Welcome to the Hive’s election-night live blog, where we’ll break down election results as they roll in, and serve up the inside chatter from Washington, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley.
6:38 p.m. ET
Joe Pompeo: Results aside, one of the other things to watch tonight is how the coverage will play out on TV, given the unusual complexity of how votes are being counted and the numerous potential landmines that may be in store, like, say, a premature declaration of victory from the president. Here’s what a source at one of the broadcast networks just told me: “I think slow and steady is going to be the mantra for everyone. No one wants to be the first to make a mistake in what’s been deemed the most important election in our lifetimes. That said, each one of the networks has so much more data and so many more ways to measure it than in the past, we may really have a better handle on this than we think. Going in, everyone is preparing for the worst and not having answers. We might actually be pleasantly surprised. Every cable network and every broadcast network pumps tons of money into bright, glitzy sets with data walls and the like, and at the end of the day it probably matters more who is behind the desk reporting the news than some fancy graphic. Viewers turn to those they trust in times of trouble.”
6:36 p.m. ET
Bess Levin: Apropos of nothing, Deutsche Bank, like millions of Americans, is reportedly eager to “end all ties” with Donald Trump, whose loans of some $340 million are due in two years. Without him in office, executives think they’d have an easier time demanding repayment or dumping the loans; they’ve apparently discussed the possibility of selling them on the secondary market just to be done with him, though that scenario is unlikely because no one wants to touch the guy and his messy financial drama with a 2,000 foot pole. Probably a lot scarier for the notoriously terrible businessman: because he’s personally guaranteed the loans, the bank could seize his assets if he can’t pay. Would they go after Mar-a-Lago? Bedminster? Trump National Doral Miami, where he tried to host the G7 Summit like the incomparable grifter he is? Stay tuned!
6:25 p.m. ET
Chris Smith: Twenty years ago tonight—okay, minus four days—an election night mess launched Jon Stewart and The Daily Show on a run that changed comedy, political journalism, and politics. Stewart had been behind the host’s desk for a little more than a year, and he was still trying to figure out the show’s direction. George W. Bush, Al Gore, and Florida handed it to him, with a high-stakes farce that could only be truly, properly rendered by satire. “It was the first time I got the feeling, ‘This is terrible—but it’s great for the show!” Eric Drysdale, a Daily Show writer at the time, remembers. One of the more amazing parts of the live election night “coverage” was a largely improvised bit by Senior Political Analyst Stephen Colbert, which you can see here. And (shameless self-promotion alert) you can read more about the Daily Show‘s wild 2000 election night here.
6:00 p.m. ET
Nick Bilton: You could call it A Tale of Two Pollsters. According to Democratic pollsters, with only an hour to go before the first polls close, Democrats are very nervous at what they’re seeing so far in Florida, where numbers are showing that more Republicans have voted early. “If the polls end being off in Florida, then they could very well be off in Georgia and North Carolina, which have similar demographics for voters,” a pollster told me. “That’s fucking terrifying.” In Maricopa County, Arizona, Republicans are leading Democrats by about three to one. Republican pollsters are seeing this as a potential early warning sign that the mainstream poll numbers could indeed be wrong, again.
Chris Smith: With a few minutes to go until the first polls close, in parts of Indiana and Kentucky, here’s the consensus from Biden insiders and allies on the race in key states: Trump wins Florida and Texas. Biden takes Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Stay tuned!
5:53 p.m. ET
Joe Pompeo: Twenty years ago on this night I was watching the election returns with college roommates on a boxy television set. Twelve years ago I was in the New York Observer newsroom, a stone’s throw from Jared Kushner’s office there, before being dispatched to the nearby Old Town Bar for some scene reporting. This year, Jared Kushner is in the White House (who would have ever imagined?), and I’m at home in the suburbs interacting with colleagues on a pandemic-friendly Slack channel, while keeping tabs on election coverage on my laptop via an array of cobbled-together streaming options, because who has actual cable anymore? But the more things change, the more they stay the same: at Old Town that night in 2008, as most New Yorkers anxiously anticipated a Barack Obama victory, the joint’s McCain-supporting and Fox News-watching owner said something that captures what a lot of people must be feeling right now on this impossibly nerve-wracking evening: “The polls were wrong the last time. I have no idea who’s gonna win.”
5:30 p.m. ET
Michael Calderone and Claire Landsbaum: Patience. Caution. Uncertainty. These are the network newsroom mantras tonight as a flood of mail-in votes, in key states like Pennsylvania, could push election night to election week. And that’s okay. Because contrary to what you might hear from the president—and his party—counting votes, rather than suppressing them, is how democracy works. No matter what happens—Joe Biden rides a blue wave, Donald Trump ekes out an Electoral College win, or a cliff-hanger brings the collective national anxiety to a fever pitch—the Hive’s team of reporters will be dishing up distinctive analysis and insight all night (and morning) long. We’ll be tethered to Twitter with TVs blaring, wondering how Fox News handles, say, Trump falsely declaring himself the winner, and obsessing over the pivotal races that could tip the Senate. We’ve all endured a tragic, traumatic year. Now it’s time to see how America moves forward.
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