Which TV News Anchors Made the Biggest Impact on Election Night?

Some of the nation’s biggest TV anchors saw the plans they had for Election Night change almost as soon as the first exit polls came in.

Early preparations for election coverage had called for hours and hours spent on sifting through what was supposed to be a neck-and-neck race. Instead former President Donald Trump quickly emerged as president-elect Donald Trump, while Vice President Kamala Harris’ supposed foundations among “Blue Wall” states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania crumbled throughout the evening.

More from Variety

The biggest audience tuned in to Fox News Channel, according to early Nielsen estimates that may change later in the day, followed by ABC News, and then MSNBC. From the late afternoon to the wee hours of the morning, the anchors had to keep level heads, and wait for the actual figures to come in before they could tell the full story.

Still, they could see a narrative building, thanks to the use of historical voter totals, county by county across the U.S., that showed how Harris’ wins were slipping below the marks President Joe Biden had notched in 2020. Balancing the emerging narrative with the hard, cold numbers fell to the anchors and correspondents below, and many more of their colleagues.

Bret Baier, Martha MacCallum and Sean Hannity

Baier and MacCallum are old hands when it comes to Election Night, but were often out in front of key state calls thanks to Fox News Channel’s voter-data apparatus. When the duo called Pennsylvania for Trump at around 1:20 a.m. ET, they also told viewers that Harris’ chances for the Oval Office had “vanished.” Meanwhile, opinion host Sean Hannity raised eyebrows on his own by telling viewers earlier in the evening that he knew Trump would win Georgia and North Carolina — ahead of Fox News’ own decision desk. Turns out he was correct.

Chris Christie

The former New Jersey governor brings unique experience to his analyst role at ABC News, which won more viewers on Election Night than any other broadcast network. His time as a state executive and as a Republican primary candidate for president have lent him key insight that helped him tell viewers what to expect during a Trump presidency. At one point during ABC’s coverage, Christie suggested that Trump barely had two years to put his new agenda into place, because chances are candidates would start emerging for the 2028 campaign.

NewsNation

The upstart Nexstar cable-news outlet raised eyebrows on Election Night by citing data from Decision Desk HQ and becoming the first mainstream TV-news outlet to call the race for Trump. Doing the honors? Chris Cuomo, who has quickly become one of the faces of the network.

Steve Kornacki and Joy Reid

MSNBC mainstay Kornacki had a full workout over the course of the progressive news network’s election coverage, and kept making sure to explain to viewers what was happening and why — even though they probably didn’t want to hear it. He also got to star in his own show — a “Kornacki-cam” made available both on the Peacock streaming service and MSNBC’s YouTube channel. Meanwhile, late in the proceedings, Reid told her colleagues why Harris had lost: “Black voters came through for Kamala Harris. … White women voters did not.”

Lester Holt

Holt, who has been with NBCUniversal for nearly a quarter-century, has accumulated enough gravitas over his tenure to provide viewers of “NBC Nightly News” a few words of commentary during some of his final segments on the evening newscast. During Election Night, he counseled some of his colleagues not to call the race for Trump before all the necessary votes were collected. At around 11 p.m., Holt chided others on set for starting to speak as if the whole thing had been decided. “This is beginning to sound like a post-mortem,” he cautioned.

Jake Tapper, John King and Abby Phillip

This CNN trio offered up stoic coverage over many hours, with Tapper working from the start of CNN’s coverage at 4 p.m. ET Tuesday through very early Wednesday morning. King, who has been working CNN’s signature Magic Wall for at least a decade, has trained himself to manipulate the screen with either of his hands, and is perhaps the best at conjuring up quick data to explain to the audience how the candidates are truly faring. Phillip, reporting from Harris’ headquarters at Howard University, kept audiences informed even as the candidate’s chances grew thinner and thinner.

Norah O’Donnell

O’Donnell led tough and sober coverage of the election on CBS News, presiding over an assemblage that included Gayle King, Ed O’Keefe, Major Garrett and Anthony Salvanto. She is soon expected to leave her perch at “CBS Evening News,” but viewers can probably expect to see her again during moments of major national import, such as an election.

Brian Williams

The NBC News veteran returned to hosting duties for the first time since leaving his MSNBC program in late 2021, popping up on Amazon’s Prime Video with a wide array of familiar faces in tow, including Abby Huntsman, Don Lemon, Poppy Harlow and Candy Crowley, among others. The program relied heavily on talk, not graphics and key race calls, but suggested the streaming giant has new ambitions when it comes to live events.

Best of Variety

Sign up for Variety's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.