After a marathon Election Night, former President Donald Trump has become President-elect Donald Trump for the second time in eight years. The Republican candidate declared victory in the early morning hours of Nov. 6 and a majority of news networks have also called the race in his favor over Vice President Kamala Harris.
Anchors, correspondents, analysts, and behind-the-scenes journalists and crew tracked Trump’s path back towards the Oval Office across multiple hours of live television. TVNewser gathered morning after reflections from some of those Newsers as this election cycle ends and the country’s gaze turns towards January’s inauguration.
Linsey Davis ABC News Live Prime and World News Tonight Sunday anchor
The most memorable part for me—and what I’m truly grateful for—was the opportunity to cover Election Night for our audience with the best team in the business, both those in front of the camera and those behind the scenes. I’m especially proud of the years of reporting and preparation that came together cohesively last night.
Ed O’Keefe, CBS News senior White House & political correspondent
For me, 2024 reminded me of what we saw in 2016 for Democrats: early warning signs of a bad night, and then confirmation of a loss. Vice President Harris should have been able to perform more strongly in northern Virginia and she didn’t. Hillary Clinton had the same challenge in 2016. Both won the state, but narrowly. The early returns from North Carolina and Georgia also weren’t giving VP Harris the mix she needed to make it happen and the details being shared by her campaign suggested they were diving for any signs of encouragement in the numbers. But, more than anything, we should marvel and appreciate that tens of millions of votes were cast and counted so efficiently and peacefully. We remain a model for the world.
Sandra Smith, Fox News co-anchor America Reports
A key point in the night for me was just before 7 p.m. as polls were closing in Georgia. We were comparing our Fox News Voter Analysis to 2020 benchmarks and began to see that Harris was underperforming Biden’s 2020 results in some key demographics in the battleground state. This was one of the earliest signs of the night that perhaps the race for the White House was moving in Trump’s favor. And as the results rolled in, our FNVA data was backed up by the actual votes coming in from the Peach State.
Elizabeth Vargas, NewsNation co-anchor of special election coverage
It is the one night when it is not the polls, or the prognosticators who speak, but the American people. It was a great honor to watch the votes roll in and see the greatest democracy on earth in action. The people finally get their chance to speak via their votes, and it is they who get the final say.
Geoff Bennett, PBS News Hour co-anchor
The most challenging aspect of Election Night 2024, in the final analysis, won’t be the nearly 10 hours of rolling live coverage we helmed for PBS News—demanding though it was. I think the challenge comes in the days ahead when all of us as journalists take stock of the voter sentiment we accurately captured and reflected in our coverage leading up to Election Day versus what we missed.
Amna Nawaz, PBS News Hour co-anchor
There’s no other single night in which the country and the world are so deeply invested and anxious to learn one answer: who won. The biggest challenge is to keep calm, to not get ahead of what you know, and let the math and facts lead the way. I’m extraordinarily proud of our entire PBS News team across broadcast and digital who did just that.
Maritsa Georgiou, Scripps News anchor
Elections always bring challenges and surprises when you’re live on an anchor desk for hours. There was so much speculation about what would and wouldn’t happen, but so many people anticipated the race might not be called until days later. We were fully prepared for that scenario, until we started to see the Harris camp’s path to 270 start to dwindle. We knew North Carolina and Georgia could be bellwethers and once the projections of those states came down, we had a clearer picture of how the night would go. The moment we knew it was over for Harris was when her campaign sent out its co-chair to say she wouldn’t be speaking until Wednesday.
One of the most memorable moments can also be labeled the most challenging, as our partners at DDHQ called North Carolina and Georgia hours before most others. That prompted a flurry of text messages and online responses that questioned the accuracy of the call. Every one of us in studio was getting inundated with text messages asking about different scenarios and predictions. Like in all elections, nobody has a perfect crystal ball, but the consensus on our desk was that the polls got this one right.
