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“When it comes to Democrats, President Joe Biden got 41 votes, Dean Phillips got 4 votes, Marianne Williamson got 4 votes, and the non-committals got 39 votes. Just 2 between Joe Biden and the non-committals. It’s the difference in votes,” she said.

Tapper provoked Gallagher by asking what he had heard about the uncommitted vote. After she presented her numbers, analyst John King also gave her opinion.

“So it’s interesting,” he said. “Here’s the math she just said about Biden, no commitment…41, 39, about a tie, right?”

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That didn’t work. Her 44 percent of votes that went “unvoted” in a county, in a town, in a precinct was more than three times her final statewide percentage. This percentage itself was only slightly higher than in 2012. Last time, the incumbent Democratic president sought renomination. In fact, his 44 percent was far more than double his final percent in Washtenaw County itself.

In the first hour after polls closed, CNN broadcast four sets of precinct-level results. On average, the reported difference between Biden and “uncommitters” is 36 points off the final statewide margin and 29 points off the final result in the two counties counted. Ta. The difference between Donald Trump and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley was an average of 20 points behind the state’s overall results, and a whopping 54 points from each county’s results.

Mr. Tapper and Mr. King each added caveats to the discussion of early district numbers. These were just a few hundred of the roughly 2 million votes that would ultimately be cast in the two primaries. But…they still presented the numbers and suggested that some meaning might be gleaned from them.

Cable news networks, including but not limited to CNN, have long done so. Viewers will see the total votes counted up to that point and a large percentage indicating who the beneficiaries of the majority of the votes counted are. Only at the bottom of the screen or by a casual mention by the anchor do viewers learn that the result they are seeing constitutes a few percent of the expected total. There were still many votes to be counted, but the screen still displayed large double-digit percentages to indicate who was “in the lead.”

As we learned in 2020, this idea itself is deceptive and potentially dangerous. No one is in the lead for several hours after voting closes until officials finish counting the votes. The election has already ended and someone has won. I just don’t know who it is.

Depending on how votes are counted, it can give the impression that one candidate is winning, and then the other candidate is catching up. In the wake of the 2022 midterm elections, I felt a similar anger over how vote totals were displayed, so I created a chart showing how the outcome of Georgia’s Senate runoffs would change depending on how the results were counted.

For example, if we first counted the most favorable districts for Republican Herschel Walker, it would appear that Walker had a large lead over Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.). , it gradually eroded and suddenly Warnock won.

Again, this is fine in theory. In 2020, Trump used his Election Day lead in Pennsylvania to claim victory in the state, and he portrayed delays in counting mail-in ballots as evidence of a conspiracy to steal the election from him. did. He had never won Pennsylvania. By the time voting ended, Biden still had more votes. But President Trump used the story of how the vote-counting operation unfolded to strengthen conspiracy theories that led to the Capitol riot.

worst case scenario. But less sinister narratives can emerge from misleading vote totals as well. CNN, like many media outlets, was ready to talk about what the “noncommittal” vote would mean for Biden’s reelection. The results from his one precinct in Oakland County served as a starting point for that.

Television news has different demands than print. Even if nothing is happening, you have to show something. And technically, the precinct-level results are the actual results, the actual tally of votes. We need to show you how the process works, its mechanisms and updates until the vote counting is complete. But it makes no sense to read those results as if they show a statewide (or even county!) pattern. There is no point in reading out the results for a state with, say, 10% turnout. If you don’t know where those votes came from and what makes them good, it doesn’t mean much either.

What should have happened Tuesday night is that the Haley campaign should have brought up another part of the Gallagher report from Ann Arbor. She interviewed Jenny Rogers, the city’s vote counting official.

“The Republican vote is 73 votes for Nikki Haley, 23 votes for Donald Trump, and one no vote,” Rogers said.

For Haley, it’s 75%.

Mr. Trump ultimately won the state probably because — under other circumstances, he might argue — the election was fraudulent.