THIRD UPDATE, 11:31 PM ET: Fox News projected Joe Biden would win Arizona, a pickup of a state that Donald Trump won four years ago.
Jason Miller, a senior adviser for the Trump campaign, tweeted, “WAY too soon to be calling Arizona…way too soon. We believe over 2/3 of those outstanding Election Day voters are going to be for Trump. Can’t believe Fox was so anxious to pull the trigger here after taking so long to call Florida. Wow.”
Fox News called Florida earlier in the evening but other networks have not called it yet.
On ABC News, George Stephanopoulos said that although it was still early to establish how the results will ultimately play, said, “This is looking a little bit right now like a replay of 2016,” albeit the network has yet to call Arizona for Biden. Nate Silver, the Fivethirtyeight election expert, had moved Trump’s chances of winning to 33 percent, from 10 percent at the start of the day.
Grinding into the early morning on the East Coast, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin are still counting votes. In a reality that may take days, both campaigns seem resigned to no one claiming victory tonight and looking like a potentially protracted battle that has shades of the 2000 race between Al Gore and George W Bush.
SECOND UPDATE, 11:02 PM ET: Joe Biden was the projected winner of California, which comes as no surprise, on an evening that seems to have dashed Democratic hopes of a blue wave.
“There’s a lot of math to go,” MSNBC’s Brian Williams said after the call of the Golden State and Oregon and Washington.
Network anchors were starting to talk about no winner being known on Tuesday night and instead a long wait until states count the vote.
“What we are getting is people are sticking to their party lines for the most part,” said Joy Reid.
UPDATE, 9:40 PM ET: Democrats will retain control of the House of Representatives and expand their majority by at least five seats, Fox News’ Decision Desk projected.
The projection was made at 9:18 PM ET.
Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell easily won reelection to another term in the Senate, but the question was whether he would return as majority leader.
Democrats saw their first Senate seat slip of the night, as John Hickenlooper defeated Cory Gardner.
So far, network coverage of the results has been a big deep dive on data.
On Fox News, Chris Wallace talked of Trump’s lead in Florida and Biden’s underperformance among Hispanics. He thinks that the president’s warning about socialism resonated with Cuban Americans.
“I think that had an impact,” Wallace said. “I think just, you know, in the end, some people just feel more comfortable with Donald Trump as the leader over the next four years than with Joe Biden.”
PREVIOUSLY, 7:11 PM ET: The time has finally arrived, as the first polls closed in ket swing states that will decide whether Donald Trump is reelected or ousted in favor of Joe Biden.
Polls closed at 7 PM ET in Georgia and the eastern part of Florida, and North Carolina’s cutoff was scheduled for 7:30 PM ET, although some precincts had extended hours.
CNN called Indiana, where polls closed at 6 PM ET, for Trump, but that was expected.
Earlier, CNN and other outlets revealed the results of exit poll information that revealed what issues were most important to voters, but it was difficult to discern whether the data was more favorable to Trump or Biden.
Statistical guru Nate Silver cautioned, “Nothing I’ve seen or heard about the exit polls give me confidence that they’ve figured out how to balance the different types of votes that are coming in. Lots of weird, somewhat incongruous results based on what’s been reported. I would ignore.”
Networks were cautioning viewers not to read too much into the early returns, given the potential disparity in those who voted early or by mail or who voted in person. That was the case with Kentucky, which initially showed a Biden lead but it flipped before the final results were in. Most of the networks have been presenting results in context of the expected vote, rather than precincts reporting as they have done in previous cycles.