The final answer may or may not come on Tuesday, but news organizations have been reporting on this issue for months. presidential campaign There’s finally an opportunity between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump to report on real results.

Broadcasting, cable news networks, digital news organizations’ sites and one streaming service — Amazon — all set aside Tuesday night to present news from their own operations.

The actual results will be a relief to news organizations that have spent weeks and an excruciatingly long voting day talking about an election campaign that polls have shown repeatedly. be pretty tight. The first hint of what voters were thinking came shortly after 5 p.m. Eastern time, when networks reported exit polls showed voters unhappy with the direction of the country.

It is not yet clear whether this dissatisfaction is to blame at Harrisavailable Vice Presidentor old President TrumpCNN’s Dana Bash said he was the one impeached in 2020.

Trying to make sense of anecdotal evidence

Otherwise, networks were left showing images of polling places on Tuesday and trying to extract wisdom from anecdotal evidence.

“Dixville Notch is a metaphor for the entire race,” CNN’s Alyssa Farah Griffin said, trying to make sense of the small New Hampshire community that reported early Tuesday morning that it had voted 3-3 for Harris and Trump.

MSNBC assigned reporter Jacob Soboroff to speak to voters waiting in line outside a polling place near Temple University in Philadelphia, where actor Paul Rudd was handing out water bottles. Soboroff was called by a young voter to take a photo with her and Rudd.

On Fox News Channel, Harris surrogate Pete Buttigieg gave a contentious interview with “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade.

“Is this an interview or a discussion?” Buttigieg said this at one point. “Can I at least finish the sentence?”

Former NBC News anchor Brian Williams embarked on a one-night appearance at Amazon to get results, and he already had an unexpected guest at the California studio where he operates. Puck reporter Tara Palmeri was supposed to report from Trump’s headquarters in West Palm Beach but was denied permission to attend by the former president’s team.

In announcing the exile, Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita described her as a “gossip columnist” in a post on social media site X. Palmeri said he accurately reported to Williams some concerns about who would vote early in the Trump camp.

Amazon said Palmeri was replaced by New York Post reporter Lydia Moynihan at Trump’s headquarters in Florida.

Neither Axios nor Politico immediately confirmed reports that some of their reporters had been similarly banned, and Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a call for comment.

New York Times strike affects election night fixtures

One notable election night media feature — the Needle on The New York Times’ website — was compromised by a strike by technical employees at the newspaper.

The newspaper said early Tuesday that it was unclear whether it would add the feature to its website during its election night broadcasts because it relies on computer systems maintained by engineers at the company, including those who went on strike early Monday.

As the name suggests, the Needle is a chart that uses polling results and other calculations to indicate the likelihood of a presidential candidate winning.

This feature, first introduced in 2016, turned into a nightmare for supporters of Democrat Hillary Clinton, who the Times determined had an 85 percent chance of winning the election. Readers watched Needle go from predicting a “likely” Clinton victory at the beginning of election night to “throwing it up” at 10 p.m. Eastern and “leaning on Trump” at midnight. Trump won the election.

“We will release a live version of the sting only if we are sure that the computer systems it relies on for data are stable,” the Times said.

About 650 members of the Times’ Tech Guild went on strike early Monday.

___

David Bauder writes about the media for the AP. follow him http://x.com/dbauder.