You’re absolutely right – a news network “calling” a race has no bearing on the outcome. The votes still need to be counted (they don’t stop when they hear the news) and the winner is judged based on the vote count.
BUT.
The writers are very much referring to what happened with Fox News and their early call of the Arizona race for Biden in 2020. They were correct, but their viewers (and their upper management) were furious because it made their viewers face reality. It didn’t change the outcome of the race but it certainly changed things at Fox.
Just add to the good explanations about why a respectable news network “calling it” doesn’t mean anything, but does mean something.
In reality, yes, the votes cast in October/early Nov are counted. Every single one. Those votes are certified many weeks later by the State (mid-Nov to mid-Dec depending on the State) and the process plays out until Jan 6 the following year.
However, generally, the above is just a formality that goes on behind the scenes. The reality is the winner is declared on election night** based on people watching the networks declaring the winner (and the campaigns agreeing obviously with the calls), and the “loser” generally conceding to the “winner” - all before all the votes are counted. We know who the next President is that same night. And importantly, It’s always right. Outside the year 2000 in a single state, I can’t think of a “call” ever being wrong in the modern era. It’s kind of like what Darwin said in the show, “we just know”…and they do as their track record has proven it to be. So I think it’s more the track record of calls being correct that is what is so important to a “call” being made.
So with that in mind, calling an election, while having no formal effect, has a HUGE effect on who Americans think is the next President. It’s always right. Once I think someone is the next President, it’s hard to mentally undo that, especially if I really care.
It’s hard to say how it will play out in the show as we only know ATN “called it” for Mencken. It gives Mencken legitimacy and credibility to call himself the winner. It takes explaining to say otherwise. However, if only ATN made the call, then yes, that is less dramatic than had all the networks/several respectable networks (or a service like AP), called it for him. Still, it adds some legitimacy as described above (people have come to expect to know that night/next day’ish, and it’s always been right) to a base of voters who might think (after the votes are actually counted) is “reversing” that call and is stealing the election. Also, and this might be too much of an aside, I think you’re somewhat oversimplifying what it means to count the votes (“the results are the results”) - counting votes can be less straight-forward and somewhat of an art in itself. The count going against a call would cause friction for either side. Personally, I can see myself agreeing with a call over the count, or the count over the call - in today’s era, details matter here I suppose along with my politics.
It also effects ATN’s credibility, which I think will be the bigger plot point in the show. You don’t want to get it wrong because being right is extremely important (they are, generally, never wrong). The called winner always matches the actual vote count winner. In the show, it was mentioned at least once, the consequences of getting the call wrong and how that would affect ATN very poorly.
So, I’m now curious how it goes in the UK (and possibly the type of election you might be referring to). But for me, when the networks call it for the President, then that’s the winner. Because they are always correct and you get used to it I guess.
**I’m summarizing the modern era of Presidential calls. Open to fact-checking. Obviously, I understand in 2000 they initially got Florida wrong (but they all quickly reversed the call) and have since changed/delayed making the call and changed how they predict the winner. With that said, I imagine the calls are 99.9’ish% accurate for all national races and higher for Presidential races.
There is no such thing as “calling” it. There’s no equivalent media declaration that holds the degree of weight that you are referring to.
The count is done for each constituency with recounts as necessary when it is close. Each vote is a single objective physical item, a cross on a piece of paper, so you tot up those numbers and the most votes wins that “seat”. A winner wouldn’t be declared for that seat until the counting has finished.
There are hundreds of “seats” around the country with a simple line drawn past which a party would need to get to claim an overall majority and form a government.
As the seat results start to come in the media reports on the progress and may make speculative projections but until it becomes mathematically certain that one side has won no-one will state it as a fact.
Even if they did and subsequent results overturned that projection the general public response would be muted. The results are absolutely primary, no-one would think that the BBC “calling” it gave any legitimacy to a party’s claim to power.
(Of course we also have the possibility of “no overall majority” in which case there may be no clear winner on the night or for several days as deals need to be struck)
In the case of Trump/Biden, we didn’t know until Saturday. Overall an excellent analysis though.
I suspect that you’re correct which is why everyone on the show posturing about how they changed the course of the Republic and History doesn’t make sense. Probably Jimenez will ultimately win which will make them look like clowns and will fuck them on the deal and for the foreseeable future. Tom will take the blame.
Thanks for the explanation. Very helpful. Probably equivalent to electing a US Congressman, of which there are 435. So, if that call was wrong, yea, it would be less muted than for the President.
And just to be clear, a call is merely a projection. But, when a State is called, the projection has gotten to the point of a mathematical certainty. Or they shouldn’t call it. And it plays out in reality. While not based on media “calls”, the transition based solely on the apparentness of the winner of the President-elect is very quick. I believe in 2016 Trump met with Obama like the day after election day (well before official voting was close to being done) as the winner/next President; and then the President-elect gets official briefings, etc. All of this is very typical (certainly pre-2020).
It’ll be interesting to see in the show if other’s called it or not, and how that plays out. Certainly ATN’s call was not a mathematical certainty and should never have been made - damn wasabi. But I mean, if it IS right (for the wrong reasons), and they were the only ones to make it when no one else would potentially weeks in advance - I wonder if that adds to their legitimacy. What a dark scenario that is!
Yes, that was the bit that didn’t quite ring true for me. ATN making a bad editorial decision and risking looking foolish seemed reasonable (you want to look like you know what you are doing as a news agency) but badging themselves as holding the future of the USA in their hands did seem a little overblown to me.
