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.
I should note that while the race was "just" .18% apart that 3761 votes is still 3761 votes. While Minnesota doesn't have universal turnout (though it is a lot higher than most other states, due to the culture), if the polls were open maybe an hour later and around 10,000 more voters voted than IRL a Reagan victory might've been possible (though at the same time you could say that Mondale could've possibly won in other states if more voters had more time or were more enthusiastic about voting). The margin of error certainly is interesting to say the least.
Regardless, the ultimate voting counts were verified by the Minnesota Secretary of State, not NBC, CBS, ABC, or any of those other news networks.
Or maybe Minnesotans just thought it would be mean not to give Mondale at least one state.
Really the question shouldn't be whether or not Mondale did win in Minnesota, but more of a question of how many voters might've sat out the election (both Democratic and Republican) due to the idea that the race was Reagans. As the man himself joked the day before the election: "I'm certainly worried about my chances!" Contrary to popular myth, many people actually sat out the election due to the perception that Reagan was going onto win a massive landslide election (and he did). The results in many places is pretty telling of this.
Also, while I do agree that the average response to this thread was a little bit ignorant of your initial point about election returns, I really don't think that making snide remarks on their intelligence is fitting. You didn't exactly word this the best way, after all. We can't read your mind, damn it!
