The polls that inundated TV news in recent months projected the 2024 presidential race was going to be close. And they were right for most of election night.
In the first few hours of coverage of the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump it appeared that viewers would have at least one more day of red, white and blue graphics whooshing across their screens.
All of the networks were cautious as the results came in for the seven swing states that are the path to the 270 electoral votes needed for a White House victory.
But NewsNation, which used data from Decision Desk HQ, called the race for Trump at 1:22 a.m. Eastern after giving the Republican 19 electoral votes from Pennsylvania and three from Alaska. Fox News followed at 1:47 a.m. Eastern after awarding Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes to Trump.
“Harris was getting Joe Biden margins across all of Pennsylvania, but what Donald Trump was able to do was he was outpacing his margins from 2020 by anywhere from 4% to 6% especially in key counties like Bucks,” Scott Tranter, director of data science for Decision Desk HQ, told NewsNation anchor Chris Cuomo. “So in other words, VP Harris did what she needed to do, but Donald Trump just got a few more votes where he needed to and that made the call basically pretty clear right around 1 a.m. this morning.”
ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN, which use Edison Research for their data, were still at 266 electoral votes for Trump when he made his victory speech at around 2:30 a.m. Eastern. They called the race for Trump around three hours later. Fox News partners with the Associated Press and NORC.
Decision Desk HQ, which provided data and vote analysis for a number of news platforms, was the first to call the election for President Biden in 2020, a full day before the networks did. The company supplied data to Vox and Business Insider in that campaign cycle.
Trump becomes the first president since Grover Cleveland to get elected to nonconsecutive terms — a surprising turn of events after early indications that the vote counting might last several days.
The lower third of the screen on Fox News read, “Pivotal battleground states too early to call,” hours after most of the polls were closed at 9 p.m. on the East Coast. CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell suggested viewers “pack their patience.”
Even conservative commentators on Fox News, who have been confident of a Trump win and disparaged Harris’ abilities as a candidate, recognized the tightness of the contest.
The early uncertainty of the results had the networks leaning heavily on county-by-county analysis broken down by CNN’s John King on his “Magic Wall,” Bill Hemmer’s “Bill-board” on Fox News and Steve Kornacki’s big board on MSNBC.
“I hope everyone is up on their Pennsylvania geographic history,” Chris Stirewalt, political editor for cable network NewsNation, said early in the evening.
News organizations added legal experts and panelists to their ranks to analyze any possible challenges or lawsuits, but they had little to do on the night.
While guiding voters through the incoming results, King referred back to the volatility of the 2020 contest. “I want to say it again slowly and clearly. 2020, this time of night, there were states that changed,” he said. “Pennsylvania changed. Trump was ahead in Georgia. Things have changed.”
But Decision Desk HQ had a probability meter on NewsNation’s screen that pointed to a Trump victory as early as 7 p.m. Eastern. Using DDHQ’s data, NewsNation was the first to call a battleground state, giving North Carolina to Trump at around 9:30 p.m. Eastern. It was also the first to call Georgia for Trump.
The early call is a coup for NewsNation, owned by the Irving, Texas-based Nexstar Media Group. The network launched in 2020 runs well behind Fox News, CNN and MSNBC in the Nielsen ratings, although it has seen audience growth in each year of its existence.
In the hours before the polls closed, cable news built the anticipation with their countdown clocks to poll closings.
The first available results from the tiny town of Dixville Notch, N.H., which traditionally votes at midnight on election day, were flashed throughout the day.
There was recognition of voter stress level among a highly divided electorate. Brian Williams, who anchored the first-ever election night coverage on Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service, turned to advice from Dan Harris, a former ABC News veteran who once had a panic attack on “Good Morning America.”
“What is the self-help cure for the folks watching tonight who are pacing, the folks who’ve been getting 20,000 steps a day all week to burn off anxiety? The folks who may have a bottle of their favorite beverage in front of them?” Williams asked.
“Deep breathing can reset the nervous system,” Harris said.
Prime Video’s election program with Williams was a stripped-down, talk-show-style presentation at Amazon’s studio in Los Angeles that did not depend on the flashy graphics and data. A number of veteran cable news stars — Jessica Yellin, Candy Crowley, Don Lemon and Shepard Smith — were among the contributors.
