Networks are preparing for their most important night of the year, an Election Night next week that will feature more data, more bells and whistles and, perhaps most important, just more coverage than any recent midterm cycle.
The robust plans across the linear landscape come as a blizzard of creators, podcasters and pundits on YouTube and elsewhere will be competing for eyeballs, offering their followers their own takes as the returns finally come in.
Traditional media still has the vast resources, whether that means deploying teams in response to an expanding map or preparing for polling disruptions or election misinformation. The night looks to be as much a referendum on Donald Trump as it will be a consequential decision on who will control Congress and a majority of governor races.
NBC News is planning 13 hours of coverage on the broadcast network, starting at 5 p.m. ET on Tuesday and running until 6 a.m. ET the next morning — the most ever the network has planned for the midterm.
Hallie Jackson, who will kick off the evening just as the first exit poll findings are released, suggested that the interest this cycle warrants it, with the unpredictability from an expanding map. “Nobody can write the story of Election Night before the ballots are cast, and that includes us. I mean, nobody,” she said. “And so we just got to stay flexible, stay nimble and see what the night holds. That’s what makes, I think, our coverage so interesting because we’re right there with our audience, unpacking this as it happens.”
As always, there will be a race to make major calls, with each network tasking separate decision desks to pore over the data. A difference is that for the first time since 2016, all the major networks will be relying on the same exit poll information, called The Voter Poll, from SSRS.
Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer, who again will be at the network’s Bill Board, said, “It’s great to be first; it’s a hell of a lot better to be right.”
All of the networks are making efforts to keep viewers within their universe of streaming channels, digital platforms and social media accounts — a familiar refrain is “meeting viewers where they are.” This battle for eyeballs means, for instance, that Fox News will have an AI-powered chatbot on its app, while the Ruthless podcast will have a three-hour Election Night streaming special on Fox Nation and Fox News Digital.
Hemmer said that for the viewer, “You turn on the TV in a moment’s notice and you’re like, ‘Where do I look?’ You’re sitting in your living room or you’re watching on your phone or whatever. Where do you put your attention? And that’s a big part of our job.”
Most of the networks are promising unique content on subscription platforms and mobile apps, as they seek to keep viewers within their branded universe. As in recent cycles, networks will offer behind-the-scenes looks at activity, with NBC News again doing a livestream of Steve Kornacki tracking the results, known as the Kornacki Cam, while MS NOW will have the VelshiCast, a YouTube channel stream of its data expert, Ali Velshi. This follows a contest that the channel had in which participants could win a limited-edition “Velshi vest.”
In addition to its linear coverage, CBS News is featuring the streaming Election 2026: The Nerd Show, hosted by Anthony Salvanto and Caitlin Huey-Burns, on CBS News 24/7, YouTube and other platforms. It’s designed to draw in political junkies looking for the latest in numbers, data and models.
David Reiter, SVP of CBS News 24/7, said: “I know we will be doing an amazing show on CBS. But that kind of assumption that you’ll do it and people will come is not as operative as it used to be. So we had to think differently this year, and our first foray into that is The Nerd Show.”
ABC News will be in a new studio at the network’s new headquarters, with a new set and a return to the legacy brand for election coverage, “Vote 2026.” ABC News Live will stream coverage throughout the day, and the new offerings include the app’s election playlist with a Verts feed, directing users to vertical video content.
Seni Tienabeso, VP of ABC News Live and specialized units, said: “Viewers will be seeking out our straightforward approach and brand, and will come to look to us to decipher fact from fiction and know that we’re the ones that we’re going to be delivering the election results in a straightforward way.” He, too, said that the multiplatform offerings are essential because “we know that the audiences are fragmented and getting those from different places, so we’re trying to meet them where they are, and we think that we can do that.”
