After months of build-up, news media finally have the chance to report on the election results

The final answer may or may not come on Tuesday, but news organizations that have spent months covering the presidential campaign between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump finally have the opportunity to report on actual results.

Broadcast outlets, cable news networks, digital news outlets and one streaming service – Amazon – are all set aside Tuesday nights to deliver the news from their own operations.

The actual results will come as a relief to news organizations that had weeks — and an excruciatingly long voting day — to talk about an election campaign that polls have repeatedly shown to be remarkably tight. The first hint of what voters were thinking came shortly after 5:00 PM Eastern, when networks reported that exit polls showed voters were unhappy with the state of affairs in the country.

It’s still not clear whether that dissatisfaction will be due to Harris, the current vice president, or to former President Trump, who was voted out of office in 2020, CNN’s Dana Bash said.

Trying to derive meaning from anecdotal evidence

Otherwise, networks continued to show photos of polling places on Tuesday and try to extract wisdom from anecdotal evidence.

“Dixville Notch is a metaphor for the entire race,” said CNN’s Alyssa Farah Griffin, as she strained to draw meaning from the small New Hampshire community that reported its 3-3 vote for Harris and Trump in the early morning hours Tuesday .

MSNBC assigned reporter Jacob Soboroff to talk to voters waiting in line at a polling place near Temple University in Philadelphia, where actor Paul Rudd was handing out water bottles. Soboroff was called upon by a young voter to have his picture taken with himself and Rudd.

On Fox News Channel, Harris surrogate Pete Buttigieg appeared for a controversial interview with “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade.

“Is this an interview or a debate?” Buttigieg said at one point. “Can I at least finish the sentence?”

Former NBC News host Brian Williams started a one-night gig on Amazon to get results, and he already had a surprise guest at the California studio where he was operating. Puck reporter Tara Palmeri was scheduled to report from Trump headquarters in West Palm Beach, but the former president’s team was denied credentials to attend.

Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita, in revealing the ban, described her as a “gossip columnist” in a post on the social media site

Amazon said Palmeri was replaced at Trump’s Florida headquarters by New York Post reporter Lydia Moynihan.

Neither Axios nor Politico would immediately confirm reports that some of their reporters had been similarly banned, and the Trump campaign did not immediately return requests for comment.

New York Times strike impacts election night

A notable media story on election night – the Needle on The New York Times website – was jeopardized by a strike by technical staff at the paper.

The newspaper said early Tuesday that it was unclear whether it would be able to post the feature on its website during election night coverage because it relies on computer systems maintained by company technicians, including some who went on strike Monday in early September .

The Needle, as the name suggests, is a graph that uses voting results and other calculations to indicate the probability that one of the presidential candidates will win.

First introduced in 2016, it became a nightmare for supporters of Democrat Hillary Clinton, who the Times determined had an 85 percent chance of winning the election. Readers watched as the Needle evolved from predicting a “likely” Clinton victory early on election night, to “tossing” by 10 PM Eastern to “leaning Trump” at midnight. Trump won the election.

The Times said that “we will only publish a live version of the Needle if we are confident” that the computer systems it relies on for data are stable.

About 650 members of the Times’ Tech Guild went on strike early Monday.