March 2025
M	T	W	T	F	S	S
	1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31

Election 2008: Your Super-Stupid Tuesday TV Guide [Karl]

AsÃ‚Â the WGA strike has leftÃ‚Â television with little more than reruns of Battle of the Network Stars, the broadcast nets are expanding their Super-Duper Tuesday TV coverage, while the cable nets are going wall-to-wall-to-wall with it.Ã‚Â Even MTV will break into its programmingÃ‚Â with video reports from its 51 “citizen journalists” stationed around the country — though I do not believe our esteemed host will be among them.

I generally try to avoid predictions.Ã‚Â However, the laws of momentum allow one to see a train wreck coming long before it occurs.Ã‚Â Tomorrow night isÃ‚Â a likely case:

Amid the glut of live coverage, however, comes the risk that the fierce competition to be first could trigger missteps, such as the certainty with which many news organizations reported Democratic candidate Barack Obama’s expected victory in New Hampshire last month.

As dazed anchors later tried to explain Hillary Rodham Clinton’s win that night, Tom Brokaw noted on MSNBC the problem with “trying to stampede, in effect, the process.”

***

Complicating the reporting is the fact that wins will be measured by which candidate accrues the most delegates, which are awarded differently depending on the state and the party. With results from more than 20 states coming in at once, anchors will have to provide real-time explanations without getting mired in numbers.

“The challenge will be constantly bringing back everyone to basics and setting the terms of the story so that the viewer stays engaged in it,” said David Chalian, ABC’s political director. “We’re all getting tutored on all of this, making sure every corner of the news division understands how these nominations are won.”

It is even possible that Katie Couric will be able to pick Mike Huckabee out of a lineup.

ABC News, with its five hours of network coverage, might spend the time going into the byzantine Democratic delegate selection rules.Ã‚Â Maybe the cable nets will also.Ã‚Â But I will not be at all surprised to see a lot of maps and graphics with states, rather than the Congressional Districts that areÃ‚Â often more relevant tomorrow.

Michael Barone, a true expert on such things, is blogging about his preparation for Fox News’s election night broadcast andÃ‚Â mentioning keyÃ‚Â CDs where applicable, but overall, the demands of “bringing everyone back to basics” and providing dramatic pictures for a dramatic storyÃ‚Â generally lacking such pictures, will likely run headlong into — and over — the sort of nuanced analysis a Barone can provide.

The television coverage is unlikely to dwell on the uncertainies that riddle the polls of February 5th states.

Nor are the anchors (at least those on the broadcast nets) likely to trumpetÃ‚Â at the top of their coverage that the results from the evening’s Big Enchilada, California, will in all probability not be known on Tuesday night.Ã‚Â

The multitude of reasons why California will be slow to report results include: more than 2.2 million absentee ballots that were not due untilÃ‚Â Monday; more than 3 million mail-in ballotsÃ‚Â outstanding, of whichÃ‚Â about 2 millionÃ‚Â are estimated toÃ‚Â arriveÃ‚Â on Tuesday — and which will not be counted until after the precinct votes are tallied; California’s decertification ofÃ‚Â many of the state’s electronic voting machines, which means officials in places like San Bernardino County expect to be counting paper ballots until 9 a.m. Wednesday (there are 20 other counties in this category); torn ballots; centralized ballot counting in six of the state’s largest counties; and the ever-present threat of lawsuits.

Nor is California the only state where someÃ‚Â of the above factorsÃ‚Â may come into play.Ã‚Â Other Super-Duper Tuesday states that allow “no-excuses” early voting include Illinois, Arizona, Georgia, New Jersey, New Mexico, Tennessee and Utah.Ã‚Â Tennesseans and Georgians setÃ‚Â new records in early voting.Ã‚Â Generally, early voters may be stuck with a choice of candidate who has dropped out of the race, though you will not be surprised to learn that in New Jersey, a judge allowed do-overs.Ã‚Â (There will likely be debate over the extent to which early voting advantaged early front-runners like Sen. Hillary Clinton, and the extent to which that should affect voters’ impression of the results.)

The accelerated schedule hasÃ‚Â created other practical problems in staffing:

In their haste to move up primaries, officials in some states appear to have overlooked ordinary facts of life, such as the weather and the advanced age of many poll workers. Cold northeastern states including Connecticut and New York have encountered problems recruiting poll workers because many senior citizens, a sizable percentage of paid volunteers, are still south for the winter. Even Sunbelt states have felt the pinch. As of Thursday, some California election officials were still recruiting poll workers on their Internet sites.

All of the aboveÃ‚Â may impede the ability of the press to quickly report results on a state basis, let alone provide a firm grasp on what the delegate counts may be.Ã‚Â It strikes me as likely that television coverage is likely to produce the same distortions it did in Nevada, where Sen. Hillary Clinton was declared the winner based on the popular vote, when Sen. Barack Obama may have won more delegates (though that process is quite murky).

Not much of the above strikes me as falling within theÃ‚Â neat confines of traditional election coverage on television.