CNN is planning round-the-clock coverage starting at midnight ET on Tuesday, with Elex Michaelson’s show from Los Angeles and coverage continuing throughout the early morning and the rest of the day. Among the other plans: John Berman and Harry Enten returning with the election evening show CNN Office Hours, a livestream that will include an audience Q&A.
At the local level, Tegna is rolling out a new mobile app tailored to its 51 markets. Elsewhere, SiriusXM is planning around-the-clock coverage through its political channels, with Stephen A. Smith broadcasting live from Washington, D.C., on the POTUS Channel and Megyn Kelly hosting on her channel, among other coverage. Politico is going live with results and analysis for an Election Night stream from its newsroom.
Piers Morgan is taking his YouTube series to Washington next week, with three nights of programs including a four-hour special. This will be the first Election Night for his company Uncensored, led by CEO Rashida Jones, formerly of MSNBC.
C-SPAN is supplementing its Election Night coverage — featuring full coverage and Democracy Dashboard results on its flagship channel — with simulcasts of The Young Turks with Cenk Uygur on C-SPAN2 and the PBD Podcast, hosted by Patrick Bet-David, on C-SPAN 3, representing voices from the left and the right, respectively.
C-SPAN CEO Sam Feist said: “The reality in 2026 America is that many Americans, particularly younger Americans, are consuming news and information from creators and from podcasts, and we decided that this would be an opportunity on Election Night, when we had two available networks. Because if you’re interested in politics and public affairs, you’re watching on Election Night.”
Creators in the game
This will be another cycle in which podcasters, independent journalists and creators will have a heavy presence on Election Night, reacting to the results or in certain cases providing their our streams of data.
The Bulwark will feature a non-paywalled livestream that includes The Next Level podcast at 7 p.m. ET, and plans for more panels throughout the evening, with updates from reporters in Ohio, Michigan, Texas, Georgia and from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The media company, which has been expanding in Trump 2.0, has a lineup including Tim Miller, Sarah Longwell, Bill Kristol and Jonathan V. Last.
For the first time, Jubilee Media will be hosting live coverage on YouTube, co-hosted by David Mauricio and Austin Julio Broughton of The Split. Two former network mainstays-turned-creators, Chuck Todd and Chris Cillizza, will host The Projection along with Decision Desk HQ, relying on the latter’s data to make their own calls. That just scratches the surface when it comes to plans for independent podcasters and hosts.
C-SPAN’s simulcasts of Uygur and Bet-David will feature their shows before live audiences. Feist said that he was impressed by their production values and that it was a chance “to expose their audiences to C-SPAN,” while noting that the live coverage will be a case of “traditional media meets new media.”
“It’s a recognition that these voices are really important in the body politic,” Feist said.
CBS News’ Reiter said that one of the rationales for The Nerd Show was a recognition that there is demand for a “deep dive into the data of particular appeal to those with a fervent interest in politics. ” Mark Lima, VP and Washington bureau chief for the network, said that The Nerd Show “is a comfortable extension of kind of how we try to reach audiences all the time. And I think we’ll do it in a way that’s that’s kind of very special.”
David Chalian, SVP and Washington bureau chief for CNN, said that its coverage “is going to be totally different because of the way in which our viewers are consuming information. That’s been evolving over time, but the sort of fully multimodal expression of our Election Night coverage is going to reflect that reality.”
He added: “I think all those influencers are also part of the political fabric now, and they are part of the conversation. And some of them have huge followings, and some of them play to one party or the other in their audiences. All of that is sort of part of the the political conversation. But I don’t know that they will all have the amount of actual data coming in the way that CNN does.”
MS NOW will be doing its first major Election Night since the split from Comcast last year, as it has built up its own newsroom. Shawna Thomas, who joined as political director in June, said: “I’m pretty confident that we know how to make this interesting. We know how to make this smart. We know how not to fall into traps that sometimes other news organizations do on TV on Election Day.”
She added: “This is about voters voting, and so I mean the polls help us make decisions up until that day. But then let’s look at the real numbers that are coming out that night.”
