Votecastr Explained - Read before using the site.

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Here’s how the VoteCastr system operates. By combining proprietary, large-sample polls taken prior to Election Day with targeted, real-time tracking of voter turnout on Tuesday, VoteCastr will make rolling projections of how many ballots have been cast for each candidate in each of the states we’re tracking: Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. If you visit Slate at 11 a.m. EST on Tuesday, you’ll see projections for how many votes have been cast for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in each of those states as of 11 a.m.

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Some polling experts also question whether the rolling projections are even likely to be reliable, because they depend so heavily on voter turnout figures.

One obstacle is that on election day, voter turnout varies over time, according to Nate Cohn, who writes The Upshot column for The New York Times.

"Younger voters don’t usually vote in the morning, and many voters in 9-to-5 jobs might surge to the polls in the evening," Cohn said in a report on Monday.

"The VoteCastr model makes no effort to adjust for this," he says. "It will treat turnout as if it's uniform throughout the day."

But VoteCastr, as well as the two media outlets - Slate and Vice News - which will publish the projections, have defended their model, even if they acknowledge it is not perfect.

"When it comes to who might win, the emphasis should be on might," said a Slate article describing the VoteCastr projections. "There are too many unknowns for us to be able to say with confidence that what we think is happening in the present will continue to happen in the future."

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