Election Projections. What’s The Rush?
They never learn.
Every election season television news outlets breathlessly compete to be the first to declare winners and losers. Beating the competition by even one minute is a point of pride for the beard-tugging dweebs who spend their time off camera crunching numbers and looking for trends.
But what exactly is the point? Who really cares? And why not wait for the votes to be counted before declaring a race over?
It happened again this week during the Iowa caucuses. No sooner had the doors closed to the various gathering places than news outlets declared Trump the big winner. The AP made the announcement at 8:25, but CNN beat them by one minute.
The Iowa caucuses are quirky. There are 1,670 precincts in 99 counties, which means there are literally hundreds of caucuses taking place simultaneously. Voters had to be inside the buildings on Monday night by 7 p.m. CT, which meant national news outlets reckoned they could declare Trump the victor shortly after 8:30 EST, before most Iowans had cast a vote.
The caucuses kickoff with surrogate speeches for each candidate and then a first vote. The paper ballots are counted on the spot and a winner is declared. Then the caucusing and re-voting occurs to find second, third and fourth place finishers.
In a story headlined “News Outlets Make An Early Call In Iowa and a Backlash Ensued,” The New York Times reported that the premature projections had a jarring effect on caucus goers.
The smartphones started to buzz at 7:30 p.m. Central time on Monday, just half an hour after the Iowa caucuses had begun. Many Iowans had not yet had a chance to cast a vote when The Associated Press and the major TV networks began to declare former President Donald J. Trump as the winner.
The outcome was expected — but the timing was not. The early call confused some Iowans, infuriated Mr. Trump’s rivals and prompted a fresh round of hand-wringing about the news media’s role in calling elections.
The DeSantis campaign was furious. DeSantis himself called it “election interference.”
“The media was against us. They were writing our obituary months ago. They even called the election before people even got a chance to vote,” said the exasperated second-place finisher.
Did those too-early reports create a bandwagon effect for Trump? We’ll never know but a DeSantis campaign worker told KCCI-TV in Des Moines that the reports definitely deflated some voters.
One DeSantis campaign staffer said some voters decided to leave their caucus site early after learning of the news.
“People had been getting notifications on their phones that the race had been called for Donald Trump and the vote hadn't taken place yet. And so you talk about putting your finger on the scales in a way that doesn't seem right that's how it felt in our caucus site,” said Scott Wagner.
During the presidential election of 1980 the media learned the pitfalls of declaring a winner too early. Jimmy Carter was clearly losing in a landslide to Ronald Reagan, so the media anointed the former governor of California the president-elect. Carter conceded the race at 10 p.m. EST.
Problem was, the polls were still open on the West Coast. Many voters left without voting and that made a difference on the down-ballot candidates, including congressional races. As a result, for the past 43 years there’s been an informal agreement among outlets that they don’t project winners until the polls close.
Defending Fox News’ mad rush to crown Trump King of Iowa, news anchor Bret Baier told viewers, “When the doors closed for the caucuses, that is the official time to be able to characterize the race.”
“There’s a lot of controversy around it because people were inside and obviously had their phones, but that is how the rules go for Iowa.”
The rules? Oh please. How about some common sense next time, Bret?
