Brit Hume
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HUME: We've had a pretty good record with projections. Of course, we had the famous controversial 2 o'clock in the morning call for Bush in Florida in 2000, which turned out at long last to be correct. But we certainly had no idea when we made that call what was about to occur.
TIME: How has technology changed election night for the networks?
HUME: One thing it has done unmistakably: We used to be able to get a pretty generous look at exit polling early on. But you can't do that anymore because it immediately lights up the Internet. The other thing technology has changed is that we're seeing the aches and pains in some quarters with the voting machines, although my own personal take on that story is that it is wildly overblown. If you've ever voted on an electronic machine, you've got to be seriously dopey not to be able to manage that, for a nation that relies as much as we do on ATMs. People will say to you: You get a receipt when you go to an ATM. But if you ever go to an ATM, what do you see all over the floor? Discarded receipts. Nobody ever pays any attention to them. You wait for your statement to come in. And we don't have a national problem with ATMs. So it's difficult for me to understand why these much-less-complex transactions such as voting machines could really be a serious problem. But I don't know how you'd ever examine that in the context of what it used to be like with paper ballots, when the problems may have been less visible. But that's just a personal take on that. The advent of the blogs has had an effect and the blogs from time to time will affect the national perception of an issue in a very indirect way. When some smart blogger seizes onto some key point or notices something and gets something started, it eventually catches on in the mainstream media and then it's all over the place.
TIME: How many Election Nights do you figure you've done, print and broadcast?
HUME: I really didn't have to cover Election Night when I was a print reporter. I've done every one since '74. I was a consultant to ABC News at the time. I was kind of out on my own, working for ABC's documentary unit. From '76 forward, I was a reporter on every Election Night. In '78 and '80, I was doing the House races from the Hill. I did the Senate all through the '80s until I was at the White House. I was at the White House into the mid-'90s, and then I've been the anchor of Election Night at Fox ever since I got here.
TIME: Does Election Night get old hat, and do you have any Election Day or Election Night traditions or superstitions?
HUME: I don't have any superstitions. It CAN get old, and it's a very great danger, because the magic ingredient in journalism is enthusiasm. Reporters who are enthusiastic and passionately interested in the stories that they're doing do better work. If you've lost interest, you're going to fail, no matter how much you know or how interesting you might be on other things. It's a struggle to maintain your interest level. Sometimes the outcome of an election is foretold, as it was for me when I was covering the Bush White House in '92. I could see that thing coming. There was no doubt about it. It was just a matter of standing there and watching the loser lose. It was a little boring.
TIME: Do you feel you have a pretty good sense of what's going to happen Election Night?
HUME: Yeah, but I'm less sure of it than I was 24 or 36 hours ago. The late polling has indicated what I consider to be an unexpected trend toward the Republicans. Surprising numbers on a certain number of internals: One showed the Republicans had pulled even with the Democrats on the handling of Iraq, which is an astonishing number. It may not be right, but it does suggest a trend in that direction. If that's true, it could be make a big difference. Of course, the wild card in the deck is this whole issue of how big a lead you can surmount with an exceptional turnout operation. Nobody really knows the answer to that. My inclination is that it has to be really close for that to be decisive. And it's beginning to look like it's closer. Could it get close enough by tomorrow morning? Who knows?
TIME: Thank you for making time for us.
HUME: You bet.