Nearly 90 minutes before polls closed in California, Fox News chose to make the irresponsible announcement that Republicans had already lost the U.S. House of Representatives. Did that early call cost the Republicans Orange County, California?
Orange County has been a Republican stronghold (and a famous one) for decades, and while there is no question the county had been trending Democrat, on Election Night, Republicans lost all seven congressional seats. But if you look at the vote counts, there were a number of squeakers.
In the 28th District, Democrat Linda Sanchez beat Republican Ryan Downing by less than 300 votes.
Out of over 140,000 votes cast in the 39th District, the Democrat won by only a little over 4,000 votes with 51.4 percent. This race was so close, it was not called until November 17.
In the 45th District, the margin was 51.6 to 48.4 percent with a margin of under 9000 votes out of some 280,000.
With margins such as these, it is not unreasonable to ask if Fox News suppressed the Republican vote with its indefensible Election Night call.
While Democrat voters prefer early voting, it is well known that Republican voters tend to vote on Election Day — which means those after-work hours are crucially important when it comes to turnout.
But for a crucial 87 minutes, between 6:33 p.m. local time, when Fox announced the election for the U.S. House of representatives was over, and 8:00 p.m., when the polls closed, Orange County was told that voting in an important national race that might have been a motivating factor to get in or remain in line, was futile.
Media outlets are supposed to wait until all the polls have closed before calling a race, supposed to wait until all the votes have been cast. For a host of reasons no one should have to explain, this is not only considered good manners, it is an easy way for the media to avoid meddling in elections by discouraging voter participation.
What’s more, sometimes the media get these early calls wrong. During the 2000 presidential election, a number of news outlets not only called Florida an hour before the conservative-leaning Panhandle’s polls closed, they called it wrong for Al Gore.
While we will never know if Fox’s early call on November 6 cost the GOP Orange County, we do know it was anti-democratic, wildly irresponsible, and another in a ever-growing list of lapses of judgment the cable news network has made of late.
In just last few months, Fox News has…
- Backed CNN’s lawsuit against President Trump to reinstate a press pass for heckler Jim Acosta.
- Buckled to emotional blackmail from CNN and others and stopped airing Trump’s perfectly acceptable ad about the dangers of illegal immigration.
- Offered a platform to Jorge Ramos, a left-wing propagandist and open borders extremist.
- Mocked an actor for working a real job.
- Spread the fake news that Senate Judiciary Committee testimony from Brett Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford was “exceptionally credible” — when the truth is that Ford’s testimony and documentation were riddled with contradictions and falsehoods.
- Attacked Breitbart News after we uncovered smoking gun audio about Google’s election meddling.
Fox News appears to be moving to the left, towards becoming a more establishment news outlet, which would be a massive mistake.
More at: https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/...orange-county/
Democrat pollster Pat Caddell told Breitbart News on Monday that Fox News “needs to answer” for prematurely declaring November 6th’s midterm elections’ results while citizens were still voting in California and other West Coast states. He spoke with Breitbart News Senior Editors-at-Large Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight.
Caddell, a former contributor to Fox News Channel, said, “Fox News, the supposed voice for conservative Republicans, announced that Democrats won the House before the actual evidence was in hand and while people in California and other states were still voting.”
Mansour replied, “I believe that really had an effect. This was early in the day. People were just getting out of work when Fox called the House for the Democrats. In Orange County, we lost it.”
Caddell noted, “Look how many races in California were lost by a hair. Even with that crazy mail-in system that always keeps voting and voting and voting, which is another thing, but how many seats were so close that [Republicans] lost? What I don’t understand is this would never have happened with Roger Ailes running Fox. They pledged, all of them including Fox, not to call elections while people were still voting; the national outcome.”
Pollak noted that only Fox News prematurely projected a Democrat House majority. “Even CNN didn’t do it,” he recalled. “CNN and MSNBC, they would love to see Republicans lose, and they didn’t do it.”
Caddell remarked, “I wanted to ask [Jason Chaffetz] — who quit his seat to be a commentator on Fox — whether anyone that night raised any hell about this at Fox about doing this [or] allowing this. If I was still at Fox, I would have taken the roof off the building. They made a pledge not to do this stuff. Nobody writes an article. Why hasn’t Breitbart or someone gone to Fox and said, ‘Who made this decision to do this?’ It violates the agreement that you and all the networks made after 2000 with the Congress on the pledge they took not to do these things, calling elections while the polls are still open.'”
Mansour said, “I don’t understand why they haven’t been held liable for it. Is it because Republicans are so reliant on Fox News that they don’t want to hold Fox News accountable for this?”
Caddell responded, “I don’t know. When Fox News really screws them, when the Murdoch sons really put it to Fox, or Bill Salmon or whoever was responsible, they decided it’s a cute thing to do. And nobody gets up. I haven’t heard a Republican congressman, leader, or news media go after Fox on this. It’s a huge story.”
Caddell declared, “They need to answer for this. That’s the problem with the Republicans. You know what my theory is, they would rather lose than win as long as they get rewarded by their consultants. Their little clique in Washington wasn’t unhappy to lose the House. They don’t know how to fight. Only Trump, apparently, knows how to fight.”
More at: https://www.breitbart.com/radio/2018...-still-voting/
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Originally Posted by Swordsmyth
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