Ever since network television started covering presidential election nights in 1948, there have been only two occasions when viewers had to wait more than a day to learn the outcome. The first was in 2000, when the country was on hold for five weeks before the U.S.
Supreme Court put an end to the vote recounts in Florida and gave George W. Bush the White House over Al Gore. Twenty years later, viewers sweated it out for four days before the networks put 270 electoral votes in President Biden’s column on Nov.
7, 2020 . Pandemic restrictions led to officials counting an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots, slowing the process. Former President Trump’s legal challenges to the results and his attempts to block the certification of the vote became a saga that culminated in the Jan.
6, 2021, insurrection. The bumpy ride of 2020 has TV news operations preparing for more uncharted territory when ballot counting begins Tuesday night in the tight race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. The 2024 election could be decided by narrow margins in as many as seven states, and Trump already is making accusations of voter fraud, as he did four years ago.
“If the polls are accurate, we’re in for a real doozy,” said Chris Stirewalt , political director for cable network NewsNation and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank. Executives across the network news divisions say they will deploy a greater number of correspondents througho.
