The live-feed counting process really messes with people's heads. Trump used this confusion to great effect in creating the conspiracy theory about election stealing ("we were winning"), but it's not only the right wing that gets it confused.

It feels like there has to be a better way to present the data to make it more obvious what's actually happening.

Yeah, I personally believe that states should agree to collectively wait till the day after to release all election results at once. That way there's not as much confusion.