NBC News’ Jackson said: “Our north star is very much what’s happening on the ground with the data and with the results. We want to bring people into that. You’re not gonna see a lot of just yapping around the deck. It’s a lot of focusing on the results coming in, what they mean, what indications they can give us about some of the races that are still outstanding.”
In other words, after months of commentary and predictions about what is going to happen, the results take center stage.
Chris Stirewalt, politics editor at NewsNation, said his network’s approach will be “NFL Red Zone-style,” with a lot of calls of races. “It’s going to be transparent, and it’s going to be race after race after race,” he said. “The time for spin, the time for bloviation is over.”
In contrast to other networks, NewsNation is partnered with Decision Desk HQ, which was the first to call the presidential race for Donald Trump in 2024.
Stirewalt added: “If you are at a point where you need to be soothed or gentled by your Election Night coverage, and you don’t want to hear the bad news, then I’m sure there are places that you can go where people will tell you what you want to hear or don’t tell you anything at all. But I think most people would rather just be told, right? I think most people would rather just know what’s going on.”
The networks also point to another resource they will have: Reporting throughout the day across the country, interviewing voters. Although anecdotal, that information can at times be a tell.
MS NOW’s Thomas said: “We have to be clear on what our story is. We have to have to be clear on really trying to hone in on hearing from the voters. And we have to be clear on [the fact that] we have the bells and whistles to make interesting television and offer people the option. But it’s all competition.”
Big data dives
The Voter Poll will take the temperature across every state with a Senate or governor’s race — 45 in all — giving most of the networks a wider scope of information on why people voted the way they did. That is a contrast to previous midterms, when such information came from battleground states.
ABC News’ Tienabeso said, “There’s more data than there’s ever been.
“There’s going to be a lot more incoming to take in but also process and make understandable to the viewer. It’s really exciting, but that is a challenge,” he said. The network will have a simulator that can calculate odds — and now they change — as results come in.
Jenn Metz, executive producer of special events and news specials planning, said: “We’ve really been tracking over the past couple of years something that we’re calling the voter shift, and that’s how we can quantify voters in the states either voting more toward the right or more toward the left.” That was a trend in 2024, with a huge shift toward the Republicans, and this midterm may see one toward the Democrats, she noted.
The night will reflect what has become commonplace through election season — a focus on probabilities and win percentages, giving a peek at what decision desks are seeing and which way they are leaning before making a call.
CNN will debut Sightline, a real-time assessment of who is ahead in major races, that Chalian said will explain “how our analysts and data experts are able to project races or not, and why.” He said it will “give users and audiences an inside look as to why we’re not at the confidence level to be at to make a projection yet, but we see this race as favoring one candidate or the other and explain why that is at that moment in time.”
CBS News will have the FutureCast, giving insight into where House and Senate control are headed, changing as more results come in but also with a margin-of-error caveat.
Reiter said that the FutureCast was another step in being “much more transparent” about the information their data desk has. He said: “I hope you’ll never hear someone say, ‘It’s too early to call” or “There’s not enough information.’ We’ll we’ll provide you with at least a race rating, and then our FutureCast will tell you where our models think the night will end up.”
Fox News is expanding its use of augmented reality and voice recognition that will call up graphics via a key word, like a state, county or certain demographics.
“What matters in the end is what the numbers are for the red team and the blue team. Period. Full stop,” Hemmer said. “But since we are trying to tell a story in an interesting way, and technology has enabled us to imagine new things when it comes to our storytelling, that’s why we’re incorporating these new features.”
Hemmer said that on Election Night, “I find the biggest challenge is to frame the story as accurately as you can, given the intense flow of data you are seeing in real time. And then [you have to decide], how do you present this story in a way that makes sense, is understandable and is also accurate.”
