Care to explain how Democratic media bias played a role in networks calling Mississippi and Alabama for Reagan when polls closed? Even though he won both by only 1.3%? Maybe exit polls in the South just suck(ed).
True, but still.. they called so many close states for Clinton as soon as the polls closed, but they didn't even call Oklahoma or North Dakota for Bush at poll closing time.
Clinton actually underperformed his polling expectations; he was expected to win by double digits, so networks thought it would be a pretty safe bet to call states that were
most likely gonna go to him. I bet they thought Oklahoma would vote similarly to Arkansas, which wouldn't have been a terrible assumption at the time. There was also a big Perot effect that probably messed up exit polls.
Besides, after the 2000 debacle, networks got a lot less lenient on how soon to call states.
