The New York Times needle: Some people love it. And some people hate it. It’s been the inspiration behind many pithy tweets and election coverage hot takes. Now the needle is back for a sixth time. Nate Cohn is one of its creators. He’s an expert numbers cruncher, who covers polling and demographics at The Times. “The needle is an election night forecast. So, it looks at the votes that have been counted and it looks at what votes are left, and estimates what the final result will be. People spent weeks trying to think of what the right way was to communicate our forecasts in a way that was compelling to people. Obviously it’s resonated in some interesting and, you know — I don’t know — but yeah, I’d say unexpected ways. People have a really emotional response to the needle because of what happened in 2016.” Namely, the needle pointing from Clinton over to Trump as the night wore on. “It’s worth noting, by the way, that when I talk about people, I’m mainly talking about liberals. I think that Republicans have a very different memory of the needle on election night. Some of what I think elicited the emotional response that the needle quivered, or jittered, maybe more precisely. The intention behind that was to show the uncertainty that surely played out on election night in 2016. And we were trying to come up with ways to communicate that in a way that was a little bit more visceral than just a probability.” So how does it work? “The data is gathered from — mainly from — The Associated Press. And every county in the country — except in Alaska, which all sort of reports as one state — tells you the number of precincts that have been counted, it says what the tabulated vote is to that point, including by candidate. We match that data to our pre-election expectations for every county in the country that’s going to vote. That’s informed based on the results that we’ve seen so far. Early in the night, it’s also based on our projection for what we expected for the county. And it’s also based on what the results in other counties have taught us about whether Democrats or Republicans might be expected to fare better or worse than we initially thought. I think that there is something about — like the clarity of the way the needle moves and points. It has a decisive feel to it. The visual gives it much more strength than the number alone does, I think, in a lot of cases.”