The head of Fox News’s 2020 election decision desk defended the network’s controversial call awarding Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden Arizona.
Arnon Mishkin, director of Fox’s decision desk, said on-air that Biden’s lead was too great for President Trump to overcome with the outstanding ballots. The Trump campaign has contended that the network called the race too early, and no other outlet has followed Fox News’s calculation.
“We made it after basically a half-hour of debating ‘is it time yet?’ because it’s been clear for a while that the former vice president is in the lead in Arizona and was most likely to win the state,” he explained. “It has been in the category that we call ‘knowable but not callable’ for about an hour. We finally called it right now. Yes, there are some outstanding votes in Arizona. Most of them are coming from Maricopa [County], where Biden is currently in a very strong position.”
Mishkin then addressed a claim from the Trump campaign, which is that there are too many votes that have yet to be counted and that Trump could make up the outstanding ground. Jason Miller, a campaign adviser, demanded the network retract the decision.
“What I think we’ve heard from the White House is that they are expecting — that they need just to get 61% of the outstanding vote and their 870,000 outstanding votes, and they’ll be getting that. That’s not true,” he added. “The reality is that they are likely to get only about 44% of the outstanding votes that are there.”
Arizona’s 11 electoral votes are considered crucial for both Trump and Biden. The candidate who loses Arizona will face a much narrower path to cross the 270 electoral college finish line.
