How To Survive Election Night (With An Important Lesson For PR Practitioners)

(Author’s Note: This is the 16th and last in a series of political articles for CommPRO.biz that I’ll be writing leading up to Election Day. Between November 4 and Inauguration Day, January 20, I’ll be writing an occasional political column. FYI – My first public relations job was with a political firm, where I worked on local, statewide and presidential campaigns. In this column, I give advice on how to survive election night, some suggestions serious, some tongue-in-cheek.)

Arthur Solomon

Hours before people in many areas of the country haven’t yet cast their ballots, or had their mail-in ballots counted, the pundits of the networks will pretend that they know what they are talking about. And, in what is surely a Ripley’s Believe It or Not display of arrogance many of the same prognosticators who proclaimed Hillary Clinton would defeat Donald Trump in a “wave election” in 2016 are still disseminating the same claptrap.

Below is a primer in 8 minutes, 21 seconds, give or take a few, on how to survive election night despite the TV nonsense you will hear on cable TV.

• Don’t take seriously anything that cable news pundits say about the vote. Wait until the National Election Pool and Associated Press release vote tallies and states are called by the network’s decisions desks, which are free of punditry. Even then, remember nothing said about the vote on election night is final.
• Don’t take seriously when a pundit reports on a candidate’s team’s internal polling results. First of all, internal polling is often slanted in the candidate’s favor, and do you really think that a candidate’s team would release bad results?
• Don’t take seriously the early evening remarks of the cable TV pundits. Remember, their job is to keep you tuned in.
• Some cable stations will begin their Election Day coverage at 4 p.m., Eastern Time. If you want to avoid hearing a lot of gibberish, don’t tune in until about 8:30 or 9 p.m. There still will be plenty of gibberish for you to hear for the remainder of the night.
• Don’t take too seriously what TV pundits say about early-voting records. They’ll continue to say, as they have been saying for weeks, that the early voting indicates a probable Biden victory. Maybe they’re right. But maybe they’re wrong. 
• If projections are correct, there will be a surge of voting on November 3. And since the margins between Trump and Biden are closer in many battleground states than in the national averages, a huge Republican turnout can win the election for Trump. 
• Don’t take seriously any tweets from Donald Trump, which might include, “a rigged election,” or a victory statement. (You might not know it, but he’s been known to lie.)
• Don’t take seriously commentary from election historians, because what happened in 2016 or 1816 has nothing to do with the reasons people are voting today. (Neither does what happened in the 2016 election have any relevance regarding what will happen in 2020.)
• Take the magical Big Board analysis for what it is—good TV, nothing more, because this year, more than in other elections, unless there is a landslide, results might not be known for days because of the unprecedented number of mail-in ballots (Did you ever notice the difference between MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki and CNN’s John King at those Big Boards? Kornacki sometime is much more dramatic, emphasizing what could still happen. He also seems to be wearing the same brown pants day after day. King is much more like a “here’s the facts” hard news reporter, the way breaking news reporters are suppose to behave. Perhaps Kornacki went to acting school. Perhaps King has more clothes).
• If you can’t wait until the morning to find out the latest results, DVR three movies, and after watching each one tune in the top  of the hour news from your local radio station. (To keep in the election mood, I suggest thriller movies.)
• Don’t get too excited or depressed from early election results. They don’t mean much, because:
  • They are often only from fast reporting areas of states and do not necessarily reflect who will win the state when all the votes are counted. 
  • Likewise, don’t be too influenced by exit polling results.

In the 2016 election early exit polling showed Hillary Clinton winning, but the actual vote was different, and  just because a candidate has a large lead in recent national polls it does not indicate an Electoral College victory, as Ms. Clinton can attest to. 

• If you’re a Biden backer and he is ahead during the wee morning hours of election night do not rejoice by getting drunk. You may not be able to celebrate his victory the next morning.
• If you are a Trump backer and he is trailing badly during the wee morning hours of election night, do not attempt to drown  your sorrows with a cocktail of Lysol and Clorox. You might never be able to drown your sorrows again.
• Go to the bathroom whenever a surrogate of either candidate is interviewed. You’ll not miss anything important. Follow the same routine when a pundit is speaking.
• If you’re a Democrat, do not watch Fox News.
• If you’re a Republican, do not watch MSNBC.
• If you don’t care who wins watch ESPN.
• Best of all do not watch any cable channel’s election night coverage.

