Media outlets and polling organizations on Saturday declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential race after announcing that Pennsylvania had gone for Biden.
But RealClearPolitics — known for its oft-cited aggregate of major polls — still has not called the crucial battleground state.
On Twitter, RealClearPolitics co-founder Tom Bevan corrected New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s claim that the site had called the race for Biden then retracted.
“We never called Pennsylvania, and nothing has changed,” Bevan wrote, reported The Hill.
This is false. We never called Pennsylvania, and nothing has changed. https://t.co/YXZ1PjI7Ud
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) November 10, 2020
Amid court challenges and a Supreme Court order to set aside ballots received after Election Day, RealClearPolitics has Biden at only 259 Electoral College votes, short of the needed 270.
Establishment media also has called Arizona for Biden, but RealClear Politics has not called that state and its 11 electoral votes as well.
A Trump campaign court challenge in Pennsylvania argues the results cannot be certified because in-person voters were differently from those who mailed their ballots.
In Michigan, the Great Lakes Justice Center is suing over alleged election law violations, including election workers coaching voters to choose Biden.
Political analyst Andy Puzder wrote at RealClearPolitics on Tuesday that the media should not have called the race so early.
“Joe Biden has made it clear that he will do his best to ‘unify’ the country following an election in which more than 71 million Americans – nearly half the electorate – voted for Donald Trump. It is an admirable goal,” he wrote. “But any chance of that happening depends on the American people having confidence that the election outcome resulted from a fair and honest process. Though never perfect, our electoral system has generally instilled confidence for the past 231 years, which is why it has worked so well.”
He said that under “the contentious circumstances of this election, the traditional media’s decision to declare a victor before the official process had run its course has diminished the confidence of Trump voters in the announced result.”
“Even if the declaration of a Biden victory is found to be accurate, the call was premature, and it will make the effort to unify our nation far more difficult,” he said.
“President Trump is contesting the reported results in those states where the race is close, and the conduct of election officials and the processes used appear suspicious. He is clearly within his rights to contest the results; his supporters generally want him to do so. Allowing the legal process to run its course is the only way to foster the unity Biden seeks.”
He argued that unity is much less likely when the media declares a winner before the matter is resolved.
“In 2012, many Republicans felt disappointed when Mitt Romney lost to President Obama. Very few felt cheated,” he noted. “That will not be the case in 2020 if the current president’s supporters believe that the media preempted the official process so as to disparage or prevent a full investigation of the president’s claims.”
He pointed out the New York Times had even claimed that “the role of declaring the winner of a presidential election in the U.S. falls to the news media.”
Nope, he said, that responsibility falls on Congress.
“But that tweet told the president’s supporters all they needed to know about the media’s intent,” he wrote.
“For months, traditional news outlets have been telling us that he would lose his bid for reelection in a landslide and that a ‘blue wave’ would sweep the nation, turning control of Capitol Hill completely over to the Democrats,” he noted. “Reporters – not just pundits, but ostensibly fair-minded ‘straight news’ professionals – treated Biden’s decisive victory as a foregone conclusion, actively discouraging their readers and viewers from even considering the possibility of a second Trump term.”
When the election results didn’t support that, he said, the media still demanded voters “trust them as they declare that their favored candidate won the election.”
“The media’s rush to judgment has done a grave disservice to the goal of unifying our nation.”
Besides Pennsylvania and Arizona, RealClearPolitics still has not called North Carolina, Alaska and Georgia.
