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Why is it the media that declares the winner of the U.S. election?

Although the U.S. presidential election are held this November 5, the official result will take days to be known: that task is up to the election boards, and ultimately to the Electoral Collegeseveral weeks after the elections: it is then that they certify the results and declare a winner, who officially becomes president-elect.

What happens between the end of the elections and the official certification? Legally, there is no winner until it is decreed by the Electoral Collegebut for more than a century, the media play an essential role in the electoral process with their “projections“Does this mean that the media says who has won? Is it something official?

Advancing the winner, a tradition dating back to the late 19th century.

Many factors come into play in U.S. elections: different time zones, different recount procedures for each state…which makes the recount is a really slow process. Although all the delegates from the states converge on the Electoral College, it takes weeks before the decisive body meets in Washington.

However, at the end of the 19th century, the AP news agency started a particular traditionthrough permanent telegraphic contact with all its delegations, AP “projected”with all the data it had available from exit polls and partial count data, that the candidate whig Zachary Taylor would be the new president of the United States after the 1848 election, as it happened.

This precedent sealed a tradition halfway between implied liability and media spectacle.Gradually, with the development of radio and television in particular, the media took on a new role in the media. public service role in making these projections and offer the public a winner, always prioritizing meticulousness over speculation.

Media “projecting” a winner before the recount

Currently, and thanks to a combination of live partial recounts, exit polls, predictive models based on historical trends, and an extensive network of correspondents in most counties, the media continues this function that has become a tradition on election nights in the United States. In fact, for decades major networks such as ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC have been part of the consortium. National Election Pool to combine resources and be more precise in this task, although the final decision to project a winner or not is up to the networks themselves.

But does this have any legal validity? Not at all.. In practice, the media offer an estimate of who will win, and historically this prediction is very high, but only the result of the count is legal. In fact, in the year 2000, many media projected Al Gore as the winner, only to be disavowed. in the face of the close count, which would end up making George W. Bush president.

A symbolic role not without controversy.

Opinion on the role of the media in the U.S. elections is not without controversy: its supporters see it as a public service to the citizenry and a safeguard for the certainty and of the cleaning of the electoral “rules of the game”. Its detractors see a great danger in the media assigning a winner before it is official because of the huge influence of this decision on public opinionespecially in a context of polarization such as the current one: many citizens could see as a winner a candidate who in reality is not, and feel that they are ‘robbed’ of that victoryin the recount.

In any case, this role of the media remains a symbolic issue.far from any official or legal consideration: the Electoral College is in charge of certifying the results of the states and appointing a new president.

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