Title: 100 Years of 100 Things: Election Returns

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we continue our WNYC centennial series, 100 years of 100 Things. For this day before Election Day, it's thing number 36, 100 years and more of watching election returns. Once upon a time, there was no such thing as television, obviously, so how did people use to do it, and how did the modern media change our relationship to and expectations about learning the results?

Our guest for this is Kathryn Cramer Brownell, director of the Center for American Political History and Technology at Purdue University and author of the book 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News, which came out last year. She also wrote an article in The Washington Post just before the 2020 election called Good TV demands results on election night, but that’s bad for democracy.

Professor Brownell, thanks for joining our 100 Years of 100 Things series. Welcome to WNYC.

Professor Brownell: Thanks so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start. More than 100 years ago, you write that in the 19th century, voters looked for election night rockets that might communicate to voters the local tally. What does that mean, election night rockets?

Professor Brownell: [laughs] Well, it really conveys how party politics worked in the 19th century, especially in the antebellum period. Parties controlled all aspects of public life even. Newspapers were partisan outlets. Parties controlled the ballots. There was no secret ballot or secret voting. They gave people a ballot so that they would then march to deposit it in, and they controlled how people found out about the results. They were in charge of calculating the results. They really turned the Election Day experience into this social event, a civitual, where people could enjoy themselves but also be firmly enmeshed in party politics.

Election night rockets was one way of one type of civic ritual, but it really is reflective of elections and party politics more broadly as this broader social experience in the 19th century.

Brian Lehrer: In terms of the media, somehow this was in the context of newspapers mostly having political party affiliations?

Professor Brownell: Yes. In the 19th century, newspapers were firmly and proudly linked to political parties. Editors played a really prominent role in the development of party politics themselves. In some of these behind-the-scenes negotiations over who the candidate would be, for example, they were very powerful political players and they didn't shy away from this. Again, they were very proudly an opportunity to convey partisan information and partisan policies as well.

Brian Lehrer: As the 20th century dawned, you have newspapers becoming less outlets for specific political parties as their business models changed. We'll relate this to election returns specifically in a minute, but what was the bigger story there?

Professor Brownell: Well, it's really about economics. That there is an opportunity with the expansion of the industrial press, that people could produce more papers in urban areas. All of a sudden, they recognized that they could sell advertisements and didn't necessarily have to be beholden to a particular political party for funding. Then there's a new wave of journalists that are critiquing political parties for the corruption that is very rampant. They realize that if they're going to critique political parties, they need a different funding model in order to do so. They really appeal to the people that they are representing the public interest. They're a voice of the people.

Then again, that means circulation matters. That they have to sell more because they have to get a higher circulation to bring in money for each individual cost, but more importantly, to sell advertisements. They can tell advertisers, "Look, if you want to reach these broader audiences and sell your product, advertising is still very new at the turn of the 20th century." They're emphasizing that buy advertisements in our newspapers. Again, there is this incentive to cultivate public trust and to tell the public that they're looking out for them in challenging the power of party politics, but also, there's that business model that is really important there too.

Brian Lehrer: At that time, and we're still in the early 20th century, you write that newspapers began to emphasize a science of election returns and hired math experts. That still would not have been for night of returns, like would come later on television. Tell us about this cultivating public interest in a science of election returns, and how and when it would play out in the papers 100 years ago.

Professor Brownell: A lot of this was very much localized. There might have been trying to calculate what is happening perhaps in New York City and conveying the results of the local election. It took time to gather all of the information from across the country. You have accountants, people, again, with these math skills. They would try to process the information as quickly as possible, and then perhaps project it outside of a newspaper building and say, "This is what we're seeing. This is the information that we have gathered." Crowds would come and try to see what are some of the insights? The results as they're pouring in.

This idea that you would know who won the entire election, that really doesn't come until television. By the early 20th century, it's still very localized in terms of the results that they were conveying.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, any oral histories, as we like to do in these 100-year segments, of your most memorable election returns viewing year? 212-433-WNYC. You know we're going to talk about 2000. We're also going to talk about 1980. We're going to talk about 1976. We're going to talk about other ones. Any oral histories of your most memorable election returns viewing year? What about anything from your parents or grandparents about an earlier era of this before television election night returns and this expectation that we would have a result the night of? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Or any questions for our guest, Kathryn Cramer Brownell, director of the Center for American Political History and Technology at Purdue University and author of 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News in our 100 Years of 100 Things series, 100 years and more of the media and election returns. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Professor Brownell, in your article about this, your first TV reference was the presidential election of 1952, Dwight Eisenhower's first election. Was that the first real TV election night?

