In the 2012 presidential election, it all came down to Ohio. When the state was called for Barack Obama, that paved the way for the networks to declare the President had been re-elected. And it all happened just after 11 p.m. ET. We dug up the 2012 TVNewser Election Night Live Blog to refresh our memory of the call times that night:
NBC/MSNBC – 11:12 p.m.
CBS – 11:15 p.m.
Fox News – 11:17 p.m.
CNN – 11:18 p.m.
ABC – 11:25 p.m.
Interestingly, something else we spotted in the live blog, just after MSNBC called the race for Obama, Chris Matthews said: “I’ve watched some of the ugly stuff in this campaign along ethnic and racial lines, perpetrated by people like Donald Trump and [John] Sununu, and around the edges by the candidate himself … all that, I have to call it crapola, all that stuff, didn’t have an effect in the North, apparently. We’ll see if it had an effect in the South, but he’s won it without the South.”
The 2008 election calls were slightly earlier, precisely at 11 p.m. ET. “It’s a great symbol for what America is all about,” Karl Rove said on Fox News that night, as the U.S. elected its first African American president. “We hope and pray for the success for our new president.”