Counting before polls close would influence voting. Even if it were "secret" you could publish fake leaks. It would devolve into a shit show of misinformation, even though we do have that already.
If you're looking at which states have been called then there may not be any surprises, but things like the NYT needle are following trends in states which are yet to be called.
I'm multi-screening about five different media sources and am letting you know that The New York Times just updated its live presidential forecast to predict a 67% chance of a Trump victory.
The day started out with the NYT in a toss-up position, but as the count has continued, it has started to slowly creep towards Trump.
Let's remember that many votes are yet to be counted and that in 2016, this same tracker at The New York Times was predicting a Clinton victory with 95% certainty.
I'm not being critical of your analysis but I think this is a fairly meaningless statement?
If you considered all maps with any significant probability, and collated / weighted their results, the outcome would be 50:50 - the same as what every pollster has been telling us for the last several weeks.
True but you have to start counting sooner or later. I guess you could wait until the last ballot is cast in the last state.