The Election Was 1 Week Ago. Here's What's Happened Since.

America went to the polls one week ago today and while experts initially predicted a deadlocked race, a clear winner emerged by the early morning hours. President-elect Donald Trump declared victory at 2:24 a.m. ET on Nov. 7 buoyed by news outlets like NewsNation and Fox News calling the race in his favor. Other outlets followed hours later, and Vice President Kamala Harris officially conceded the election Wednesday afternoon. The post-Election Night period has been awash in campaign postmortems, predictions about what happens next within Republican and Democratic circles, and think pieces ruminating on the news media's role over the next four years. Amidst that glut of commentary and hot takes, though, some specific narratives have taken shape. Here's what's dominating the conversation in the mediasphere one week later. Trump defied the polls... again Heading into Election Night, conventional pollster wisdom held that Harris and Trump would be locked in a close battle for the "Blue Wall" battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. But once Pennsylvania was called for Trump on Election Night—which led NewsNation and FNC to project the GOP candidate as the winner—that wall steadily collapsed. Wisconsin and Michigan both went in Trump's column by Wednesday afternoon, and by Friday he had completed a clean sweep of all seven swing states. The final Electoral College tally saw Trump capturing 312 electoral votes versus 226 for Harris, as well as a popular vote win—the first for a Republican presidential candidate since George W. Bush's re-election in 2003. With voters—not to mention journalists—anticipating a protracted counting process, the speed of Trump's decisive victory caught many off guard. That's led to continued speculation about the reliability of pre-election polling over the past week, although select pollsters themselves have argued that the industry at large should "feel good" about how they performed in this cycle versus 2020. Thanks to term limits, the 2028 presidential election will be the real test for polling accuracy in a post-Trump landscape. Harris and Biden are staying out of the spotlight Harris spent the weeks leading up to Election Day on a full court media blitz that included highly-rated interviews with Bret Baier and Anderson Cooper. But the vice president has largely—and understandably—been out of sight since her concession speech on Wednesday when she told supporters, "I am so proud of the race we ran and the way we ran it." Biden echoed those sentiments when he addressed the nation on Thursday, emphasizing that his administration planned to work with the incoming Trump team to ensure a peaceful transfer of power in January. "Campaigns are a contest of competing visions—the country chooses one or the other," he remarked. "We accept the choice the country made." Neither Biden nor Harris have announced any formal sit-downs with the press as they enter the final stretch of their White House tenure. But it's not unimaginable that one or both of them will book "exit interviews" with one or more networks ahead of the inauguration. CNN could be the outlet of choice since it hosted Biden's consequential debate in June as well as Harris' first interview after taking over the top of the ticket. Audiences are migrating to new platforms Then again, Biden and Harris could decide to bypass legacy media entirely and save their farewells for a podcast. The Trump team's pivot to podcasters like Joe Rogan and Theo Von has been credited with helping the campaign make inroads with younger voters, along with their embrace of new platforms like Twitch. It's similarly no accident that one of Harris' most impactful interviews was her appearance on Alex Cooper's blockbuster Call Her Daddy podcast. Election Night itself offered further evidence that audiences are migrating elsewhere for their political news. Ratings were down 25% compared to 2020 and plunged 41% from 2016. Of course, those numbers were for linear viewing; NBCUniversal News Group shared with TVNewser that NBC News Now and NBCNews.com saw a lot of sampling with the streaming newscast achieving its largest audience ever with over 100 million views. Meanwhile, Amazon's toe-dip in the news game, Election Night with Brian Williams, kicked up plenty of press, but the company has yet to unveil viewership numbers. Leave it to CNN media analyst—and TVNewser founder—Brian Stelter to ably sum up the challenges facing legacy media as social media platforms increasingly becomes news media platforms. "Election post-mortems should zoom out—way out—to the reality that web browsers, social networks and smart phones have introduced an almost infinite amount of competition for peoples' attention," Stelter wrote in Tuesday's edition of the Reliable Sources newsletter, adding: "Information about Donald Trump, Kamala Harris and other candidates trickled down, from primary sources to podcasters to parents and friends." The post-election media makeover begins Speaking of CNN, Chris Wallace kicked off the week by announcing his departure from linear television to explore opportunities in—where else?—podcasting and streaming. His departure comes ahead of anticipated layoffs at the network now that the election is in the rearview and CNN head Mark Thompson starts to implement more of his digital-first plans, including branded verticals and website paywalls. CNN isn't the only network that will look a little different after the election. Over at MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell is leaving her afternoon anchor's chair for a larger role at the NBCU News Group. Norah O'Donnell will soon make a similar move at CBS, with John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois set to take over the CBS Evening News. And Today's Hoda Kotb is leaving NBC News' flagship morning show in January with a new co-host yet to be announced. And those are only the departures that have already been disclosed. It's widely expected that the proverbial revolving door will keep spinning as 2024 gives way to 2025—and the Biden team is replaced by the once and future Trump administration.

Politics

The Election Was 1 Week Ago. Here's What's Happened Since.

A survey of the narratives dominating the mediasphere since Election Day

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Ethan Alter

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