The Press: The Winner Is … Is …

The morning after, the early edition of the Milwaukee Sentinel was selling secondhand for $20 a copy, the Chicago Tribune was preparing an editorial reminding readers of its own DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN gaffe, two television networks were sharing their humiliation with an audience of millions, and Jimmy Carter had snatched a memorable psychological victory in the Wisconsin Democratic primary. All this because in their race to be first, ABC and NBC had declared Congressman Morris Udall an upset winner instead of what he was about to be, a game loser.

It began at 8:27 p.m. CST, just 27 minutes after the Wisconsin polls closed last Tuesday night. ABC’s Harry Reasoner interrupted The Rookies to say that Udall was headed for a surprising victory over Governor Carter. For a while, NBC held off. Then, at 9:22 p.m., John Chancellor announced Udall would be the winner by “a modest margin.” That left CBS the lone TV network holdout. CBS steadfastly refused to concede anything except that the race was “extremely close” until 1:30 a.m., when it became clear that Carter had eked out a victory and Walter Cronkite could crow, “Some other networks predicted that Udall would win [and] we did not predict that here.”

By then the damage was done. Following the two networks, half a dozen major newspapers, including the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the New York Daily News and the Sentinel, went to press with early editions whose bold headlines proclaimed Udall the winner. Bolstered by optimistic projections from some of his staff, Udall gave a short victory speech (“How sweet it is!”) to a throng of jubilant supporters—and headed off to bed.

Heavy Switch. Watching the early bad news up in his room at the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee, Carter turned to Barry Jagoda, a former CBS producer who coordinates coverage of the Carter campaign with the networks. “How often are they wrong?” he asked. “Seldom,” Jagoda replied. “Well, I’m satisfied,” said Carter. “I never like to finish second. But I think we’ve done well here.” Half an hour later, at 10:30, he went down to the ballroom, addressed his disappointed backers and offered his “tentative congratulations” to Udall.

What went wrong at NBC and ABC?

NBC Consultant Richard Scammon put the blame on “a heavier switch than we’d anticipated in rural areas.” ABC’S Walter Pfister shrugged it off as “a fluke, an anomaly.” All three networks base their projections on a model-precinct system. When the results of those precincts are analyzed, they are supposed to give an accurate projection for a state. But ABC and NBC, in their haste to post a winner, took a gamble when the race was too close to call. At the time ABC projected Udall, the News Election Service (see following story), which supplies the networks with precinct tallies, had counted only 2% of the vote.

NBC was no better off, but for a different reason. It has had computer trouble since the New Hampshire race, and was using a manual analysis of results. Man did no better than machine, though NBC is convinced it would have seen the closeness of the race had its computer been operational. CBS was saved by nothing more complicated than proper caution and a set of sample precincts that more accurately weighed the rural vote.