Donald Trump’s party is fighting to hold Congress, and the network anchors keep calling the Republicans finished.
The networks insist they only report what the polls tell them.
And one stopwatch caught them aiming something at Donald Trump’s most loyal voters.
A Stopwatch Caught the Networks Picking a Side
The Media Research Center timed every campaign story on the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening newscasts from September 28 through October 26. Its analysts clocked statements from anchors, reporters, politicians, and voters alike.
The networks aired 56 minutes and 44 seconds of bad news for Republicans. Democrats got 18 minutes and 53 seconds of the same treatment.
Three to one. And the networks ran that ratio while early voting was already underway across much of the country.
ABC’s World News Tonight carried the heaviest load with 23 minutes and 49 seconds of Republican trouble. NBC Nightly News followed at 16 minutes and 35 seconds, and the CBS Evening News trailed close behind at 16 minutes and 20 seconds.
Good news for the GOP added up to about seven minutes. Most of it came from sound bites of President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, administration spokespeople, Republican candidates, and voters. The reporters themselves rarely volunteered any.
But the anchors never ran short on one storyline. Night after night, viewers heard that Republicans were running scared in their own red states, dragged down by Trump’s approval numbers, prices at the pump and the grocery store, and the Iran war.
CBS anchor Tony Dokoupil opened one October broadcast by announcing Trump was back on the trail “not in an effort to gain ground on Democrats but to protect what has historically been Republican-friendly territory.”
Correspondent Ed O’Keefe followed from Nebraska with a fresh CBS poll and a verdict of his own: “He understands the GOP candidates are struggling because of the state of the economy.”
And when Politico got hold of Trump-endorsed Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton grumbling to donors, all three networks jumped. “I don’t control the message or what we’re doing,” Paxton reportedly said. His campaign told Politico he meant outside super PACs.
The Democrat Scandals Producers Left on the Floor
The other column looks a lot thinner, and Democrats didn’t exactly have a quiet fall.
Troy Jackson, the Democrat Senate nominee in Maine, told an NBC-affiliated station that some Mainers won’t call the Gaza war a genocide “only because, you know, they’re Jewish.” He apologized for the generalization the next day while standing by the genocide charge. The Big Three evening newscasts never touched it, according to MRC.
Xavier Becerra, the Democrat running for governor, told a nationally televised CNN debate audience that his parents came to this country with $12. His mother did come from Mexico. His father’s obituary lists Sacramento as Manuel Becerra’s birthplace in July 1928.
Becerra leans on the fact that his father grew up in Tijuana after the family moved there during the Great Depression. A tale about two immigrants arriving with pocket change loses some shine when one of them held an American birth certificate. The evening newscasts let the whole thing slide.
Minnesota Democrat Senate candidate Peggy Flanagan drew scrutiny over what MRC called multiple connections to the state’s fraud cases, along with a grade-inflation flap. Zero evening news minutes there, too.
NBC’s Tom Llamas did press Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed about old posts from his half-sister, including one that read, “My family has long been MB.” ABC and CBS left those posts alone.
The networks also covered the Justice Department’s search of Representative Ilhan Omar’s home in Washington, DC. But ABC’s Jay O’Brien made sure viewers heard the department “traditionally avoids taking public steps in political investigations within 60 days of an election,” then let Omar call the whole thing “political intimidation.” Prosecutors haven’t charged Omar with any crime.
So even the Democrat trouble arrived with a pillow underneath it.
The 6:30 Crowd Is Exactly Who Trump Needs at the Polls
Here’s the piece of the puzzle most media studies skip. Who actually sits through these broadcasts?
Nielsen counted roughly 8.4 million viewers for ABC, about 6.5 million for NBC, and just under 4 million for CBS during the week of September 21. That’s close to 19 million Americans a night.
ABC counted about 1.15 million of its viewers in the 25-to-54 bracket advertisers chase. Fewer than one in seven.
Nielsen’s weekly releases don’t publish a full age chart, so nobody should pretend to know the exact split. But anybody who has sat through the commercials during the dinner-hour news, the ones for arthritis cream and Medicare plans, can make a pretty good guess.
Those viewers are the folks who show up for midterms. They don’t need a pop star’s text message to find their polling place, and in recent midterms they’ve leaned Republican.
And that’s the audience absorbing three minutes of Republican doom for every one minute of Democrat trouble. Tell a retired farmer enough times that his side is finished, and maybe he skips the drive into town. Maybe not. MRC can clock the minutes, but no stopwatch counts the voters who stayed home, and this crowd has tuned out the anchors before.
A Newsweek Editor Gave Away the Game Two Decades Ago
The networks have run this play before.
In July 2004, Newsweek’s Evan Thomas told the panel on Inside Washington, “The media, I think, wants Kerry to win.” He guessed the press glow might be worth “maybe 15 points” before later knocking his estimate down to five.
His publisher got even further ahead of the voters. An early online listing for his campaign book promised a look at “the 2004 Kerry presidential victory.” The finished book hit shelves as Election 2004: How Bush Won and What You Can Expect in the Future.
In the fall of 2024, the same three newscasts gave Kamala Harris 78 percent positive coverage and Donald Trump 85 percent negative coverage, according to MRC. And Trump won anyway.
The midterm version swaps cheerleading for gloom. A Republican who stays home out of discouragement helps a Democrat every bit as much as an excited Democrat who shows up.
Gas prices aren’t imaginary, and no honest newscast could skip them. But a newscast that lingers for weeks on Republican worries and skips a Democrat Senate nominee’s crack about Jewish voters has picked a favorite.
CBS correspondent Nancy Cordes did air one exception, a medical device manufacturer named Trevor Theriot. He credited research and development credits in Trump’s “big beautiful bill” and said tariffs pushed him to build more of his products in America. “We’re growing at eight percent,” Theriot said. “To me, that’s success.”
Stories like his barely made the rotation.
And expect the same anchors to call any Republican hold on November 3 a stunning surprise.
Troy Jackson gave his interview to NBC’s own station in Portland, Maine. NBC Nightly News never mentioned it.
Sources: Media Research Center/NewsBusters; Bangor Daily News; CNN; Washington Post; New York Times; Los Angeles Times; Sacramento Bee/Legacy.com obituary of Manuel Becerra; Nielsen ratings via Adweek TVNewser and ABC News; New York Sun; National Review; Fox News