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Analysis: Too close to call?

By PAT NASON, UPI Hollywood Reporter
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LOS ANGELES, Nov. 3 (UPI) -- TV news divisions went into election night promising not to project winners in states where vote totals for President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry were too close to call, but the discipline didn't hold, as Fox News called Bush a winner in Ohio when other networks were still holding back on making the call.

It was Fox that first declared Bush the winner in Florida in 2000, setting in motion a series of events that put network and cable news operations in an election-night defensive crouch they have, for the most part, yet to abandon. The commitment to hold off on projecting any but the most clearly decisive winners in 2004 was a direct outgrowth of the mortification of 2000.

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TV news departments also pledged, going into their 2004 coverage, not to project any winners until all the polls in a state were closed. Minutes after Fox called Ohio for Bush at 12:41 a.m. Wednesday, CNN reported that some voters were still waiting in line at some polling places in the Buckeye State.

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By 1 a.m. NBC joined Fox in calling Ohio for Bush. ABC, CBS, CNN and C-Span were still not calling Ohio as of 4 a.m. -- even though the Bush campaign was spreading the word that the president would declare victory and the Kerry campaign signaled it was not prepared to concede defeat.

"We will fight for every vote," said Kerry's running mate, Sen. John Edwards, in a brief appearance before supporters at the campaign's election-night headquarters in Boston.

As the election-night coverage began, network anchors, reporters and analysts were sitting on information -- based on exit polls conducted throughout the country during the day -- that indicated Kerry was headed for victory. Much of the talk centered on optimism in the Kerry camp and disappointment among the president's team.

However, as the night wore on and actual returns came in from the states, the tone changed -- and so did the expressions on the faces of the various campaign officials who appeared on camera to talk up the candidates. At one point before the tide seemed to turn in Bush's favor -- and following an appearance by a Bush surrogate who said the campaign was feeling optimistic about Florida -- former Clinton White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers said on MSNBC that it seemed as though the campaign was trying to set itself up to be able to claim a victory if the outcome was close.

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"Al Gore didn't do that in 2000," said Myers, "and he looked like a sore loser (when he finally contested the outcome in Florida)."

Fox and CNN both included in their coverage live shots from a U.S. military facility near Fallujah, Iraq, where coalition forces are widely reported to be preparing an assault against Iraqi insurgents. Fox's live shot featured GIs watching Fox's election-night coverage on a big-screen TV -- and the GIs let out a cheer when they saw themselves on the tube. The big screen was dark during the CNN live shot, and the soldiers were subdued.

TV news anchors and reporters uniformly noted that, for the most part, Bush was winning states he won in 2000 and Kerry was winning states Gore won. That phenomenon produced the most heavily used sports metaphor of the evening -- this one borrowed from the game of tennis -- that neither candidate had broken the other's serve.

The need for restraint in projecting winners state-by-state grew largely out of deficient data from exit polls, and the networks went to considerable trouble this year to replace the old exit-poll model with a new, more reliable one. However, the returns Tuesday night frequently contradicted the exit-polling data -- confounding not only the network professionals, but also the political pros.

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CNN White House Correspondent John King reported that Bush campaign officials were asking: "How could we have been so wrong?"

At a few minutes before midnight, CNN analyst James Carville -- who helped engineer two successful White House campaigns for Bill Clinton -- sounded somewhat demoralized about Kerry's chances and offered what might have been the first observation of the evening that the contest was over.

"I think Senator Kerry's got to draw an inside straight," said Carville, taking his metaphor from poker. "The president has the better hand."

Rep. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn., turned to baseball for a reference intended to give the impression that the Kerry camp was not convinced it had lost Ohio -- and very probably the election. He told MSNBC the campaign was thinking of the Boston Red Sox, who did not quit even when they were down three games to none against the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series last month.

Even with the final disposition of Ohio's 20 electoral votes technically in doubt, analysts began Tuesday night to assess what accounted for Bush's strong performance -- despite the fact that he came into the election with historically problematic approval ratings. Veteran White House adviser David Gergen was one of several who said the president seemed to derive his greatest electoral advantage Tuesday from voters who were most concerned about moral values.

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MSNBC analyst Joe Scarborough, a former congressman from Florida, noted the president's strength in Middle America.

"It drives people crazy on both coasts," said Scarborough, "but George W. Bush is popular in Middle America, and it gets him elected."

NBC showed some exit-polling data indicating that a large majority of Ohio voters said the economy was not good. But the president benefited from strong support among white evangelicals, who made up 25 percent of the vote in Ohio Tuesday. The network said 75 percent of those voters went for Bush.

NBC also presented a segment focusing on the influence that Internet bloggers have had on the election. The segment featured John Hinderaker of the conservative powerlineblog.com, Ana Marie Cox of the cheeky wonkette.com, and former Howard Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi of joetrippi.com.

Trippi said the Internet may have been more effective for Kerry than the Democratic Party organization, which he said did not do enough to generate sufficient turnout among potential Kerry voters.

"It was Karl Rove's amazing discipline to get his troops out," said Trippi, "and the Democratic Party not doing its job."

The network and cable news coverage relied on a wide range of technology -- from the low-tech white marker board that NBC's Tim Russert used to the "spatial logic colorized" graphics on CNN that displayed county-by-county results in individual states.

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It was the last election-night telecast for NBC's Tom Brokaw -- at least in his capacity as anchor. He will step down Dec. 1. It remains to be seen whether ABC's Peter Jennings or CBS's Dan Rather will return for another election night in 2008.

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