Was waiting to Saturday, Nov 7 to call the election morally wrong?

[Oregon Eagle Politics]

As soon as PA was within 20K votes, the election should have been called.

[DaleCooper]

Waiting and being cautious wasn't the problem, the problem was that they covered the vote counting like it was Super Bowl Sunday. "Well now Chris, it looks like Biden's behind by about 100,000 in Pennsylvania. I think there's a chance he could come up from behind and win this thing, but he's got a lot of ground to make up." Such statements are absolutely inexcusable because it makes audiences forget that every single one of these votes was cast before the ballots closed on Election Day with the exception of a relatively small amount of late absentees that had no decisive impact on the election.

[Oregon Eagle Politics]

NV definitely should have been called Friday morning at latest. They held out weirdly long on NV when Biden was up by more than 2%.

Because AP and FOX called Arizona for Biden. Calling Nevada would put Biden at 270.

CNN didn't want to call Arizona. Nor did they want to call the election. But if they called Nevada than that would force AP to call Nevada. And thus the election. Which means CNN would have to call the election.

I feel like there was an unspoken agreement among media networks to call NV/PA and the overall election at the same time, when everyone felt safe.

But while CNN is my chosen source of news, they dragged things out. I hate FOX but I appreciate them being willing to end things. Same thing happened in 2018, they said Democrats would win the House long before the other networks did.

Similarly in 2016 all networks except FOX waited to call WI/PA at around the same time. FOX didn't but they waited to call AZ just as long as the others, I think.

FOX had called Wisconsin for Trump sometime around midnight ET, and someone else had called Pennsylvania for Trump.  If you put them together, he had the votes to win, but no network was willing to call the election for a little while.

NV definitely should have been called Friday morning at latest. They held out weirdly long on NV when Biden was up by more than 2%.

Because AP and FOX called Arizona for Biden. Calling Nevada would put Biden at 270.

CNN didn't want to call Arizona. Nor did they want to call the election. But if they called Nevada than that would force AP to call Nevada. And thus the election. Which means CNN would have to call the election.

I feel like there was an unspoken agreement among media networks to call NV/PA and the overall election at the same time, when everyone felt safe.

But while CNN is my chosen source of news, they dragged things out. I hate FOX but I appreciate them being willing to end things. Same thing happened in 2018, they said Democrats would win the House long before the other networks did.

FOX uses a different exit polling system than the other networks do, which tends to lead it to have different calls sometimes.  The seemingly premature Arizona call was likely due to their exit poll overestimating Biden's margin there.

Maybe I'm imagining things, but wasn't there some data error on Nov 4 that made it seem like AZ had Over 98% of votes in when in reality it was less than that?

[Inmate Trump]

At a certain point, they were intentionally dragged it out.

[LBJer]

They definitely waited too long.  On Friday, three days after the election, Politico published a piece in which someone in the Trump campaign said that the election was over, and had been for a day.  Dragging it out until Saturday made it look like they were scared of Donald Trump and his supporters. 

[LBJer]

It would look bad to call it for Biden if Trump was still ahead. They made the right move to call PA only after Biden took the lead.

I don't think this logic has been employed in any other election.  If I'm not mistaken, the call is traditionally made when the outcome is virtually certain, regardless of whether the eventual winner is already in the lead at that point or not.  

[Non Swing Voter]

What was morally wrong was for Republicans in Pennsylvania and Michigan and elsewhere to delay absentee ballot counting because they knew those votes would skew heavily Democratic then stay silent while Trump ranted about a 3 am "ballot dump" robbing him of his lead (that never existed because those absentee ballots were cast first).