In separate interviews with Reuters about their plans for election night, top executives at five major news networks described a focus on restraint, not speed; on transparency about what remains unknown; and on a reassuring message that slow results don’t signify a crisis.
Election night “is not going to be about storylines or narratives or projections or predictions,” said NBC News President Noah Oppenheim. “It’s going to be about: ‘What do we know in any given moment?’ and staying firmly focused on only those facts.”
Compared to election night features such as the white board Tim Russert scrawled on in 2000, many of this year’s tools will be decidedly more scientific. Networks will be showcasing their investments in more polling, deeper data analysis, and additional reporting on the mechanics of voting, voting integrity and misinformation.
Walt Disney Co’s DIS.N ABC News and ViacomCBS Inc VIACA.O- owned CBS News have voter integrity units dedicated to topics such as foreign election interference and how the vote is tallied, state by state. CBS is using its “Battleground Tracker” that combines polling, files on voter participation, U.S. Census data and historical patterns.
Comcast CMCSA.O-owned NBC News has doubled the size of its “Vote Watch” team, which includes 24 correspondents, reporters and producers who specialize in issues such as voting rights and misinformation campaigns. For the past year, the news division has been reporting on voter sentiment in five “bellwether” counties in Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona.
This will be the first presidential election in which the major TV networks will get data from different providers, raising the potential for divergent perspectives on election night returns.
Since 2018, Fox Corp’s FOXA.O Fox News has partnered with the Associated Press to replace traditional in-person exit polls with online and telephone surveys that aim to reach early and Election Day voters. The survey data will be combined with real-time results tabulated by the AP to help make projections. Fox and the AP left the National Election Pool consortium, which includes the three broadcast news networks and AT&T T.N-owned CNN. The consortium will rely on the firm Edison Research for exit polls and results as they come in from each precinct. Reuters has a distribution deal with the NEP for 2020 election data.
Networks may benefit from an adjustment in pre-election polling since 2016: Weighting state polls for education, not just gender and age. In the 2016 election, a voter’s education figured prominently in whether they would vote for Trump or Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton. Whites without college degrees turned out for Trump in greater numbers.