CBS News Election Coverage
Dan Rather, who has covered every major election since 1964, will anchor CBS News' comprehensive coverage of Election Night 2004 and will be joined by a group of some of the most experienced political reporters in broadcast journalism, as well as correspondents and reporters in key battleground states.
Reporting live on Election Night '04, Tuesday, Nov. 2 (7:00 PM-2:00 AM, ET), will be Bob Schieffer, Ed Bradley, Lesley Stahl, John Roberts, Bill Plante, Jim Axelrod, Byron Pitts and Mika Brzezinski, among others. CBS News coverage will continue beyond that time if events warrant.
In addition, CBSNews.com will provide the fastest, most reliable, most user-friendly election results available anywhere. Live results, updated every 90 seconds, for the Presidential, Congressional and gubernatorial races will be available down to the county level. CBSNews.com users will see projections as soon as they're made by the Network's Decision Desk. The same complete, detailed national and state exit poll data used by CBS News producers and correspondents will be available on CBSNews.com as soon as the polls are closed. To provide context to the data, experts from the CBS News Election Unit will update clear, user-friendly stories on voter trends and behavior throughout the evening. At the end of the night, CBSNews.com will feature opinion and analysis commentary from our partners from across the entire political spectrum. CBSNews.com will also Webcast all of the key victory celebrations and concession speeches.
Several important operational and editorial changes will be in place at CBS News this election night, as they were for the 2002 midterm elections: the Decision Desk will be located in the Election Night studio to facilitate constant contact among the reporters, producers and analysts, and a senior-level CBS News executive, Linda Mason, will oversee the desk's activity; CBS News Correspondent Mika Brzezinski will report live from the Decision Desk to explain to viewers how CBS News is making its projections; more precise language will be used to describe some races if CBS News feels it cannot make a call, including "too close to estimate" or "not enough votes to estimate," among others; even more sources will be checked for vote tallies; reporters will be positioned on the ground in closely contested states to provide further information to the Decision Desk; and no estimates will be made until after the scheduled poll closing times in each state.
Rather will anchor the CBS News coverage, which will include all Presidential, Senate and key House of Representatives election results, as well as votes on key referenda. With sophisticated, state-of-the-art technology developed for CBS News, Rather will have massive amounts of quantitative data literally at his fingertips: by touching a computer screen, he will have access to up-to-the-minute vote counts in a variety of categories instantly. A large monitor will simultaneously display the information to viewers.
Other members of CBS News' coverage team and their "beats" for the evening are:
Additional CBS News correspondents and reporters will be positioned in key battleground states, including Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and others.