ABC News Coverage of Election Night '08

Ahh, election night, a very exciting night for the country. It’s when the people decide and discover who the next president of their nation will be. It’s also the night when every single television news station spends hours of coverage repeating themselves and each other while they attempt to fill their program before they can officially announce the next president. The station I was honored enough to cover: ABC.

I actually thought that ABC did an appropriate job of coverage of this 2008 presidential election. For one thing, they had everything organized. They had Diane Sawyer in charge of exit polls, George Stephanopolous in charge of scenarios and situations, some lady was responsible for the web and voter feedback, and then they had people placed in both the Obama and McCain camps, with Charles Gibson leading the network charge. ABC also knew what was important in this particular election. They highlighted six key battleground states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Indiana, Virginia, and North Carolina, and they admitted that McCain needed to carry at least five of these six to have a chance, and they had a correspondent in each of these states. It just went to show that the network wasn’t just reporting what happened, but they comprehended what was necessary for each candidate to prevail.

Making the information constantly available to the viewer is another important factor in election coverage, and ABC certainly did this. They had a ticker on the bottom of the television screen that ran at all times, and it displayed the presidential and congressional races in each state, as well as the total popular vote between McCain and Obama. In addition, they had boards in the background of the hosts that displayed the electoral college vote, and a map that was colored red or blue to portray which way each state was projected. There was also a map in which Stephanopolous could create scenarios, such as what states McCain could afford to lose while still maintaining a chance at victory. I think ABC did a very good job in this instance of scenarios because they were able to incorporate the outcomes in the previous two elections, both won by Bush. By using these results, they could determine what would be necessary for either candidate if a swing state swung the opposite way it voted in the past two elections, and really laid everything out so it could be easily understood by the viewer.

ABC did an excellent job of keeping their online website up with their national television coverage. They had a large map that was very similar to the one behind the hosts, except it had an interactive aspect to it. You could use your mouse to scroll over any state, and it would tell you the percentage of votes for each candidate as well as the percentage of precincts reporting. Also, they kept up with the coverage, as each state online turned color almost simultaneously as it was projected on television.

There were some interesting segments that ABC used to fill in the down time between the top of each hour, when polls closed in certain states and all the projections came; all the action. They interviewed the campaign managers of each party, they had people in Chicago and Phoenix at the Obama and McCain camps, and they even talked to Rudy Giuliani and Oprah. They did all they could, but they could not avoid the inevitable. It is always customary that each network ends up stepping on their own toes and beating things over the head repeatedly. It’s unavoidable; there’s only so much they can talk about without this happening. The whole bit about people in Kenya, the story about Obama’s relationship with his grandmother, occasionally interviewing the people in Times Square; these were all unnecessary to the coverage, not to mention somewhat irrelevant and boring, at least in my opinion. And Diane was a little ridiculous with some of her exit poll breakdowns, I mean who cares how many evangelists in Indiana voted for each McCain, or how many senior voters in West Virginia cast their ballot for Obama?

Overall, I liked what ABC did. They could not ignore some redundancy and irrelevancy, but they were organized and comprehensive, as well as up to date with their projections. Also, they were not too quick to project a winner in each state as they wanted to make sure they would not have to go back on it, and they refused to announce Obama as the next president until he reached that 270 mark in the electoral college vote (which they did around 11 pm) even when things looked bleak for McCain. Overall grade: B+/A-