5 Tips for Watching Tuesday Night's Presidential Election Coverage - Horowitz

5 Tips for Watching Tuesday Night's Presidential Election Coverage - Horowitz

 

Here are five tips for watching tonight’s national coverage of the election results:

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1.  The tilt of the coverage before polling places close provides clues to the early exit poll results: The election night commentary from about 5:00 PM until the polls close and results begin to come in at 700 PM or so are shaped by the early exit poll results to which all the networks are privy. If anchors and commentators shade their comments towards one of the candidates having a good night, that is nearly always a clue as to which candidate is ahead in the early exit polls. While all the networks used to contract with Edison Research for exit polling, beginning with the 2018 election, Fox News signed up with AP VoteCast, a partnership of AP and NORC at the University of Chicago, a high-quality provider of non-partisan public opinion research created in the wake of perceived exit polling deficiencies in the 2016 presidential election. This alternative is also employed by The New York Times, among others.

 As a result, to get the best sense, use your clicker often and channel surf. If it seems as if your candidate is doing well based on the initial gum-flapping, however, it is premature to break out the champagne.  Early exit poll results are often poor indicators of the ultimate result.  One of the most famous anecdotes about jumping to a conclusion based in this case on leaked national early exit poll results was media consultant Bob Shrum reportedly saying to John Kerry on election night in 2004, “May I be the first to call you Mr. President.”

 

2.  Pay no attention to Donald Trump’s anticipated early declaration of victory:   In 2020, Donald Trump declared victory at 2:30 AM of election night in a race where Joe Biden ended up garnering 306 electoral votes and winning 7 million more popular votes than the former president.  At the time Donald Trump made his declaration, there was no credible data to back up his claim. He is expected to do so again and will likely once more point to his lead among those who voted on election day.  As the former president knew then and knows now, with up to half the electorate voting before election day--either by early in-person voting or by mail---and with the Democratic candidate expected to outperform him with those voters, his anticipated lead among election day voters is no guarantee of victory.  We can count on Mr. Trump to deliberately mislead the public by once again taking advantage of the fact that in most states, the election day vote will be counted and publicly released before the mail ballot results are available.

 

3.  Georgia and North Carolina results could be early indicators:  The polls close in Georgia at 7:00 PM, Eastern Time (ET) and in North Carolina at 7:30 PM (ET). In both of these battleground states, most of the absentee ballots should be counted in advance of the polls closing.  If one candidate opens up a decisive lead in both states, it may foretell a national trend.  Of the three northern blue wall battleground states, Michigan is the only one that allows counting of the mail ballots before election day. Michigan spans two time zones, with polls closing at 8:00 PM (ET) in the eastern part of the state and 9:00 PM(ET) in the western region.  Still, we should know the Michigan results by the end of the evening or in the wee small hours of the morning, while we are unlikely to know the Pennsylvania and Wisconsin results until later in the week. 

 

4.  Pay attention to the Fox News election decision desk:  As they did in 2020, the state-by-state calls and the ultimate national call made by the Fox News decision desk will take on outsized importance as a reality check for Republicans and conservatives if Donald Trump. prematurely declares victory as he did in 2020 and is expected to do again this time.  Fox News is where most Republicans and conservatives will get their election night news. In 2020, it was the first network to call Arizona for Joe Biden, a controversial call at the time that turned out to be correct. The Fox News decision desk is independent of the rest of the news operation and is highly respected across the political spectrum. While it will not deter Mr. Trump from making false claims either about the results or about supposed voter fraud, the Fox News decision desk can serve as at least a bit of a brake on other Republican elected officials backing the former president in any evidence-free victory declaration.  

 

5.  Realize that election night coverage could turn into election week coverage. It took until 11:26 AM (ET) on the Saturday following for the AP to call the 2020 election for Joe Biden.  While I think we will have a result before then this time, if the election is anywhere near as close as the polls are indicating, it is likely to take until Thursday or Friday until we know the winner.  With Wisconsin and Pennsylvania prevented by state law from counting mail ballots until election day and Nevada accepting mail ballots up to 4 days after election day--as long as they are postmarked on election day or before -- to name a couple of prominent examples of the candidates are only thousands of votes apart in the battleground states, the outcome will not be immediately known.   This is not a sign of voter fraud or anything else untoward, contrary to the over-heated and false claims we can anticipate; given the multiple options people now have for casting their ballot, we all need to adjust our expectations to this new reality.