# Anybody notice Fox News has been "calling" the Bush states ahead of the Kerry states? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 3, 2004, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-notice-fox-news-has-been-calling-the-bush-states-ahead-of-the-kerry-states/272705 "2004-11-03T08:30:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2004, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-notice-fox-news-has-been-calling-the-bush-states-ahead-of-the-kerry-states/272705/21 "2004-11-03T22:22:31Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Fox called Ohio for Bush after Ohio’s Secretary of State informed them that Kerry winning Ohio was a near statistical impossibility. They interviewed his spokesman on air. He gave them the math. They posted their call. What’s the problem? It was classless and greedy. There was no emergency. Decency and tradition dictate that he should have waited for a concession. There was nothing to lose by waiting and nothing to gain by rushing out to grab it before it was over. It was just bad manners. He was going to win eventually, it would have made him look better if he had just waited patiently for Kerry to conced. Instead he behaved like a self-absorbed child, the way he always does. ---
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2004, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-notice-fox-news-has-been-calling-the-bush-states-ahead-of-the-kerry-states/272705/22 "2004-11-03T23:17:45Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > **blowero** your points would hold more weight if FOX was wrong. They got it right. They were consistant with not calling a state until they got word that all voting had ceased. They never once implied that California would even be close. Seemed to me that they were a bit more aggresive than the other networks with their predictions but not tremendously so. CNN were pussies and were scared to commit to anything. I might have it wrong but I believe that NBC called the states for Bush before FOX. Still, it is a minor quibble in the grand scheme of things. If that were the case, I would expect to have sometimes seen Fox project a _smaller_ gap than the other networks, since they would have delayed calling the Bush states as well as the Kerry states. But, as I said, that never happened. The gap was consistently wider in the Fox coverage for the entire evening. They appear to have only played it safe when it favored how Bush looked. I don’t know what you mean by “got it right”. ALL of the networks showed Bush leading; what I’m saying is that Fox showed him leading by a GREATER MARGIN than all the other networks, sometimes dramatically so. If they were just calling _everything_ later, then by the law of averages, sometimes the gap would have appeared to _narrow_ more than the other networks, since those other networks would have called Bush states before Fox did. That did not happen the entire time I was watching. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2004, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-notice-fox-news-has-been-calling-the-bush-states-ahead-of-the-kerry-states/272705/23 "2004-11-03T23:21:01Z")
> [@blowero](#): > > John, I can’t understand how you can say that. Did you maybe stop watching at 7:00 Pacific time? Well, I wasn’t actually writing down which stations called which state first, so if you were, then you might have a leg up on me. But I did pay extra attention whenever I was watching FOX to see if I could catch them slanting things towards Bush. I just didn’t see anything. The only real bias, if that’s what it was, I saw was early in the day. All the stations, including FOX, was reporting that things looked very bad for Bush. But then, even the Bush campaign folks were sending out negative vibes. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2004, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-notice-fox-news-has-been-calling-the-bush-states-ahead-of-the-kerry-states/272705/24 "2004-11-03T23:24:23Z")
> [@Diogenes the Cynic](#): > > It was classless and greedy. There was no emergency. Decency and tradition dictate that he should have waited for a concession. There was nothing to lose by waiting and nothing to gain by rushing out to grab it before it was over. It was just bad manners. He was going to win eventually, it would have made him look better if he had just waited patiently for Kerry to conced. Instead he behaved like a self-absorbed child, the way he always does. He? Was there a candidate named Fox? ---
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2004, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-notice-fox-news-has-been-calling-the-bush-states-ahead-of-the-kerry-states/272705/25 "2004-11-03T23:27:44Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > Well, I wasn’t actually writing down which stations called which state first, so if you were, then you might have a leg up on me. But I did pay extra attention whenever I was watching FOX to see if I could catch them slanting things towards Bush. I just didn’t see anything. > > The only real bias, if that’s what it was, I saw was early in the day. All the stations, including FOX, was reporting that things looked very bad for Bush. But then, even the Bush campaign folks were sending out negative vibes. Yeah, well we’re talking about different time frames, then. I actually missed the whole vibe of Kerry looking like the winner. That happened in the afternoon, California time. In fact, I was quite surprised to hear about it today. I’m talking about the electoral vote projections that each network was running in the background throughout the evening. I wasn’t writing down which states they called, I was just looking at the totals electoral votes shown for each candidate, which each network was showing most of the evening, and updating as soon as they called a state. So with all due respect, if you weren’t paying attention to that, then you’re really not in a position to argue with what I’m saying. ---
