In the 2020 US presidential election, Fox News triggered controversy by calling the state of Arizona for Joe Biden days before competitor outlets deemed it safe to do so.
The call was ultimately correct — but it prompted widespread skepticism from other media companies over Fox’s procedures, as well as anger from Donald Trump supporters, many of whom temporarily saw some viewers turn their backs on the network in protest.
This year, the arch-conservative news organization was out front once again — this time calling Trump as the winner of the presidency hours before competitors.
The back-to-back correct calls highlight Fox’s increasingly large role — and responsibility — as the most watched of the three major US cable news networks, especially in an era ripe for disinformation that Fox itself often fuels.
Fox is a decidedly partisan network that vies to stay at the forefront of conservative ideological battles — but it’s also established among the US news outlets whose “decision desks” call elections.
Those desks — teams of statisticians, analysts and journalists armed with mountains of data — feed media outlets with results as they roll in.
A consortium of channels including ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN work with the Edison Research Institute, which provides exit polls, projections and counts. Fox News, like the Associated Press news agency, works with the NORC Institute at the University of Chicago, using a survey system called AP VoteCast.
It is up to those individual networks to create their own standards on how they use the data and make calls.
The 2020 Arizona call against Trump had Fox News on the defensive, although they never backtracked and were ultimately vindicated.
But internal communications made public as part of a defamation lawsuit — Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox after the network asserted the voting machine company rigged the 2020 vote, resulting in a massive $787.5 million settlement — revealed infighting over the call.
The communications included clear concern about backlash from Trump’s team, leaving some viewers and analysts wondering if politics were factoring into decision desk calls — and whether they would this time around.
Politics or not, Fox was right in its early Wednesday call: Trump will indeed be the 47th president of the United States.