Go to bed. There is a possibility that the result of the election might not be known for hours, if not days or weeks. But one thing is certain, the TV pundits will still pretend they are experts no matter how wrong they might have been in past elections -- or just a few hours earlier. 

However, if you’re the type of person that must get up every couple of hours to check on the results, here’s what to look for:

• Wasted Votes: By that I mean if Biden piles up huge winning margins in California and New York, when all he needed to win was one more vote than Trump in each state, without having a state that Trump won in 2016 go blue by early Wednesday morning that bodes badly for Biden.
• If Biden is tied or slightly ahead of Trump in states that the president won in 2016 in the middle of the night that bodes well for Biden, because all the mail-in votes haven’t been tallied yet.
• If Trump is tied or slightly trailing Biden in battleground states or states that the president won in 2016 in the wee hours of the morning that bodes well for the president, because many of the more conservative Mountain Time zone states and rural counties probably have not yet completed their vote counts.
• *Until a clearer indication of how the election will play out, Fox News pundits will play up Trump’s chances of being reelected, or maybe not.
• *Until a clearer indication of how the election will play out, MSNBC pundits will play up Biden’s chances of being elected, or maybe not.
• *Until a clearer indication of how the election will be decided, CNN will pretend that the comments of their pundits are all based on proven facts, or maybe not.
• *The only reason that makes sense to me for a person staying up until the dawn of November 4 is that you can expand your vocabulary by watching the election night cable telecasts, especially if you’re an equivocator. If so, keep a notebook close by when pundits give their opinions. You’re certain to hear ambiguous word or phrases that will be useful to you. “Pundit talk” expressions will include, “There’s always the possibility,” “Chances are,” “I’m willing to concede,” “Let’s not over think this,” “I’m willing to change my opinion,” “I’m fairly certain,” “My guess is,” “The most likely outcome is,” and as the great baseball philosopher Yogi Berra is alleged to have said, “It’s not over till it’s over.” And if you lost your calendar, the pundits are certain to remind you that “2016 is not 2020.”

*If the above analysis seems wishy-washy, well, wishy-washy is the definition of punditry. 

Political Reality Opinion: Do not take seriously pundit comments about how the undecided voters can determine the winner, like they did in 2016. Reason 1 - This is not 2016. Reason 2- Trump has been president for four years. Reason 3 - After four years voters know what a Trump presidency looks like. Thus, the undecided vote is probably minimal.

Likewise, do not take seriously pundit comments about the “shy Trump voters” swinging the election for Trump. There is no proof that there are not as many, or more, shy Biden voters. It’s just a creation of the pundits, who are never shy about trying to prevent you from tuning them out, (as you should.)

(PR practitioners should always remember that the early results of an election are often similar to the early results when launching a new program. A few good hits during the first week of a new launch is no guarantee that the program will be considered successful by your client. In an election, nothing is official until all the votes have been counted. The same is true with a PR program. It’s only after the results have been analyzed that a program can be considered a “success” or “failure.”)

Important to remember advice to backers of either candidate: If the candidate of your choice loses, do not say that you’re going to another country. Because of the coronavirus pandemic they might not let you in.

Also, remember, January 21, 2021, is the first day of the 2024 presidential campaign.

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About the Author: Arthur Solomon, a former journalist, was a senior VP/senior counselor at Burson-Marsteller, and was responsible for restructuring, managing and playing key roles in some of the most significant national and international sports and non-sports programs. He also traveled internationally as a media adviser to high-ranking government officials. He now is a frequent contributor to public relations publications, consults on public relations projects and is on the Seoul Peace Prize nominating committee. He can be reached at arthursolomon4pr (at) juno.com and artsolomon4pr (at) optimum.net.