Professor Brownell: Yes. It was really the first real TV election year more broadly, where Dwight Eisenhower really begrudgingly-- he was very reluctant at first, but he does make television a priority, hires advertisers and entertainers to help him craft his TV message. He's really effective at selling Ike. "I like Ike." That was a very well-crafted message that was designed for television.

Election night was, again, a TV experience where CBS and NBC, they engaged in what they called the "battle of the brains." They both had computers that were helping. Huge computers that were trying to process the information that was coming out from all of these local precincts across the country.

Brian Lehrer: It's so hilarious to see some of the old footage where they would trot out these huge computers. I think one of them was called UNIVAC. Is that right?

Professor Brownell: That's correct, yes.

Brian Lehrer: They were these gigantic things. Now we can have a computer in a watch. That was the thing at that time. Well, before we talk more about that early television election returns era and work it up to the present, radio had been a thing for 30 years by then. The whole context of this series is that it's in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the founding of WNYC, which was in 1924. Have there been no equivalent on live radio of watching election returns come in and people sitting around their radio and listening to it like they used to sit around listening to drama and comedy shows on the radio, and President Roosevelt.

Professor Brownell: Well, of course, radio does create-- There is information about the election as it's unfolding that happens on radio. Radio is a really important part of the political process and political communication more broadly. With television, it really becomes more of a show. That's where computing history also really matters, because it's about processing the data as quickly as possible. You also have it's the early stages of polling, so there's more information as people are trying to figure out the science of elections and voter behaviors.

You have all of these different types of things that come together in the 1950s to turn election evening into really this Super Bowl moment for the television networks. It's their opportunity, again, to cultivate public trust, to show that they're participating in the democratic process, but again also to get audiences and to really boost their prestige. It's right when television newsrooms were very-- they're very new. They don't have the credibility that they would gain over the next couple of decades. TV is really trying to assert its importance in this broader civic process.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take some interesting calls that are coming in about different eras of the media and election returns. Peter in Palm Harbor, Florida is going to go back to the print era before television dawned in the presidential election context in 1952. Peter, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Peter: You're not talking to me, are you?

Brian Lehrer: I am talking to you.

Peter: Oh, right. That was so fast. No, right, because what went through my mind was the most famous blunder of all time, "Dewey Defeats Truman." When they did the autopsy of that blunder, does that have any relevance to today? Are we well past that or can that happen again?

Brian Lehrer: That's a great thing to bring up. 1948, it was a Chicago newspaper, I believe, that thought it had enough of a handle on the results to publish "Dewey Beats Truman" which obviously he did not. You familiar with that incident?

Professor Brownell: Yes. The Chicago Tribune, of course. It's one of the most iconic pictures of that election. Dewey's big smile. He actually gets a copy of the newspaper when he's traveling through Chicago two days later. Someone hands it to him, so's it's this great photo op that you can just see that he's beaming. It's because he really was not expected to win in that election. I think this also gets into this emerging science around election, the election process and voter behaviors, again, very early. Not with the sophisticated polling that we would think of today.

The early information that was coming out showed that he had no chance. That he was really behind. Everyone expected him to lose, and that information was not accurate. I think that's a really great example where this effort to try to capture the science of it in anticipation before people actually go out and vote. Also, the Chicago Tribune wants to get ahead, is anticipating this and thinking through the presentation of this information before they actually have the hard data as well.

Brian Lehrer: Competition to be first. Was it before people voted or was it that they had some early indications and they did their own projection? We'll talk more about television networks projecting the winner before all the votes are counted, which is the norm these days. In 1948, was it the next morning's paper? I should know this and I don't. Was it the Wednesday morning right after Election Day, and they had some data and they overinterpreted it, or was it something else?

Professor Brownell: That's a really good question. I'm not entirely sure if it was the next day or if it was a couple days later. I know that it's when Dewey traveled through Chicago. It was two days after that it had printed, but I'm not entirely sure on the exact date.

Brian Lehrer: Lawrence in Bayside has a Walter Cronkite on TV memory, I think. Lawrence, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Lawrence: Hi, Brian. How are you? Remember when Walter Cronkite would tell us who won the election and no one would question it? We have a crisis of misinformation and propaganda being sold as news. We have two professions in America that we depend on that are governed not by the government but by their own guilds. That would be lawyers and doctors who the government allows to regulate their own industries. We don't want the government involved in journalism, that's a totalitarian state. We could have a journalism guild regulating their own members.

