Who will be the next president? News agencies lack the ability to communicate the uncertainty

new York
CNN
—

“Referee ball.” “Coin toss.” “Throw it away.” “Dead heat.” “Stuck.” On television and on the Internet, political analysts no longer have the opportunity to say that the presidential race is effectively a draw.

But they have to repeat it again and again. As CNN's Dana Bash said on “Inside Politics” Tuesday, “This race couldn't be closer.”

In this final week of the campaign, uncertainty is the most important thing the news media can communicate.

“We have a responsibility not only to say what the polls show, but also to explain what they don't show and what they don't show,” Rick Klein, ABC News Washington bureau chief and vice president, told CNN. “Any suggestion that the outcome of this election is certain is simply not borne out by the numbers.”

But some partisan media outlets operate extremely safely. On the right, former President Donald Trump and many of his right-wing media allies are expressing complete confidence that the Republican will win next week. Fox News stars like Laura Ingraham and Jesse Watters are already speaking on air about how Trump will implement his second-term agenda.

“There is real danger when media echo chambers falsely and knowingly tell half the country that their candidate will win,” conservative political columnist Matt Lewis wrote Monday. “People wake up the morning after the election when they see the results and are in disbelief.”

But it happened in 2020 and it could happen again now. CNN's Donie O'Sullivan recently spent 24 hours looking at pro-Trump media sources and concluded that “all of these media outlets are saying that if the election is fair, there is no way Trump can lose.” At the same time, he said : “MAGA media is telling its audience to expect the election to be stolen.”

Conversely, consumers of left-wing media may find it difficult to accept that Trump has a real chance of regaining power. While the MSNBC anchors don't project any certainty about a Vice President Kamala Harris win, they aren't outdoing themselves as much as Fox and its colleagues. Trump is portrayed as so aberrant and dangerous that liberal viewers are wondering, as former first lady Michelle Obama recently said, “Why is this race even close?”

Answering this question is one of the main tasks of reliable news sources. That's why CNN's senior political data reporter, Harry Enten, is on TV morning, noon and night in the final days of the campaign.

“I spend more hours finding ways to say this race is close than New Yorkers spend in traffic,” Enten quipped.

In his Magic Wall live footage, Enten highlighted the razor-thin margins in swing state polls and explained why anything from a Trump landslide to a Harris landslide is possible, along with plenty of razor-thin results in between.

While yes, “this thing is statistically undecided,” said Jonathan Karl, ABC News' chief Washington correspondent, “it's also important to point out that in such a close race, the battleground states could also break up in the same way.” “In other words, once the votes are counted, it’s possible it won’t be so close after all.”

“The most important thing is to highlight the uncertainty of the race,” Karl told CNN. “We have a lot of data. We have a lot of smart people analyzing the data. We present what we have with humility. The truth is that nobody knows who will win this. And that is a point that we have emphasized again and again.”

Journalists typically feel most comfortable talking about what they know. But sometimes it's the story that isn't visible. And this is one of those moments.

“I've used almost every adjective for 'close' and 'just,' but that's the message every time,” Anthony Salvanto, managing director of elections and polls for CBS News, told CNN.

Fears and anxieties surrounding the election are particularly high this year, but the principle of declaring all possible outcomes applies to every campaign cycle. “My goal in every election and every poll is to understand why voters might break one way or the other,” Salvanto said. “Viewers will not be surprised when they understand why what happens happens.”

Salvanto mentioned another word that will be crucial next week: patience. Even if all polling stations are closed, there may still be uncertainty about the outcome because individual states tabulate votes in different ways.

“It may take some time to get results,” he said, “so it is important to convey that we are patient in our reporting.”