NBC is first with a splash of Reagan blue, but Cronkite scores
For millions of viewers who had settled in with snacks and drinks for a long night of watching election returns, it was like an eagerly awaited heavyweight championship that ends with a knockout eleven seconds into the first round. At 6 p.m. E.S.T., an hour before Election Night coverage got under way at the three networks, CBS News President Bill Leonard confidently collected a bet from a Carter backer, proclaiming, "It's gonna be an early night." At NBC, John Chancellor signed on at 7:00 with the prediction that "Ronald Reagan will win a very substantial victory tonight, very substantial." In fact, by the time ABC made the night's first official call—Reagan in Indiana, at 6:30, one minute ahead of NBC, two ahead of CBS—news executives at all three shops had exchanged hunches with one another. All three agreed that their Election Day "exit" surveys of voters leaving the polls pointed to a landslide victory for Ronald Reagan. Still there remained the painstaking process of reporting votes from selected precincts, in order to call the states one by one. At least, that's the way it was at CBS and ABC.
But something funny was happening on the 24-ft. by 14-ft. plastic and Plexiglas map at NBC, behind which a team of electricians waited to flick switches that would illuminate 7,324 light bulbs—red ones for Carter, blue for Reagan, white for Anderson. States were turning peacock blue faster than John Chancellor and his team could announce them. Looking over his shoulder at the epidemic of blue, David Brinkley observed: "It's beginning to look like a suburban swimming pool." Other NBC staffers took to calling it "Lake Reagan." New Hampshire, Vermont, Delaware and South Carolina (18 electoral votes) fell into the drink with a resounding splash at 8:15:21 p:m. E.S.T., and NBC flashed the words REAGAN WINS! on the home screens. Thus the network that has been mired in third place in ratings had won the prize for speed.
Over at CBS, Walter Cronkite, anchoring his last election before he retires next year, heard the news as he was reporting his network's latest electoral vote total for Reagan: 67. Viewers tuned to CBS may have been confused when Cronkite suddenly launched into a rather huffy defense of his network's methods of projecting winners. Taking a slap at "socalled exit polling, in which voters are interviewed when they leave the polling place," Cronkite insisted: "We make our estimates on the basis of sample precincts, of actual voters casting votes in those precincts."
The reason for this lecture was evident soon enough at all three networks: 90 minutes after the NBC call, President Carter walked into his Washington campaign headquarters and conceded defeat. Carter evidently was less cautious in recognizing reality than Cronkite. CBS finally gave the election to Reagan at 10:33 p.m., ABC at 9:52 p.m.