Ridiculous media bias in calling states for Trump

[Nym90]

The timing of the calls of the different states depends a lot on where the outstanding votes are and how many absentee/provisional ballots remain to be counted even after all precincts have reported. The networks also use key bellwether precincts that have a long track record of predicting the outcome in that state (it would be fascinating to know which they use).

Over time the networks have gotten a lot more conservative about calling states. In 1980 Reagan was declared the winner at I believe 8:00 Eastern or shortly thereafter. Carter gave his concession speech before the polls had even closed on the West Coast. In 1992 Clinton was called the winner not long after 9:00 Eastern, and I know it was right at 9:00 in 1996.

Then in 2000 we had the debacle of Florida being called for Gore at 7:48 Eastern, twelve minutes before the polls closed in the panhandle. At the time the network policy was that a state could be called so long as at least 75 percent of the polls had closed in the state (after that it was changed to 100 percent). Followed by the retraction, then the call for Bush putting him over the top, then Gore calling Bush to concede, then thousands more votes coming in from Florida and all of a sudden the margin is less than 1,000 votes and Gore calls back to retract his concession and well, you know the rest.

Anyway, my point is that after 2000 things changed a lot.

[Smash255]

After what happened in 2000, it isn't shocking that networks are more conservative with the states they call, but no it isn't bias.

In 2008, Obama won Indiana by a slightly larger margin than Trump won WI, & PA,  IN wasn't called until 2:15 AM.  North Carolina (which was slightly closer than Trump's pa & MI margin) wasn't called until two days after,  NE-2 was three days after,  Missouri's call (the closest state in 2008) wasn't until almost two weeks later.

Now of course the election was called sooner itself, because Obama already had the EV's from other states, this election was called later because the states that put Trump over the top EV wise were so close. 

 Considering Trump won those states by .72% and .77% (as per the #'s on Atlas currently) it isn't much of a surprise that both states took awhile to be called, and it seems to match past history with states about as close when those were called.

[jaichind]

I think the media

1) Was scared after 2000 of being burned on bad calls on FL
2) Saw that there was opposite swings going on (wealthy suburbs swing toward Clinton while rural areas swing toward Trump) so traditional representative precincts are no longer bellwethers.

Overall the US media has become very chicken on making calls

Back in July Japan Upper House elections there were many examples where the count was something like

70% of the vote in
LDP  49
DP    46

And then NHK calls it for DP with the result ending up being

LDP 47
DP   48

Most likely NHK had local agents are almost all counting centers and had advanced views of unofficial counts and has a lot of historical data to project results looking at where the vote is coming in from.   Anyway those calls were all bold and in the end all accurate.  
  

[Figueira]

Honestly it's probably better this way, to avoid 2000 type situations.

[jaichind]

I do not think there was any systematic bias to avoid making calls for Trump.   While it was clear that Trump won FL but no one would call it,  as it was pointed out before, the same could be true for VA.  It was clear that even when Trump was still ahead his lead was clearly behind Gillespie's lead as a function of how much NOVA was reporting.  But the media would not call VA either even as it was obvious that Clinton would win comfortably. 
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