I really wonder if Mondale actually carried Minnesota

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Given that it was his single state of the '84 election and given how tight it was (4K votes), I really wonder.  There was a youtube up with some brief NBC coverage.  When Brokaw announced that they were projecting MN for the Democrat, you could see his smile of Glee and there were claps and cheers audible in the background.

If I'm not mistaken, ABC actually called the state soon after 9pm when the polls closed, but for CBS and NBC, it was the final state called that night.

Because he was happy about winning his home state?

I think he was referring to Brokaw.  His theory seems to be that the "liberal media" rigged MN so Reagan would be denied a 50 state landslide.

On another note, Mondale's performance was absolutely pathetic everywhere. I don't care if things were less polarized back then, there was no excuse for losing MA & RI.

ABC callled MN during the 10 o'clock hour, it was 2% in, Mondale 57-42. NBC and CBS waited until 62% of the vote was in and it was Mondale 53-47. As for why ABC called it so early, I don't know, but this extra high confidence by ABC in MN was evident in their 2012 coverage as well, so they must know something about how it votes that none of the other networks do, but whatever.

(In 2012, ABC called MN (for Obama) at 9:50, when it was at 5% in, Obama 57-41. The other networks waited until about 10:45, when it was at 22, 23% in, Obama 53-45.)

Another poster on this forum noted a while back that it was odd that NH & GA were called immediately in 1992 even though they were both extremely close.

That election night was odd, to say the least. VA was a 2 point margin and took 3 hours to call, TX was a 2 point margin and took hours upon hours to call, yet GA was a 1 point margin and was called right away?

The networks seemed to trust exit polls from some states more than those from other states back in the day as well. For instance, Bush carried VA by 8 points in '00 and it took 30 minutes to call, but Rick Santorum won the PA senate race that year by 6 points (in a state where the most democratic votes are always counted first) and it was called immediately.... For some reason, the networks liked PA exit polls over VA exit polls....

[IceSpear]

I heard on right wing radio the other day that 6-7 million people illegally voted in the 2012 election...

Don't be on the level of them, or the liberals who don't believe Bush actually won Florida Ohio in 2004.

Fixed.

[kcguy]

This is getting off topic, but I have a couple of favorite "early calls".

In 1996, the polls were barely closed in New Hampshire, when CNN called Dick Swett the winner in the Senate race.  (Bob Smith won 49-46.)

In 1998, CNN waited until 92% of the polls had declared in Kentucky, before declaring Jim Bunning the winner in that Senate race.  Then the Louisville vote came in, and with 98% of polls reporting, Scotty Baesler surged ahead.  (Bunning would eventually win 49.7-49.2.)

[ElectionsGuy]

I heard on right wing radio the other day that 6-7 million people illegally voted in the 2012 election...

Don't be on the level of them, or the liberals who don't believe Bush actually won Florida.

Yes...because these claims are totally equally ridiculous. It's not as if one has zero backing and is simply racist propaganda, whereas the other one invokes a complicated scenario involving several unresolved disputes surrounding a poorly designed ballot, voting machine malfunctions in the poorest most Democratic towns, a voter purge aimed at African Americans, and various hanging chad. Nope it's not like that at all, great analogy ElectionsGuy!

So you think Gore won Florida?

[NHLiberal]

I heard on right wing radio the other day that 6-7 million people illegally voted in the 2012 election...

Don't be on the level of them, or the liberals who don't believe Bush actually won Florida.

Yes...because these claims are totally equally ridiculous. It's not as if one has zero backing and is simply racist propaganda, whereas the other one invokes a complicated scenario involving several unresolved disputes surrounding a poorly designed ballot, voting machine malfunctions in the poorest most Democratic towns, a voter purge aimed at African Americans, and various hanging chad. Nope it's not like that at all, great analogy ElectionsGuy!

So you think Gore won Florida?