The closest thing I can think of right now is the Columbia School of Journalism, which rates the objectivity of various news organizations. We could have an American journalism bar which license newscasters. If they're not broadcasting and disseminating news that meets an objective standard by their own profession, they could be sanctioned or lose their ability to broadcast. That could be given to them, and we could stop having Fox News telling us that the election was stolen until it cost them half a billion dollars.

Brian Lehrer: Lawrence, thank you very much. Although Fox News was also the first to call the 2020 election for Biden through their data calculations and projections. These things are complicated. No network, no matter its political leanings, wants to get election projections wrong. This brings us to the 1970s, where, Professor Brownell, in your article you cite 1972 as the first cable television election night. That was nearly a decade before CNN, more than 20 years before Fox or MSNBC. What was cable as a baby medium doing in 1972 on election night?

Professor Brownell: Cable in 1972 looks very different from the cable TV that we think of today. In 1972, cable operators were tapping into growing public discontent over network broadcast television, and especially network television news programs that were very elitist and exclusionary in terms of the perspectives that were conveyed, overwhelmingly presented a view of the world from a white, male, heterosexual New York City mindset. Across the political spectrum, there is criticism that the big three monopoly, that they were excluding certain viewpoints. They weren't really engaging with the local level as well.

Cable operators saw an opportunity to present cable television as an alternative to network broadcasting, and one that could be more responsive to local community. It's very much part of an effort by the cable industry to deregulate the industry to show that if they're allowed to compete with network television, that you'll have a more robust democratic exchange because at the time, federal regulations upheld the monopoly of the big three networks.

In places like Manhattan you have a teleprompter, which is a cable operator, that is featuring all these different interviews at the local level. They have these roving reporters who are trying to get viewers or citizens, get them to talk about their experiences, very much like I heard on your station. Going to laundry marts, right? It's an effort to bring new voices into conversations about Election Day.

It was an opportunity to do something different. It was at a very small scale. Cable was not the behemoth that it would grow into over the next several decades. It was really experimental. I think that was cable early on because it was really affordable. Cable operators and programmers could be really experimental in how they approached different events.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a 1972 memory caller. Susan in Chicopee, Massachusetts, you're on WNYC. Hi, Susan.

Susan: Hi there. I was in Hanoi as part of the peace delegation in 1972 when the election was called. We thought we were going to have some POWs released to us as a gesture of goodwill, but that never happened. We heard the result of the election over Agence France-Presse. We weren't hearing it from the United States. I remember being absolutely stunned that McGovern had carried only Massachusetts.

Brian Lehrer: It stunned at Nixon's landslide in 1972. All right. We're going to continue in a minute. For the rest of the segment, we're going to get into the networks doing projections, which started in '76, and many of you know how they messed up in the year 2000. They also messed up in the year 1980, which we'll touch on, and of course 2020 as well as we move toward the present in our 100 Years of 100 Things segment for today, number 36, 100 years of election returns in the media. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC in our 100 Years of 100 Things segment for today, number 36, 100 years of watching election night presidential election returns with our guest Kathryn Cramer Brownell from Purdue, author of the book 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News. In the history you wrote in a Washington Post article, you cite 1976 as the year that the network started predictions, not just reporting the numbers as they came in.

I'm going to play a short clip of a caller to set this up, who came into the national coverage that we did last Wednesday special with On the Media hosts Micah and Brooke about media coverage of the election. This caller, Stephanie, in the Finger Lakes region of New York had this question.

Stephanie: I want to know why the news media feels it's absolutely necessary to make calls before all the counts are voted. I think they interfere with turnout and I don't think it's fair. All the people who have sent in ballots from overseas and mail-in from local elections. Why did they do that? Why did they feel--

Brian Lehrer: 20 seconds. Why do they make projections at all rather than wait till the votes are counted?

Professor Brownell: Because we're all desperate, Brian, that's why. Because we want to know even what is unknowable.

Brian Lehrer: Ha. Because we were running out of time in the show, right at that moment we couldn't give her a more thorough answer. Professor Brownell, maybe you can do that if Stephanie in the Finger Lakes is listening right now, or for anyone else. Why did the network start making projections rather than just counting the votes?

