Inside the 2024 Election at the Minnesota Star Tribune

There will be organized chaos at the Minnesota Star Tribune newsroom in downtown Minneapolis on Election Night as national, state and local votes begin to be counted. But the emphasis is on organization as preparations for national election coverage this year have been underway for months.

Exposing national, state and local politics to Minnesota readers has been one of the paper’s primary missions since its earliest days. This historic role has become vital again in recent years as disinformation and misinformation surrounding voting and election results have spread far and wide.

On Tuesday, Star Tribune reporters, photographers and videographers will fan out across Minnesota to interview voters at the polls. And when the polls close, writers, editors and visual journalists will work to bring election results in key national, state and local races to our digital and print audiences. In total, about 125 Star Tribune journalists will be involved in election coverage.

Planning began in January. A group of representatives from across the company met to brainstorm about the types of stories that could drive engagement and satisfy the curiosity of the Star Tribune audience, according to Greg Mees, senior associate editor.

“You plan everything,” Mies said. “You make contingency plans for the fact that we don’t know the winners, that we know the winners on both sides. And we plan ahead for this so we can be prepared for anything.”

The polling numbers come from the Associated Press, which has staffers stationed in county and precinct offices across the country tasked with accurately recording voting data. The Star Tribune is combining those numbers with those from the Minnesota Secretary of State, said C.J. Sinner, director of graphics and visual data.

“We have a large internal channel and code that combines those two things in a way that people can understand so they can search our site for any race that happens in the state,” Sinner said. Star Tribune Real-time election results dashboard checks and updates data every 60 seconds, eliminating the need for refreshes. Users will be able to enter their addresses to see election results from their own ballot or search by any local race in the state.

No other local news organization provides readers with all the race results in one place, Sinner said.