That's not the point. I'm saying that putting those two theories on the same level is ridiculous, whether you believe Gore won Florida or not.

As for whether I think Gore won Florida, that really depends on what standards you use. Just the hanging chads probably wouldn't have flipped it to Gore, but if you were to fix for the machines and the Butterfly Ballot, then yeah, he probably would have won. And if the voter purge hadn't happened, it wouldn't have even been that close.

[bedstuy]

I heard on right wing radio the other day that 6-7 million people illegally voted in the 2012 election...

Don't be on the level of them, or the liberals who don't believe Bush actually won Florida.

Yes...because these claims are totally equally ridiculous. It's not as if one has zero backing and is simply racist propaganda, whereas the other one invokes a complicated scenario involving several unresolved disputes surrounding a poorly designed ballot, voting machine malfunctions in the poorest most Democratic towns, a voter purge aimed at African Americans, and various hanging chad. Nope it's not like that at all, great analogy ElectionsGuy!

So you think Gore won Florida?

More than likely, Al Gore got more votes in Florida.  If you did a manual recount of every vote, Al Gore beat Bush by something like 100 votes.  But, it's academic at this point.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

I heard on right wing radio the other day that 6-7 million people illegally voted in the 2012 election...

Don't be on the level of them, or the liberals who don't believe Bush actually won Florida.

Yes...because these claims are totally equally ridiculous. It's not as if one has zero backing and is simply racist propaganda, whereas the other one invokes a complicated scenario involving several unresolved disputes surrounding a poorly designed ballot, voting machine malfunctions in the poorest most Democratic towns, a voter purge aimed at African Americans, and various hanging chad. Nope it's not like that at all, great analogy ElectionsGuy!

So you think Gore won Florida?

More than likely, Al Gore got more votes in Florida.  If you did a manual recount of every vote, Al Gore beat Bush by something like 100 votes.  But, it's academic at this point.

Depending on how strict a recount would be over deciding whether each individual undervote and overvote had enough evident voter intent to be counted or not, you could get an extremely narrow win for Bush or an extremely narrow win for Gore. Not that it matters at this point.

Now, if you fixed the butterfly ballot in Palm Beach County and fixed the ballot in Duval County which misled people into voting for two presidential tickets (by putting the text 'vote on every page' on the bottom of each page of the ballot, and then spreading the choices for president over two pages), then Gore would have likely gotten the narrow victory regardless of how strict undervote/overvote counting happened to be.

However, it should be noted that turnout went down dramatically in the final hour of voting in FL in 2000 because they were misled by networks saying that the polls were closed in Florida when in fact polls in the panhandle were still open. If the networks had waited until 8 P.M. EST (as they do today) to say that FL polls were closed on Election Night 2000, and assuming that that made turnout between 7-8 P.M. consistent with an average hour's turnout on that day, Bush would have won by a pre-recount margin of 10,284 (1,784 (Margin by which Bush won actual 2000 ELECTION NIGHT (pre-recount) vote count + 8,500 (estimated amount the turnout increase increases Bush's victory margin by) (0.17%). If we factor in the recounting that was actually done in 2000, the victory margin goes down to 9,037 (537 (2000 FL certified Bush Victory Margin) + 8,500) (0.15%). Unfortunately for Gore, there is no combination of ballot fixing remedies, recounting of normal votes, and counting/recounting of certain undervotes/overvotes that is even remotely likely to make up that difference.

So, who probably won among the votes that were actually cast (if each vote had been cast as actually intended)? Gore

But, who probably won if we add in the votes that likely would have been cast if the networks had not misled people as to the poll closing time of the FL Panhandle? Bush

-----------------------
Overall, I didn't like Bush as a president, but I prefer to blame Ralph Nader for his win in 2000 - if he (Nader) hadn't been in the race, Gore would have won FL by about 1.5-2 points or so (some Nader votes would refuse to vote for Gore and simply stay home in a two-way race).