Professor Brownell: Well, I think because, as she mentioned, there is a demand for that information. People want to know, and they want to know things before they even happen. It turns out that it can lend itself to ratings. That people will tune in and see what kind of information is there available. There is a consequence. You actually see this in 1980, because NBC News, they got it right, they were accurate. They first projected a win for Ronald Reagan right after 8:00 PM Eastern Time. Jimmy Carter gets this information. He goes on TV and he actually delivers a confession speech, but it's before the polls closed on the West Coast.

Many Democrats were furious, especially on the West Coast, because they thought that it did deter voter turnout that cost them congressional seats. There is an investigation into this practice that's led by a Democrat from Colorado, Timothy Wirth. He really argues that is this effort to be first? Even that proves to be accurate, is this deterring people from participating, especially when you think about the timing? This has been a legitimate question from the beginning.

Brian Lehrer: Did the networks stop calling a presidential election until all the polls are closed from coast to coast, even maybe Hawaii and Alaska?

Professor Brownell: Practices have evolved over time. I think that's one of the other things that you see, especially in the aftermath of the 2000 election, which we haven't talked about yet, but I'm sure we will, is that practices have evolved in terms of calling certain states after all of the polls of that state have closed if they are in different time districts. These are practices that have evolved over time. There's no federal regulation for how these actually happen. It's just more of a network understanding, like listening to some criticism, listening to congressional investigations about practices, and then studying and evolving in terms of their practices.

Brian Lehrer: Of course, Florida is an example of that, where most of the state is in the Eastern Time zone and a little bit of the state is in the Central Time zone. The polls in Florida close at seven o'clock local time, but the networks have resisted calling Florida until after eight o'clock Eastern Time when they have all the polls closed in Florida. Of course, Florida brings us to the fateful year of 2000. It's again NBC, which had called Florida, crucially for Al Gore, but then Tom Brokaw went back on the air to say this.

Tom Brokaw: "NBC News is now taking Florida out of Vice President Gore's column and putting it back in the 'too-close-to-call' column."

Brian Lehrer: Of course, eventually, after a Supreme Court case and recounts and everything else, Bush was finally declared the winner of Florida in December, ending that presidential election. How'd they get it wrong?

Professor Brownell: Well, there are a lot of reasons. I think first, it's important to remember that 2000 is where there's a tremendous competition. That MSNBC and Fox News, they launched in 1996. They're now really expanding their operations. You've got MSNBC, Fox, CNN, then you've got ABC, CBS, NBC, so you have a lot of competition. They're all trying to prove their worth. They're trying to show that they're different from one another.

I think that that competitive environment is really important to understand, especially because one of the central problems that scholars have identified in the 2000 coverage is that the public didn't know that they're actually getting all of their information from the same data, the Voter News Service. They were all trying to process the same information that was problematic, but they're trying to process that quickly. That's their spin, is that they can process this information and present it to their viewers faster than the other the other newsrooms.

It wasn't clear to viewers where that information was coming from, or exit polling, how it worked, how it influenced these decisions. There are a lot of factors that go into the "science" that we've talked about, that were not made clear to voters. When it challenges the integrity and calls into question the results as they're actually calculating the votes, all of a sudden voters are very confused about the entire process.

Brian Lehrer: In our last minute, we're now in the era where we expect Donald Trump, in a way that no candidate has done before, to declare victory tomorrow night, early, before any candidate could mathematically declare victory, certainly before the networks or the Associated Press have a database projection. What are you going to be watching for tomorrow night? Either as a media critic or to help arm our listeners with a little bit of media literacy?

Professor Brownell: I would say to make sure that you know. Whatever you're watching for information, see how they're calculating the information. A reputable news organization will make it clear how they're processing and pay attention to that process. We want to know things. There's this culture of immediacy, instant gratification that we have, but it takes time to process votes. It takes time to count them. To let the voting process and the counting process-- to let it unfold and to be patient. I think that's something that we learned in 2020, that certain things can take time.

It doesn't mean you don't have to be glued to your TV during the process, but make sure that you understand where the information that you're consuming, where it's coming from.

Brian Lehrer: Kathryn Cramer Brownell, director of the Center for American Political History and Technology at Purdue University is the author of the book 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News. Thank you so much for joining us with all this information in our 100 Years of 100 Things series. Thank you very much.

Professor Brownell: Thanks so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Obviously, we'll be back tomorrow morning on Election Day. Right now, stay tuned for Alison.

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