| | | | MEDIA WINNER:
Steve Kornacki
Elections can be stressful under the best circumstances, and when you throw in a divisively partisan race and all the insanity that 2020 hath wrought, it's a recipe for fried nerves. It was little surprise that Google searches for nearby liquor stores surged to record levels last night.
In this kind of fraught environment, merely keeping calm and carrying on can be enough to make you a winner, and that's just what MSNBC's Steve Kornacki managed to do, with flying colors.
Kornacki provided analytical breakdowns of the results into the wee hours of Wednesday morning, objectively reporting not just votes but trends from 2016 and 2018 that helped viewers put the information in context.
We'll be the first to admit that cable news personalities often make fun headlines when they "rage" or "meltdown," but when it comes to reporting vital election results, calm and steady is what's needed. Kornacki's rolled up shirt sleeves and necktie accurately represented his unwavering work ethic throughout the night.
Honorable Mention goes to Fox's Bill Hemmer, who tirelessly manned his Bill-Board on Election Night, and CNN's John King, who conducted himself with similar objective professionalism during the long hours of reporting. King was on air, at the helm of the Magic Wall, until 4 am and back at it again around 11 am Wednesday morning.
It may or may not have been a good night for your preferred candidates, but we did see praiseworthy performances from the guys standing by the giant touchscreens.
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| | MEDIA LOSER:
Political pollsters Close races are tough to poll, and all the more so as a growing number of Americans have dropped landlines and switched to a cell phone-only life -- often with an area code that isn't local for where they're currently living. But 2020 is shaping up to potentially be a death knell for political polling as we know it.
“The political polling profession is done,” Republican pollster Frank Luntz declared late Tuesday evening. "It is devastating for my industry.” Luntz had recently made similar comments on our Mediaite podcast, The Interview, predicting a win for President Donald Trump over Joe Biden would mean the "end of public polling" in political campaigns.
The election hasn't been called yet, but the fact that many races were far closer than the pollsters' common wisdom predicted is drawing ire from both sides of the aisle. Some of the numbers that have pollsters reaching for the antacids today include misses as large as 5 to 10 points in key swing states by a number of well-regarded polls, like the New York Times/Siena poll, and a Washington Post poll that had Biden winning Wisconsin by a whopping 17 points.
So is it really the end of the polling profession? Or was the pandemic a unique situation that skewed the results more than the polling models were able to incorporate? That seems to be a theory that FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver may favor, tweeting that there hadn't been enough of an adjustment for how heavily Democrats favored mail ballots and Republicans Election Day voting in this very unusual year.
Top pollsters command hefty consulting fees for their work and get a lot of airtime on cable news programs. In order for that to continue, they will likely have to provide some reckoning for the mathematical missteps in this election. |
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| | ELECTION DAY 2020 Yaaaaaawn...like many political obsessives, your humble Mediate correspondents were up very late following all the twists and turns as we finally got to see how America voted.
Check out our state-by-state tracking with dedicated posts for the key battlegrounds and toss-ups.
A quick summary: Trump was declared the winner in Florida, Iowa, Texas, and Ohio. Biden was declared the winner in Minnesota, Arizona, and Arizona again, then, just breaking on Wednesday afternoon -- in Wisconsin.
So far, neither candidate has reached the critical 270 electoral college vote threshold, although the winds seem to be blowing in Biden's direction.
Ballots continue to be counted, gangs of lawyers are forming and ready to pounce, and the Trump campaign is requesting a recount in Wisconsin.
Fake it 'til you make it
With votes still being counted in key swing states late Tuesday, both candidates got in front of TV cameras to speak to their supporters. Biden was cautiously optimistic, saying "We believe we're on track to win this election," and Trump was...wellllll, Trump, falsely declaring victory in states that had not yet been called and throwing around baseless allegations of fraud and votes being stolen.
Unsurprisingly, Trump drew a lot of criticism for this, with multiple networks cutting away from his remarks to drop some hot fact checks on the president.
Wednesday, Team Biden had their own flirtation with falsehoods, with Biden campaign attorney Bob Bauer declaring, "We've won the election."
No Blue Wave
Control of the Senate is likely to remain in Republican hands. Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell fended off a challenge, as did Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville took the Alabama Senate seat back for the red team from Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL).
Cable news quips
As the night dragged on and sleep-deprived cable news personalities got punchier and punchier, and had a number of quotable moments.
Fox News' Chris Wallace said Trump had "just thrown a match " into the "extremely flammable situation" for this election.
Rachel Maddow bemoaned the lack of a blue wave, not even seeing a "ripple in a pond."
MSNBC's Joy Reid referred to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as "Uncle Clarence," a comment that raised eyebrows especially among conservatives on Twitter.
The MSNBC panel was livid at Trump's remarks claiming victory, calling it "autocratic malarkey" and a "Hee Haw laugh track," among other reactions.
The CNN panel was in the same mood, calling it "obscene," "dangerous," and "patently false."
Oops
A tweet from a Republican columnist in Texas that seemed to show some shenanigans with the vote reporting from Michigan was deleted and corrected after it became clear that the bizarre results were just a typo.
But not before the tweet went viral through the online MAGA world, including getting a retweet from Trump himself.
Kanye Out
Kanye West conceded a presidential campaign that was quixotic at best -- but he's vowing to run again in 2024.
6.5.0 |
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| Uncle Pappy The "Ragin' Cajun" James Carville often provides colorful television moments, and Tuesday night was no exception. His comments encouraging Democrats to calm down and have hope -- by telling them to "just put the razor blades and Ambien back in the medicine cabinet" -- were spicy enough, but we really enjoyed his extended discussion of a beloved and very hard-to-acquire bourbon.
Pappy Van Winkle's Family Reserve, a spirit produced in quantities so limited as to create a wild black market (including counterfeit bottles), was Carville's chosen liquid refreshment, and he had positioned the bottle to be clearly visible just behind him in his live shot with MSNBC.
Carville said he was waiting for the final results before he poured himself a glass, but it was a fun and lighthearted moment in an otherwise frequently tense evening, so cheers, James! Watch here. |
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