• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, November 7, 2024

Early results show some 65.3 million households watched an average of just over two hours' worth of Presidential election night coverage -- 122 minutes, according to research by MiQ, a programmatic media company

MiQ sourcing for TV election viewership came from Vizio, Experian, Google Trends and NBC News. These results suggest party affiliation viewership was pretty much in line with how the Presidential election night went.

Around 26% of viewers in those homes were Republican-leaning, while 24.4% were Democrat-leaning. But MiQ also noted that 49.6% were “non-partisan.”

The latter might be a mystery to some and a clue to others -- especially in terms of how it might affect presidential TV ad campaigns.

It also might explain why the polls continue to get the Presidential election results so wrong, and why pollsters have a hard time getting better guidelines for voters, especially Republican-leaning voters.

Are certain voters shying away from revealing their true feelings, or something else, to pollsters?

The viewing public was told for weeks that the race would be extremely close -- similar to Joe Biden’s close win over then-President Trump in 2020 -- and that the race in those seven battleground states could this time also be determined by 80,000 people or so.

But this time around with Vice President Kamala Harris, it was much more. And with a different political party outcome.

Seven swing-state races gave Trump the win by a few percentage points -- with the margin or error around minus 3.5 percentage points for most polls.

Looking at one poll might show why things landed where they did: A PBS News/NPR/Marist Poll said the day before the election, Harris had a four-point lead over former President Trump -- 51% to 47%.

Twenty-four hours later on election night, Trump had the advantage of 71.7 million to 66.9 million votes. Trump also reversed GOP Presidential candidates' fortunes in recent years: Getting more overall voters than the Democratic contender.

Some analysts might wonder if Biden couldn’t have done better -- if he stayed in the race. Probably not. Polls in the summer showed he was much farther behind Trump, around six to perhaps eight percentage points or so. So changing to Harris was the right move, but perhaps not enough to put her in the top spot.

Exit polls say Trump improved with every demographic group versus the last time around: Young men, Hispanic voters, older non-college educated men, even suburban women. The only group he lost ground with was with college-educated women.

TV marketing and messaging? These concerns are always issues going forward to the losing side.

But perhaps some more revealing numbers might have helped with those TV ads. Maybe better polling is always figuring out who the real “non-partisan” and/or “independent” voters really are -- and what they want.