Poll Expert Nate Silves Says Calls For Biden Winning Arizona ‘Should Be Retracted’
Michael Cantrell
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Master of the polls Nate Silver says that he thinks that all of the calls by mainstream media outlets like Fox News and the Associated Press that Biden won the state of Arizona need to be retracted.
Silvers says that while he believes Biden will end up taking the state, flipping it blue for the first time since Bill Clinton won it back in 1996, media outlets called the state prematurely.
“I don’t know, I guess I’d say that Biden will win Arizona if you forced me to pick, but I sure as heck don’t think the state should have been called by anyone, and I think the calls that were previously made should be retracted now,” he said on Wednesday evening.
Fox News was the first outlet to call the state for Biden, sending shock waves through the Trump campaign. While the campaign publicly rebuked the network with Jason Miller, a campaign adviser, demanding the network retract the decision, President Trump telephoned Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News.
In response, Fox News put Arnon Mishkin, director of Fox’s decision desk, on-air to explain why they called the state for Biden on Tuesday night.
“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.”
Following in the footsteps of Fox News, the Associated Press, early on Wednesday morning, called the state of Arizona for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Mark Brest of the Washington Examiner noted in his story that, “Both outlets have the same Electoral College map — Biden with 264 votes and Trump with 213. The remaining undecided states for the two outlets are Alaska, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina. According to Fox News and the Associated Press, Biden would reach the necessary 270 Electoral College votes to win the election if he won any of the outstanding states other than Alaska, which is considered unlikely.”
“Other media outlets like CNN, NBC News, and CBS haven’t called Arizona for either candidate. Arizona and its 11 Electoral College votes are the only difference between the two factions of media outlets, meaning they have Biden at 253 electoral votes and Trump still at 213. Trump has a much easier path to 270 Electoral College votes if he’s able to pull off a victory in Arizona,” Brest added.
At the end of the day, it makes you wonder why in the world Fox News, an outlet that is supposedly center-right, would be so eager to call states for Joe Biden, but not at all eager to call them for President Trump?
Look how long they took to call Florida and other states the president clearly took in the race. Something fishy with all of that, wouldn’t you agree?
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