Prediction markets
CBS News will feature data from Kalshi, its prediction market sponsor, reflecting the increasing presence of betting in political races. Reiter said that the prediction market will be another data point, and “it’ll be really interesting on Election Night to see not only you know as the votes come in, as we get the exit polls, but to see where are the prediction markets and how are they changing, and to be able to discuss with some of their really smart folks why they think that’s happening.”
CNN’s Chalian said that prediction markets “have grown more sophisticated over time and have certainly entered the chat, if you will, in this election season in a way they had not before.” But he cautioned that it was not a “standalone data point. It’s one of a gazillion data points out there, and so you got to feed it into the entire mix of everything.”
The midterm also could be a test as to how much importance prediction markets have in gauging voter sentiment.
NewsNation’s Stirewalt said that “we have a lot of evidence now that tells us that betting markets are lagging indicators, not leading indicators” and not “materially different from Fan Duel or DraftKings.”
Fox News’ Hemmer said: “There could be value in them. I’m not entirely disregarding them, but I would much rather rely on data that I am seeing and that our team is receiving rather than an outside source to give me a forecast that I can’t prove.”
Election Fraud: Real or Fake?
Networks say they are prepared for the possibility of election disputes, whether that be in poll disruptions, legal challenges or fraud claims, with reports that the Justice Department plans to send an expanded number of election monitors to polling locations. Most networks have teams of legal reporters and election-integrity experts at the ready.
Just as important is context. ABC News’ Tienabeso said that includes knowing whether something that is happening is “of national significance or this is something that happens every election cycle.”
Metz said that also includes the vote count and informing viewers that “what we’re seeing is is what it what it should be, and to just keep reassuring the viewers as the night goes on that if in fact what’s going on is normal, this is normal, and this is how you know the the vote process works. We’re watching democracy play out in real time.”
CBS News’ Lima said that their voter-monitoring Democracy Desk is “going to be watching very carefully for any anomalies that might happen, anything that might affect the votes in various states. That’s something in these last couple election cycles we really had to pay attention to as well. And obviously, we’ve seen the start of some of that and accusations already, and we’re going to be paying really close attention to the vote.”
The Expanding Map
This week came new polling showing an unexpectedly tight race in South Carolina, where Republican Darline Graham, appointed to the seat after the death of her brother Lindsey Graham, is running against Democrat Annie Andrews.
The expanding map of close races, particularly in the Senate, has forced networks to dispatch more reporters to spots deemed safe for Republicans six months ago.
MS NOW’s Thomas said that “even as we started to lay out where we wanted reporters for Election Night and the weekend before the last round of campaigning, that list has changed a little bit over the course of the month as we make sure we are in the right places to tell the story of this election.”
C-SPAN’s Feist said that its Road to the Capital project started with about 60-70 races, but that number has “expanded significantly.”
“We’ve had to deploy additional resources and to cover races we never thought we would be covering on 2026 Election Night,” he said. The network is relying on their crews and embeds as well as other news organizations to capture feeds from dozens of campaign headquarters.
Just the planning the days before the election has been a scramble, as Trump rallies for Kansas and Iowa were canceled in favor of tele-rallies, then they were back on.
“The map is challenging because so much of it this year is playing on what had been reliably Republican turf,” CNN’s Chalian said. “So it’s not as if you can approach the Election Night [by assuming] ‘Oh, the red states will stay red, the blue states will stay blue. Here are the purple states.’ Instead, the actual battlefield of competition is taking place in a lot of deep-red-territory states, states that Donald Trump won by double digits just two years ago, and they’re now the ones that are like going to be determinative, and so it sort of gives it a different kind of element, some new places we have not necessarily been focused on at sort of the heart of political competition in America in the last few years.”
NewsNation’s Stirewalt said: “We have, relatively speaking, such a wide range of potential scenarios that we just have to be prepared for all of it, right? So given the data that we have, we could be looking at a red wall. We could be looking at a blue wave. We could be looking at a blue tsunami. All are in play, and some more probable than others, but all in play. So we really have to be ready for different scenarios.”
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