I planned to write and publish this post on November 3; but wanted to respect the political climate that surrounded the election and wait until America was certain. From the start of the day, I listened to coverage of the vote turnout and it was clear that Biden was going to be president of the United States on January 20, 2021.
It is easy on November 8, to claim that it was obvious that Biden would be the winner of the election. based on news from November 3. But I contend that it was obvious.
On the morning of November 3, FiveThirtyEight modeled an 89% chance of a Biden win. 89% is not 100%, but it would require shockingly low turnout on election day or a last minute shock to be considered a likely outcome. As an exercise, FiveThirtyEight ran a simulation on November 2 where they recreated the polling error from 2016 and determined who would win the election. In that scenario, Biden won. FiveThirtyEight took the simulation further and awarded the electors from the next two likely states to Trump. In that scenario, Biden narrowly won the presidency.
Not all pollsters forecasted the same outcome as FiveThirtyEight, and I understand that not everybody follows the same news; however, FiveThirtyEight is a modeling institution that considers all mainstream pollsters in their forecast, weighted by historical accuracy. I’m using FiveThirtyEight as a proxy for an average historically-accurate forecast.
Looking at the news on November 3, it was clear to all that the United States was on pace for record voter turnout. Increased turnout has favored the Democratic party over the last few decades. Republicans win mid-terms, largely as a result of smaller turnout.
But the news the night of November 3 conflicted with the observations above. Trump was leading in many states early in the night that he would ultimately lose to Biden. The New York Times identified Michigan as a state that would likely go to Trump during the coverage (Biden ended up winning it by > 150,000 votes).
The reason for the misleading and dramatic counting of the election is twofold:
- The president declared that mail-in ballots would be fraudulent and urged his supporters to vote in-person. These votes were counted earlier, because many states prohibit counting mail-in ballots before election day. Because of Trump’s request, Trump would appear to have more ballots counted early–his supporters had their votes counted first.
- The news organizations (NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox News, etc.) released up-to-the-minute forecasts based on real-time state vote counting. In August, I recommended that organizations refrain from sharing projections or vote counts before all votes were counted to prevent the misled reactions to November 3.
Instead, news organizations sparked increased concern about the election. Most mainstream media organizations spend election night sowing discontent by expressing their hope that Biden won the election and outlining how Trump might have won. While far-right organizations decried “late surge” of ballot counts for Biden as fraudulent. I will not post a link to that type of reporting; it does not deserve increased attention.
News organizations spent the night forecasting something that happened in the past (voting) and expressing their hope that Trump did not pull off another “miracle.” As an example of news organizations displaying partisan leanings, noted Democrat, George Stephanopoulos moderated ABC News’s bipartisan election coverage; at more than one occasion during the night he asked to see more blue (democratic wins) on the map.
He would see more blue; as soon as the mail-in ballots were counted. These organizations that spent days forecasting an event that previously occurred remind me of a scene from Mean Girls. We, as a nation should have taken them as seriously:
To this point, I’ve been pretty critical of the news (although I’ve stopped short of calling it F**e N**s). It comes with good reason. The national push to replace president Trump added to the polarization of the country. News diversity shrunk from 2016-2020 meaning that more news focused on the most polarizing issue: Trump’s presidency.
Traditional news organizations did more to gain trust with liberal-leaning readers than conservatives in 2020. Some may think that is a positive considering the propensity of the Republican president to lie. But liberals do not have a monopoly on the truth; Trump lies frequently, but his critics are not always honest.
Glenn Greenwald recently published an article about a story that was spiked by his editors at The Intercept. The article covered concerns that Hunter Biden leveraged his father’s position to secure lucrative positions with foreign governments and firms. The article falls short of accusing president-elect Biden of personally profiting or advocating policies that would aid the institutions that sponsor Hunter; but clearly and accurately identifies the open questions about the president-elect’s involvement. Greenwald alleges that the article was killed because it was too critical of president-elect Biden.
Similarly, The New York Times refused to publish Op-Eds that were deemed insensitive or objectionable more than once this year. These internal clashes on what should be published made national news.
Preventing the publication of an opinion is not censorship, nor is it a restriction of free speech. News organizations are corporations and are not required to give all writers an equal platform.
However, when mainstream media organizations make consistent editorial decisions that amplifies criticism of one party and restricts criticism of another, it fails the responsibility that it holds as the Fourth Estate. Mainstream media can no longer be an democracy maintaining institution; it becomes another source of division.
The two examples above are not outliers. The mainstream media overwhelmingly favored policies and politicians supported by Democrats.
2020 may prove to be a significant inflection point in American politics. As the level of political polarization in the United States reaches record levels, Joe Biden continues to state his desire to be a president for all Americans: “I don’t see blue or red states, but United States.”
Its time for the mainstream news to do the same. Media bias will always exist, and I am not asking for the solution for general bias. What I ask is that news organizations from Fox News to MSNBC recognize that the election is over and that the 2020 political ratings bump should not be sustained in 2021. Both sides must be willing to praise and criticize president Biden in 2021.
President Biden will not be able to be the president of all Americans, if all Americans live in a news echo chamber. In that world, only the most extreme news organizations will prosper and Biden’s message will be irrelevant.
Polly Wanna Math 