Of course, that may be what the writers want us to think i.e. “who the hell do they think they are?” and I may not know enough about USA election protocol and tradition to get that message clearly.
To get back on topic, I very much liked Tom’s wine speech.
“Information, Greg. It’s like a bottle of fine wine. You store it, you horde it, you save it for a special occasion — and then you smash someone’s fucking face in with it.”
Specifically in the Succession universe though, the winner ultimately hinges on whether to rerun the Wisconsin election to make up for the destroyed ballots which is a political decision and amenable to popular sentiment. ATN’s call could make rerunning the election politically untenable and what ultimately sways the winner.
Regardless, ATN’s decisions impact people’s faith in the electoral process and make it harder for a Jimenez presidency to gain a popular mandate and rule effectively.
re: how big a deal the call was. I remember Shiv saying to Kendall something to the effect of “we’re not crowning anyone, but if we do this we are making it possible.” I mean, I did get a sense of the grandiose destroying democracy as we know it stuff too (I think mostly from Shiv), but there was a lot of fast Kendall lines about “it’s not a big deal, the Courts will hash it all out anyways” - a reflection that the call was not that big a deal and other people/systems will decide this. Now, did they say that because they believed it, or because they wanted to believe it to make it easier to do.
Overall, I took it more as just nudging the needle in Mencken’s direction (which is all they can do), not handing him the Presidency (which they, alone, cannot). Again though, there were so many words said that I think a lot of different impressions are fair game.
I also think you’ve got a bunch of “not serious people” running the company by themselves for the first time, at a very critical point, with a lot personally riding on the outcome of this. I think they may be overestimating their roles in the electoral process, with a smidge of wishful thinking clouding their thought processes.
I kept saying out loud during the episode, “It seems they actually believe they have the power to finalize the results.”
These aren’t the brightest bulbs in the box. Logan knew this.
ETA: And can i just say how much i love this show? There aren’t many (any?) shows that i spend this much time thinking about, reading about and talking about after each episode. I’m gonna miss it, and this menagerie of terrible humans, when it’s done.
I found it funny how Kendall was so mad about Shiv’s betrayal when he and Roman lied to her immediately upon the co-CEO agreement and then Kendall was bragging last episode about how he was going to cut both her and Roman out of it going forward.
And yeah, the whole tension about them putting their finger on the scale for the Nazi probably doesn’t matter at all. Them anointing him at the GOP retreat and then the, presumably, fawning coverage they gave him since is what really won him the election. Not calling it after the fact.
The guy that delivered Roman’s rant was the guy that named his dog after Hitler’s dog and only reads Mein Kampf. Good callback.
They gave him a head start on the narrative. And ATN will deliver a shit ton of alternate facts to support it. That will definitely be an influence on the process as it plays out in the coming days.
I think it’s kind of both. They don’t decide the election. Their call has zero legal weight. In a practical sense, it probably has small-but-not-totally-zero impact on the process, as process and systems can be swayed by apparent reality. I think the biggest impact their would have would be on the level of rage of the succession-universe-equivalent-of-the-MAGAverse… but of course that level of rage can then actually loop back into the process, etc.
Do you mind listing them? I’ve probably forgotten a lot of them, I’m sure others have as well. Be nice a nice reminder as we head into the final two episodes
Thanks for the insights (and to everyone else as well). I think I’m comfortable with chalking this up to my own cultural ignorance combined with a degree of ambiguity regarding the motivations and potential delusions of those involved.
In the end it doesn’t really matter, not everything has to be perfectly obvious and fit together neatly. I’m still eagerly awaiting the next episode.
Yes, and Mencken is going to run with it. And his supporters. I remember the 2000 election, where Bush supporters were all over the place with “Sore Loserman” placards and the media narrative helped tilt public opinion to (where it seemed) people were over it and though Bush won… even though I think now we all are pretty much convinced that Gore probably got more votes in Florida.
I’m interested in this as an outsider and thought something different had happened back then. Being from the UK, but as I was living in Belgium at the time, with limited Internet access, I couldn’t keep up with the news (international editions of newspapers are very slim). So please correct my details, because I thought they called Bush first, so it wasn’t reversed.
I thought they called it for Bush in Florida in 00. Then realised it was so close a call that they shouldn’t have. But this in effect made Bush the winner. Then Democrats wanting recounts. The hanging chad stuff. Then a selection of court cases where the democrats tried to get recounts, and the Republicans did not, I am unsure if they did and how many got recounted. In the end, I thought, they did not do the recounts or accept them because it would affect the legitimacy of the now president, which had been called by Fox news.
So that one time, they’d called it inaccurately and did not let the real result get measured.
As I said, please correct me on this information. I do wonder if I’m wrong, and this was sort of the story was the way it was represented in the UK, whether this has led Jesse Armstrong to write it this way, being in the UK at the time.
You’re mostly correct. The networks initially called Florida for Bush, and Gore even (IIRC) called Bush to congratulate him. But as the vote count continued and showed that it was far too close to call and that recounts were needed the networks “uncalled” the race and Gore “uncongratulated” Bush. The network call had no bearing, other than psychologically, on what happened.
The recounts then began, with hanging chads and multiple court cases. Bush v Gore went to the Supreme Court, which decided that the recounts should stop. As Bush was ahead at the point (by a few hundred votes) this in effect gave Florida, and the presidency, to Bush.