US election: Fox News sets election night ratings record as Trump feuds with network over Arizona call

Fox News won the US election night ratings war on Tuesday, with almost 14m viewers tuning in to its coverage of the nail-biting — and still unresolved — race for the White House between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

Nielsen data recorded an average of 13.8m people watching Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum broadcast between 8pm and 11pm EST, an all-time record for a cable channel.

By comparison, CNN was the second most watched network with 9.1m viewers, followed by MSNBC with 7.3m, ABC on 6.1m and NBC on 5.6m.

In total, an estimated 56.9m people watched the events of a dramatic evening unfold.

But, despite turnout at the polls at its highest level since 1900, that audience total fell far short of the 71m who watched Mr Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 and the 66.8m who tuned in for Barack Obama’s victory over Mitt Romney in 2012 to secure his second term.

A chaotic night failed to provide a clear winner as many key states were forced to extend their vote counting after receiving an influx of mail-in ballots as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, with millions of people preferring not to take part in person to limit their risk of exposure to Covid-19 by queuing in long lines at polling stations.

Mr Biden, the Democratic challenger, is currently just six Electoral College votes shy of the 270 he needs to win the presidency with just four battleground states still to show their hand: Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

President Trump has already said that he intends to challenge the outcome, prematurely declaring victory in a speech at the White House in the early hours of  Wednesday morning before the counting had even been concluded, alleging that unspecified “fraud” was rampant without providing evidence and calling on the US Supreme Court to step in.

Mr Trump, a former TV personality himself and a keen student of ratings, might have been expected to cheer Fox’s triumph, the network having acted as a tireless champion of his candidacy in 2016 and throughout most of his tenure in the Oval Office.

He regularly calls into the breakfast show Fox and Friends, retweets clips of favourable coverage from its shows and is even personal friends with several of the network’s “big beast” anchors like Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs and Tucker Carlson.

But the president has grown increasingly frustrated with Fox’s reluctance to show unquestioning loyalty to his cause, frequently lashing out on Twitter over its negative polling during the election campaign and griping that the channel is “not what it was”, even giving preferential access to fringe right-wing media organisations like One America News Network and Sinclair Group as a rebuke.

Those tensions came to a head on election night when Fox called the red state of Arizona for Mr Biden, becoming the first media outlet to announce the upset shortly before 11.30pm EST.

“WAY too soon to be calling Arizona… way too soon,” senior Trump adviser Jason Miller tweeted angrily. “We believe over 2/3 of those outstanding Election Day voters are going to be for Trump. Can’t believe Fox was so anxious to pull the trigger here after taking so long to call Florida.”

“Words cannot describe the anger” within the president’s inner circle over the judgement, an insider told CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta at the same time.

Mr Acosta was just one of several DC journalists to report the rift.

Fox’s decision desk director Arnon Mishkin was ultimately called on air to explain the call to the channel’s anchors and commented: “I’m sorry. The president is not going to be able to take over and win enough votes to eliminate that seven-point lead that the former vice president has … We’re not wrong in this particular case.”

According to Vanity Fair, Mr Trump himself is understood to have phoned Fox owner Rupert Murdoch during the night and screamed at him, demanding an immediate retraction out of concern the early ruling could influence results in other states.

The notoriously immovable media baron refused and the announcement stood, with the Associated Press confirming soon after that the verdict was correct and that the desert state had indeed turned blue for Mr Biden.

Fox’s decision to make the call nevertheless infuriated supporters of the president in the state, several hundred of whom picketed a Maricopa County ballot-processing facility on Wednesday evening, chanting “Fox News sucks!”