Here are some observations on what you didn’t hear on election night. Most networks’ focus was, quite properly, on whether former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris would carry enough of the 93 electoral votes of the seven target states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, to win the needed 270 electoral votes. Public polling, as reported and analyzed by websites such as RealClearPolitics and Silver Bulletin, had Trump ahead in most of the target states, but by microscopic percentages, and polling in both the 2016 and 2020 cycles had understated the percentages Trump ended up winning.
Once it became clear that Trump was not going to lose Iowa, despite Ann Selzer’s Des Moines Register poll, and that Harris was not going to lose New Hampshire, despite one odd poll showing the opposite, the focus remained on the seven target states, none of which got called by the networks, the Associated Press, or the New York Times until the wee hours after midnight.
