The New York Times and Fox News election needles are completely at odds
Needle, needle, on the wall, who's the fairest candidate of all?
Turns out, it totally depends on which needle you're asking. The New York Times rolled out its infamous election needle again on Tuesday night, with a competing needle available for election watchers on Fox News. But depending on which you were looking at, you'd have a very different impression of how the night is going for your preferred candidate:
Let's, uhh, take a closer look at that:
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Nate Cohn, of The New York Times, offered some insight into why his publication's needles specifically might be skewing so much toward Trump. "[A]ll three states are in the same model," he explained, asking rhetorically if the results in Florida might "bias us a bit in [North Carolina and Georgia], especially in Latino areas? I think that's at least possible in [Georgia] burbs."
Alexander Panetta of The Washington Post added his two cents, too: "Based on my comparison of counties [in North Carolina] in 2016 to counties in 2020 the Fox one makes more sense," he tweeted. "Except — it means SFA unless you know A) what the mail votes vs. in person are and B) how the votes by different methods break down."
Maybe for 2024, we can get additional needles that project the odds of the needles being right?
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.
-
World’s oldest rock art discovered in IndonesiaUnder the Radar Ancient handprint on Sulawesi cave wall suggests complexity of thought, challenging long-held belief that human intelligence erupted in Europe
-
Claude Code: the viral AI coding app making a splash in techThe Explainer Engineers and noncoders alike are helping the app go viral
-
‘Human trafficking isn’t something that happens “somewhere else”’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
China’s Xi targets top general in growing purgeSpeed Read Zhang Youxia is being investigated over ‘grave violations’ of the law
-
Panama and Canada are negotiating over a crucial copper mineIn the Spotlight Panama is set to make a final decision on the mine this summer
-
Why Greenland’s natural resources are nearly impossible to mineThe Explainer The country’s natural landscape makes the task extremely difficult
-
Iran cuts internet as protests escalateSpeed Reada Government buildings across the country have been set on fire
-
US nabs ‘shadow’ tanker claimed by RussiaSpeed Read The ship was one of two vessels seized by the US military
-
Maduro pleads not guilty in first US court hearingSpeed Read Deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores pleaded not guilty to cocaine trafficking and narco-terrorism conspiracy
-
Iran’s government rocked by protestsSpeed Read The death toll from protests sparked by the collapse of Iran’s currency has reached at least 19
-
Israel approves new West Bank settlementsSpeed Read The ‘Israeli onslaught has all but vanquished a free Palestinian existence in the West Bank’
