The answer may or may not come on Tuesday, but news organizations that have spent months reporting on the presidential campaign between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump finally had the opportunity to sift through a blizzard of actual results.
Broadcast, cable news networks, digital news outlets’ sites and one streaming service — Amazon — all set aside Tuesday night to deliver the news from their own operations.
“The future of American democracy is on the line tonight,” ABC News’ David Muir said during his network’s coverage.
As the hour slipped past 10 p.m. Eastern time, none of the battleground states had been called. But some of the early results heartened Trump supporters. “Probably folks in the Trump camp are feeling pretty good right now,” said Jessica Yellin, who was part of Brian Williams’ election night streamcast on Amazon.
Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity, one of Trump’s most prominent media supporters, said that “I am growing more and more confident.”
The New York Times’ Needle, the predictive device that moved through the evening, said at 10:30 p.m. that Trump had an 82% chance of winning the election. The Times also said that Trump had a better-than-even chance of winning all seven battleground states, ranging from 60% in Wisconsin to more than 95% in Georgia.
But most newcasters cautioned viewers that there was plenty to still be learned, and that the results would not come right away.
“We’ve got days,” said MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “We’ve got weeks. We’re tireless.”
Fox analyst Karl Rove carried a whiteboard saying “Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania,” attesting to the importance of that state — and saluting the late Tim Russert of NBC News, who famously used the same prop to point to Florida in the 2000 election.
For much of the night, the journalists who stood before “magic boards” — John King on CNN, Bill Hemmer on Fox News Channel, Steve Kornacki on MSNBC — took up much of the airtime with granular reports on results.
Actual results were a relief to news organizations that had weeks — and an excruciatingly long day of voting — to talk about an election campaign that polls have repeatedly shown to be remarkably tight. The first hint of what voters were thinking came shortly after 5 p.m. Eastern, when networks reported that exit polls showed voters had a low opinion of current President Joe Biden.
“That is, no question, a big headwind for Kamala Harris,” said CNN’s Dana Bash.
Trying to draw meaning from anecdotal evidence
Before polls closed, networks were left showing pictures of polling places Tuesday and trying to extract wisdom from anecdotal evidence.
“Dixville Notch is a metaphor for the entire race,” CNN’s Alyssa Farah Griffin said, making efforts to draw meaning from the tiny New Hampshire community that reported its 3-3 vote for Harris and Trump in the early morning hours.
MSNBC reporter Jacob Soboroff talked to voters waiting in line outside a polling place near Temple University in Philadelphia, where actor Paul Rudd was handing out water bottles. Soboroff was called on by one young voter to take a picture with herself and Rudd.
On Fox News Channel, Harris surrogate Pete Buttigieg appeared for a contentious interview with “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade.
“Is this an interview or a debate?” Buttigieg said at one point. “Can I at least finish the sentence?”
Williams, during his one-night Amazon appearance, had one unexpected guest in the California studio where he was operating. Puck reporter Tara Palmeri was supposed to report from Trump headquarters in West Palm Beach but was denied credentials to attend by the former president’s team.
Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita described her as a “gossip columnist” in a post on the social media site X. Palmeri told Williams she had accurately reported some anxiety within the Trump camp about who was voting early.
Amazon said Palmeri was replaced at Trump’s Florida headquarters by New York Post reporter Lydia Moynihan.
Neither Axios nor Politico would immediately confirm reports that some of their reporters were similarly banned, and the Trump campaign did not immediately return a call for comment.
