new york
CNN
—

“Bounce the ball.” “Coin Flip”. “Throw up.” “Dead Heat”. “Stalemate.” On television and online, political pundits are running out of ways to tell that the presidential race is effectively tied.

But he has to keep repeating. As CNN’s Dana Bash said on “Inside Politics” Tuesday, “this race couldn’t be closer.”

In this final week of the campaign, the most important thing for the news media to communicate is uncertainty.

“We have a responsibility to not just say what the polls show, but to explain what they don’t do and what they can’t do,” ABC News Washington bureau chief and vice president Rick Klein told CNN. “Any suggestion that the outcome of this election is certain is not supported by the numbers.”

But some partisan media outlets are acting awfully safe. On the right, former President Donald Trump and many of his right-wing media allies are expressing unbridled confidence that the Republican will win next week. Fox News stars like Laura Ingraham and Jesse Watters are already talking on air about how Trump will implement his second term agenda.

“There is a real danger when the media falsely echoes the cameras and knowingly tells half the country that their candidate will win,” wrote conservative political columnist Matt Lewis on Monday. “People wake up to the results the morning after the election and they’re in disbelief.”

But it happened in 2020 and it could happen again now. CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan recently spent 24 hours absorbing pro-Trump media sources and concluded that “all these outlets say Trump can’t lose if the election is fair.” At the same time, he said, “The MAGA media is telling the public to expect the election to be stolen.”

Conversely, consumers of left-leaning media outlets may find it hard to accept that Trump has a real chance of regaining power. While MSNBC hosts aren’t sounding certain about a victory for Vice President Kamala Harris, they aren’t getting ahead of themselves the way Fox and its counterparts are. Trump is portrayed as so deranged and dangerous that liberal viewers are left to wonder, as former first lady Michelle Obama recently said, “Why is this race even close?”

Answering this question is a key responsibility for reliable news sources. That’s why CNN senior political data reporter Harry Enten is on TV morning, noon and night in the final days of the campaign.

“I spend more hours finding ways to say this race is close than New Yorkers spend in traffic,” Enten joked.

In his live Magic Wall photos, Enten pointed out the razor-thin margins in swing state polls and explained why anything from a Trump landslide to a Harris landslide is possible, along with plenty of very thin results in between they.

Journalists are usually most comfortable talking about what they know. But sometimes the story is what cannot be known. And this is one of those times.

“We’ve used almost every adjective for ‘almost’ and ‘even,’ but that’s the message every time,” Anthony Salvanto, CBS News’ executive director of elections and polling, told CNN.

Election fears and anxieties are especially high this year, but the principle of explaining all possible outcomes applies to every campaign cycle. “My goal in any election and with every poll is to understand why voters might swing one way or another,” Salvanto said. “Viewers won’t be surprised if they understand why what’s happening is happening.”

Salvanto played up another word that will be critical next week: patience. Even after all the polls are closed, there may still be uncertainty about the outcome because different states record votes in different ways.

“It may take time to get results,” he said, “so it’s important to convey that we are patient in our coverage.”