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CNN
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“Skip the ball.” “Coin flip.” “Throw it up.” “Dead heat.” “He’s at a dead end.” Political analysts on television and online are losing their way of saying that the presidential race is effectively a tie.

But they have to repeat this constantly. As CNN’s Dana Bash said on “Domestic Politics” Tuesday, “this race couldn’t be closer.”

The most important thing the news media needs to communicate in this final week of the campaign is uncertainty.

“We have a responsibility to not only say what the polls show, but also explain what they don’t show and what they don’t show,” Rick Klein, ABC News Washington bureau chief and vice president, told CNN. “Any claims that the outcome of this election is certain are not borne out by the numbers.”

But some partisan media outlets are being extremely confident. On the right, former President Donald Trump and many of his allies in the right-wing media are expressing unbridled confidence that Republicans will win next week. Fox News stars like Laura Ingraham and Jesse Watters are already talking live about how Trump will implement his second-term agenda.

“There is a real danger in the media falsely and knowingly telling half the country that their candidate will win,” conservative political columnist Matt Lewis wrote on Monday. “People wake up the morning after the election to the results and they can’t believe it.”

But it happened in 2020 and it could happen now. CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan recently spent 24 hours examining pro-Trump media sources and concluded: “All of these publications claim that there is no way Trump can lose if the election is fair.” At the same time, “MAGA media is telling their audiences to expect the election to be stolen.”

Conversely, consumers of left-wing media outlets may have a hard time accepting that Trump has a chance to regain power. While MSNBC’s hosts haven’t spread any definitive information about Vice President Kamala Harris’ victory, they’re not getting ahead of themselves like Fox and her colleagues. Trump is portrayed as so perverted and dangerous that liberal viewers are left wondering. As former First Lady Michelle Obama said recently, “Why is this race even closer?”

Answering this question is an important responsibility of reliable news sources. That’s why CNN senior political data correspondent Harry Enten was on television morning, noon and night in the final days of the campaign.

“I’m spending more hours finding ways to say this race is closer than New Yorkers are spending in traffic,” Enten said.

In his Magic Wall live footage, Enten highlighted the razor-thin margins in swing state polls and explained why everything from a Trump landslide to a Harris landslide is possible, with plenty of razor-thin outcomes in between.

Journalists are often more comfortable talking about things they know. But sometimes the story is the unknowable. And this is one of those times.

“I’ve used just about every adjective for ‘close’ and ‘even,’ but that’s been the message every time,” Anthony Salvanto, CBS News managing director of elections and polls, told CNN.

Fears and anxieties about elections are particularly high this year, but the principle of disclosing all possible results applies to every campaign cycle. “My goal in every election and every poll is to understand why voters might be skewed one way or another,” Salvanto said. “Viewers won’t be surprised if they understand why things happen.”

Salvanto used another word that will be critical next week: patience. Even after all polls have closed, uncertainty about the outcome may still exist because different states tabulate votes in different ways.

“It can take time to get results,” he said, “so it’s important to convey that we’re being patient in our coverage.”