Fox News second-guessed calling Arizona for Biden. It was 100% election night’s best moment

Arnon Mishkin, the director of the Fox News decision desk, talks about making the call for Joe Biden in Arizona.

 (Photo: Courtesy of Fox News)

In a surprise move on Tuesday night, Fox News, alone among networks, called Arizona for Joe Biden over President Donald Trump, royally ticking off the Trump campaign, reportedly and perhaps understandably.

The network made the call with Biden ahead by 7 percentage points in the race, but with hundreds of thousands of votes yet to be counted in the state, something that chief White House correspondent John Roberts noted when talking to anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, who seemed perplexed by the call.

It made for great TV.

Fox News called Arizona for Kelly and Biden before anyone else

The network called the U.S. Senate race for Mark Kelly over Sen. Martha McSally, but that didn’t kick up nearly as much controversy.

Whom do you turn to in this situation? If you’re Fox News, you turn to Karl Rove.

Perfect.

Rove, you may recall, argued in 2012 against the Fox News call of Ohio for Barack Obama — argued so much that then-anchor Megyn Kelly made a famous stroll down the hallway to talk to the network’s decision desk about how and why they made the call.

For the record, the decision desk was right that night — Obama won Ohio, and the election.

I never thought I’d write this, but they could have used someone more like Kelly on Tuesday night.

Rove, surprisingly, took issue more with the timing than the call itself.

“I’m not certain I disagree with the call,” he said. “But I think maybe it’s a little bit premature. … This is one where a little bit of caution might be useful.”

Fox brought on its decision desk director to talk through the calls

Conservative contributor Katie Pavlich — a University of Arizona graduate — said of the White House, “They are livid.”

It’s their default state, but yeah, you’d think so.

Baier then brought on Arnon Mishkin, the director of the Fox News decision desk, to explain things. If you’re wondering about the tenor of the conversation, it began with Baier saying, “We’re getting a lot of incoming here, and we need you to answer some questions.”

Mishkin, calm and maybe a little bit goofy, was ready. Are you 100% sure about the call and when and why you made it, Baier asked?

“Absolutely,” Mishkin said without hesitation. “We made it after basically a half-hour of debating, ‘Is it time yet?’ Because it’s been clear for a while that the former vice president is in the lead in Arizona and was most likely to win the state. It has been in the category that we call ‘knowable but not callable’ for about an hour. We finally called it.

“Right now, yes, there are some outstanding votes in Arizona. Most of them are coming from Maricopa (County), where Biden is in a very strong position, and many of them are mail-in votes, which we know from our voter analysis Biden has an advantage.”

Mishkin then addressed the Trump campaign’s complaints.

“What I think we’ve heard from the White House is they need just to get 61% of the outstanding vote, and there are 870,000 outstanding votes and they’ll be getting that,” he said. “That’s not true. The reality is that they’re likely to get only about 44% of the outstanding votes that are there.”

Thus, the call.

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Last SlideNext Slide ‘I’m sorry, but we’re not wrong in this particular case’

“I’m sorry,” Mishkin said, “the president is not going to take over and win enough votes to eliminate that 7-point lead that the former vice president has.”

Mishkin knows his audience — he apologized again.

“I’m sorry, but we’re not wrong in this particular case.”

Baier pressed again.

“You’re 100% sure?”

“Yes.”

Mishkin apologized yet again, and Baier said, “You don’t have to be sorry.”

Uh, really? Mishkin knows what’s what.

“The president is not happy,” he said.

Well, it is a day ending in Y, after all. But viewers looking for any semblance of certainty in a night that lacked it almost everywhere else sure should have been.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk.

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