not at the expense of accuracy.

“You want to write as succinctly as possible,” he said. “But above all, you have to stick to the reporting and make sure not to go too far or jump the gun.”

Mr. O’Neill needs to ensure that the news presented on the home page remains organized and up-to-the-minute, while also staying on top of unexpected developments.

“It’s about being prepared, but also being able to pivot,” he added.

Deploying Data and Visuals

Much of the home page on election night is dominated by graphics and other visuals, including the Needle, a data visualization that looks like a car’s speedometer. The Needle, powered by the Election Analytics department, which works on statistical models for election night, will share The Times’s race forecasts, based on statistical analysis of votes that are counted and estimates of those to come.

An interactive map of the United States will also populate the home page; states will appear red or blue as Electoral College votes are confirmed.

Much of the visual work is overseen by Wilson Andrews, a deputy editor in The Times’s Graphics department, who has led the election results operations since 2020.

He and his team prepare for election night months in advance. In run-throughs in the weeks leading up to the big day, they rehearse dozens of hypothetical scenarios to stress test the presentation of graphics and data for any possible permutation.

“We prepare for different moments in the vote count,” Mr. Andrews said, “from the first results reported in the early states, to when things really ramp up between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., and throughout the night until the next morning.”

The home page will highlight real-time results. But the team is careful to always put numbers into context, to explain what we know and don’t know about the count at different points.

“This is important because the order that votes are reported often means that early returns are unreliable as a guide for where the race will end up,” said Mr. Andrews, whose team will embed reporter commentary alongside graphics, to ensure readers are getting expert analysis.

When Night Turns to Morning

The night — now, morning — remains intense until 2 or 3 a.m. when the vote count begins to slow. But it’s hardly over: The race for president often isn’t called until well after midnight, or sometimes even days later, as in 2020, when Joe Biden was declared the winner four days after Election Day.

But The Times will be ready whenever the call comes. Reporters have written articles for both outcomes — a Kamala Harris victory or a Donald J. Trump win — and editors stand ready to publish articles as soon as the result is official. The home page can transform in a matter of seconds to reflect the news.

“We’ll have a pre-designed banner headline ready to go,” Mr. O’Neill said. “We’ll already have a mock layout for what we intend to do for both possibilities.”

Most of the editors will linger until the early hours of Nov. 6, trickling out into the pre-dawn darkness to board subway trains and hail cabs home as the sun comes up.

It’s an exhausting night for the editors, yes. But ask any one of them — they’d volunteer to do it again in a heartbeat.

“It’s exciting,” Mr. O’Neill said. “It’s like being a small part of history, in a way.”