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Karl Rove Challenges Fox News' Projection for Obama's Victory

Jeremy Fuster |
November 6, 2012 | 9:52 p.m. PST

Staff Reporter

When Fox News announced at 11:14 PM on Tuesday night that they are projecting Barack Obama as the winner

of Ohio and the 2012 presidential election, one member of their team wasn't willing to call a winner: Karl Rove.  

The former Bush administration senior advisor challenged the Fox News analysts decision and demanded that they rescind their projection and wait for more votes in Ohio to be counted.  He claimed that Democrats usually build up early votes in Ohio and that the results can change later on.

"We've got to be careful about calling this when we have 991 votes separating the candidates," he told Fox News anchors Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly, and Chris Wallace.  "I'd be very cautious about intruding into this process."

The direct challenge to Fox's news judgement caused a moment of awkward silence at the news desk before Kelly decided to directly ask the news team's number crunchers in a conference room down the hall from the studio about the reasoning behind their decision.  

"Basically, right now there is too much Obama vote that's outstanding there that we know is going to come in," one pollster told Kelly. "And while, yes, there are a number of counties out there that will be Romney, the largest thing that's outstanding right now is the Cleveland area, is Cuyahoga. This is Democratic territory and we're quite comfortable with the idea that Obama will carry Ohio."

The numbers did not convince Rove, but at the time this article was posted, news sources began projecting that Obama would win Virginia.  Fox News has not rescinded their election projection.  

Rove is the co-founder of the super PAC American Crossroads, which has spent millions of dollars to fund Romney's campaign as well as tens of millions of dollars on attack ads against Obama.




 

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