A race is a single electoral contest managed by either a state or a county’s election authority. What a race corresponds to can vary quite a bit - it can be as narrow as a local school board election or as broad as the presidential race in Wisconsin. Fundamentally, all races have 3 aspects to them, candidates, geographies, and votes.
Contested vs Uncontested races
Decision Desk HQ only collects and reports votes for races that are “contested”, meaning have more than 1 candidate on the ballot. For races that are uncontested the uncontested flag will be true, and vote totals will always be zeroed out.
Estimated votes in vs. Precincts reporting
Decision Desk HQ has two different ways of reporting the current status of a race.
Estimated votes represents our modeled estimate for the amount of votes that have been processed by the election authorities. Precinct reporting represents the number of voting precincts that have reported their votes.
Broadly, precincts are used for all municipal elections, these are races that are “lower” than state legislative elections and usually happen only within a specific VCU.
To determine whether to use the estimated_votes or precincts key in your application, reference the reporting_type key which will return precincts if the race is reporting in precincts, and estimated if the race is using estimated votes.