TV Networks Called Florida While People Were Still Voting
Thirteen journalists said 39 times that all Florida polls were closed, while voters in the Central time zone panhandle were still casting ballots.
Washington Examiner · An inconvenient fact-check of Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth on its 20th anniversaryAt about 7:50 p.m. Eastern time on Nov. 7, 2000, control rooms at the major television networks made the same call within minutes of one another. Florida would go to Vice President Al Gore, and with 272 electoral votes, the presidency would go with it.
On screen, the map turned, the math was explained, and the race for the White House appeared to be over. In living rooms across the country, many viewers went to bed believing the election had been decided.
The problem was that voting had not finished. Polls were still open in Florida's panhandle, the western strip of the state that leans heavily Republican and runs largely on Central time, an hour behind the rest of Florida.
That is why the early call matters, because the rush to be first produced a basic geography mistake with national consequences. In the 80 minutes leading up to the projection, thirteen journalists on the national broadcasts insisted again and again, in 39 mentions in all, that balloting statewide ended at 7 p.m.
No one on the air seemed to account for the fact that Florida spans two time zones, and that 7 p.m. Eastern is only 6 p.m. in Pensacola and Panama City. Voters there were still casting ballots while the networks were telling the country that their state had already voted.
The networks had to take it all back. They rescinded their projections for Florida, and for the presidency itself, in one of the most embarrassing reversals in television news history.
Then the night swung the other way. At 2:15 a.m. Eastern, the networks gave Florida to George W. Bush, the governor of Texas, a result that would put him in the White House as the 43rd president. That call, too, would be disputed, but the lesson from the first mistake was simple, and it still applies: check the time zone before you call the race.
Questions people ask
Why is part of Florida in a different time zone?
Time zones in the United States generally follow lines of longitude, and the western Florida panhandle sits far enough west to fit more naturally with Alabama and Mississippi in Central time. The boundary runs near the Apalachicola River, so cities such as Pensacola and Panama City are on Central time while most of the state is on Eastern time.
Do networks still project winners before all polls close in a state?
Major networks now have formal policies against projecting a state while polls remain open there, and they coordinate through exit poll procedures and the Associated Press. They can still project a national winner while polls are open in western states, but they avoid calling an individual state with open precincts.
What happened after the networks took back the Florida call?
Florida remained too close to call, leading to a recount and weeks of legal fights over ballot counting, including disputed punch card ballots. The Supreme Court decided the case for Bush on Dec. 12, 2000, Gore conceded, and the final certified margin was 537 votes.