Well, cinyc had made a good point that no RL media calls an election when the votes are still being casted.
Seriously though, I wonder how far we can relate to RL here, as RL elections also don't have the possibility to count votes before the end. Part of what Atlasia makes interesting is this "look bore leads by 3 votes; oh no, now TNF is a vote behind...", and if that means some races will have apparent winners early on, well, so shall be it, I'd say.
Did CNN called Florida for Gore before polls actually closed?
Yes. The rules back then were different, networks were allowed to call states as long as most of the polls were closed. So they called Florida before some panhandle polling places closed, they called Texas when some El Paso polls were still open, Michigan was called while some UP polls were still open, etc. After the florida call debacle of 2000, the networks and the AP were sued into changing their rules to only allow for calls once ALL state polls are closed.
Poll