**Author:** ![yosemite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/3ab097/32.png) [@yosemite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yosemite)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2004, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-notice-fox-news-has-been-calling-the-bush-states-ahead-of-the-kerry-states/272705/26 "2004-11-03T23:39:38Z")
> [@blowero](#): > > Yeah, well we’re talking about different time frames, then. I actually missed the whole vibe of Kerry looking like the winner. Ohhhh, it was definitely there. FoxNews’ pundits on the Brit Hume program were pretty much writing Bush off, saying (without saying) that this is how they thought it would go. I can’t remember what exactly they said, but I could read between the lines. It was almost as if they were preemptively trying to explain why Bush lost. Things didn’t pick up for Bush until later in the day. I remember a report from a guy at the Bush headquarters in the evening. He said that things were grim earlier in the day for the Bush camp, but they’d just got some reports that looked _really_ good. I also remember seeing a report of Kerry earlier in the day, where he was all smiles and saying how he was a “strong closer” or something like that. It was quite obvious that they (Fox News, at the very least) thought that Kerry was going to win. Until later in the day, when everything changed. As far as calling the election, I was following FoxNews and also checking a lot of web sources (including Yahoo, NBC, CBS, CNN’s sites). The big thing I saw called for Bush was Ohio. But NBC had already called it by the time FOX called it (I immediately checked NBC’s site, because I was a little uncomfortable with the idea of Fox calling it when they did). So it wasn’t just Fox that called it. And it turned out that they were right about Ohio. I wasn’t seeing a big disparity on who called what and when. Ohio was the only one that really jumped out at me (I was obsessed with the status of Ohio, I admit!). Fox lagged in calling California and Alaska, even though we all knew that they’d go to Kerry and Bush. We all knew it, and they conceded as well that they knew that “historically,” CA would go to Kerry, etc., but they held out. A little frustrating, but it seemed consistent. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2004, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-notice-fox-news-has-been-calling-the-bush-states-ahead-of-the-kerry-states/272705/27 "2004-11-03T23:44:13Z")
> [@blowero](#): > > I wasn’t writing down which states they called, I was just looking at the totals electoral votes shown for each candidate, which each network was showing most of the evening, and updating as soon as they called a state. So with all due respect, if you weren’t paying attention to that, then you’re really not in a position to argue with what I’m saying. Then, with all due respect, if you can’t tell us exactly what the numbers were, how do you expect us to respond? Could it have been the difference of just one state? Were ALL the other networks exactly the same except for FOX? If not, it just shows that they call things differently. ---
**Author:** ![Bleaker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Bleaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bleaker)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2004, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-notice-fox-news-has-been-calling-the-bush-states-ahead-of-the-kerry-states/272705/28 "2004-11-04T08:18:13Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > Then, with all due respect, if you can’t tell us exactly what the numbers were, how do you expect us to respond? Could it have been the difference of just one state? Were ALL the other networks exactly the same except for FOX? If not, it just shows that they call things differently. [Media Mattters compiled a timetable](http://mediamatters.org/election) of when the networks made their calls. Fox called California an hour later than the rest, but was first by 40 minutes to call New Hampshire blue. They were half an hour behind the other networks in calling Mississippi red. Overall, I don’t see any bias on the part of Fox. In the case of late but easy calls like MS and CA, Brit Hume often stated there was really no question about who would win them, but they were waiting for the official word from the decision desk. He took pains to say, especially earlier in the night, that uncalled states may just not have enough data in, instead of actually being “too close to call”. ---
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2004, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-notice-fox-news-has-been-calling-the-bush-states-ahead-of-the-kerry-states/272705/29 "2004-11-04T08:37:46Z")
> [@yosemite](#): > > Ohhhh, it was definitely there. I think you misunderstood me. I said I _missed_ it, not that it wasn’t there. ---
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2004, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-notice-fox-news-has-been-calling-the-bush-states-ahead-of-the-kerry-states/272705/30 "2004-11-04T09:00:57Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > Could it have been the difference of just one state? You might be right about that. Looking at Bleaker’s linked chart, it looks like it might have been due only to the fact that they called California so late. I’ll study the chart some more tomorrow. Seems like a funny coincidence that Fox deciding to be _more_ cautious resulted in skewing the results _towards_ Bush, but maybe that’s what happened. Now I wish I had written the numbers down as I was watching them. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2004, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-notice-fox-news-has-been-calling-the-bush-states-ahead-of-the-kerry-states/272705/31 "2004-11-04T16:17:26Z")
> [@blowero](#): > > You might be right about that. Looking at Bleaker’s linked chart, it looks like it might have been due only to the fact that they called California so late. I’ll study the chart some more tomorrow. Seems like a funny coincidence that Fox deciding to be _more_ cautious resulted in skewing the results _towards_ Bush, but maybe that’s what happened. Now I wish I had written the numbers down as I was watching them. I also noticed that CNN still hadn’t changed there web cite to show Ohio for Bush even after Kerry conceded yesterady morning. I thought that was the strangest of all! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-notice-fox-news-has-been-calling-the-bush-states-ahead-of-the-kerry-states/272705.md?page=1)