The Associated Press and television networks that projected former President Donald Trump as the winner of the Iowa caucus came under fire for calling the race before most votes were even counted.
The Associated Press called the race just about 30 minutes after voting began, projecting Trump as the winner with only nine of 1,657 precincts reporting results, or 0.54%, according to Axios. Fox News, NBC News and CNN all projected Trump as the winner before 9 pm as well.
Many Iowans at caucus sites had not yet had a chance to vote when smartphones and TVs began to buzz with news of Trump’s win, according to The New York Times. Though Trump’s win was widely expected, even his own campaign did not have time to open the doors at his victory party when the race was called earlier than expected, according to The Messenger.
“Are you kidding me?” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a Ron DeSantis ally, complained to reporters in West Des Moines. “They haven’t even started voting yet and heard all the speeches and A.P. calls it?”
The DeSantis campaign, which spent millions on a second-place finish that didn’t see the Florida governor win a single Iowa county, accused the networks of “election interference.”
“Absolutely outrageous that the media would participate in election interference by calling the race before tens of thousands of Iowans even had a chance to vote,” tweeted DeSantis spokesman Andrew Romeo. “The media is in the tank for Trump and this is the most egregious example yet.”
The criticism wasn’t limited to the Republican runner-up.
“Oh come on you cannot call a race before the voting is over, let alone before it starts,” tweeted Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii.
“It was a massive mistake for these media outlets to call the race before voting was clearly done,” tweeted Jonah Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Dispatch. “Not saying it changed basic contours of the results. But just incredibly myopic & misguided given years of talk about media overreach, democracy, rigging, etc.”
Polling guru Nate Silver said the call “doesn't show a lot of concern for the democratic process.”
“We may have a disputed outcome in November, or for that matter in future primaries/caucuses,” he wrote. “Networks provide an important check if e.g. partisan state officials refuse to call races. So this is actually fairly high stakes. Why blow your credibility tonight?”
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Iowa Republican Party Chairman Jeff Kaufmann said it was “highly disappointing and concerning” for networks to call the race “before the overwhelming majority of Iowans had even cast their ballot.”
"One of the key differences between the Iowa Caucus and a standard primary election is that Iowans have the chance to listen to presidential candidates or their surrogates and deliberate to make an informed decision," he said in a statement. "There was no need to rush one of the most transparent, grassroots democratic processes in the country."
The AP defended its early call, saying it was based on an analysis of early returns and a survey of voters who planned to caucus Monday night, both of which “showed Trump with an insurmountable lead.”
“Initial results from eight counties showed Trump with far more than half of the total votes counted as of 8:31 pm. ET, with the rest of the field trailing far behind. These counties include rural areas that are demographically and politically similar to a large number of counties that have yet to report,” the outlet said.
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Fox News host Bret Baier also defended his network’s call, saying they had enough data to make a call once the doors closed for the caucus sites.
Fox relied on a “rolling poll of caucus-goers, as well as the raw total of votes coming in, once that was overwhelming on the analysis of that, we could make the call in the caucuses when the doors closed for the caucuses,” Baier said in a clip flagged by Mediaite. “That is when the official time is to be able to characterize the race. And so that’s how that develops that early. Again, there’s a lot of controversy around it because people were inside and obviously had their phones, but that’s how the rules go for Iowa.”
Fox News analyst Brit Hume also defended the call.
“The reason why people worry about calling these races too soon is that in some places, people haven’t voted,” he said. “That makes a lot of sense in a general election where people walk in to catch about and leave, and if they hear about it ahead of time, they may decide not even to bother. But we’re talking here about people who come out on a cold night to gather at the caucus site, and the doors have closed and nobody can get in. And, you know, and so their opportunity to vote remains. It’s hard to believe that very many people would say, oh my goodness and the race has been called I’m going home. I don’t think so. So I think, you know, it’s the impact of it seems to me to be the premise is doubtful.”
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