We all probably remember the relatively early call of Arizona made by Fox News on election night in 2020. That call infuriated President Trump and led to a lot of behind the scenes consternation at Fox. Ultimately, the AP joined Fox a few hours later but other networks and the NY Times did not. And it turned out that while Biden did win the state he did so by a very narrow margin.

Today, Nate Cohn has an analysis column looking at the call of Arizona. He concludes that it was no better than a lucky guess at the time Fox made the call and, had it not worked out the way it did, it would have been a real disaster.

At the time Fox called Arizona, Mr. Biden led Mr. Trump by 8.5 percentage points, with an estimated 73 percent of the expected vote counted. The tabulated votes were mainly mail ballots received well ahead of the election. To win, Mr. Trump needed to take about 61 percent of the remaining votes.

In addition to the tabulated vote, the Fox decision desk also had the Fox News Voter Analysis, otherwise known as the A.P. VoteCast data — a pre-election survey fielded by The Associated Press and NORC at the University of Chicago. The AP/NORC data showed Mr. Biden ahead by six percentage points in Arizona.

A person with knowledge of how the call was made, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the Fox team believed that the early returns confirmed the Fox News Voter Analysis. Indeed, Mr. Biden’s early lead seemed to match the survey’s findings among early voters, who broke for Mr. Biden by 10 points in the survey, 54 percent to 44 percent. The implication was that Mr. Biden was on track for a clear victory.

After the call was made, Fox even brought on their decision desk director, Arnon Mishkin, to ask him if he was sure about the call. Mishkin said he was and added, “We’ve heard from the White House that they need just to get 61 percent of the outstanding vote…and they’ll be getting that. That’s not true. The reality is that they’re likely to get only about 44 percent of the outstanding vote that are there.” And because of that, President Trump wasn’t going to be able to eliminate Biden’s 7-point lead. Here’s the clip.

Back to Nate Cohn:

In the end, Mr. Trump won 59 percent of the remaining vote, all but erasing Mr. Biden’s advantage…

By the time of the Arizona call, it was already clear that the AP/NORC survey data — along with virtually all pre-election polling — had overestimated Mr. Biden. In North Carolina, for example, Mr. Trump had already taken the lead after AP/NORC data initially showed Mr. Biden ahead by five points. The same data initially showed Mr. Biden ahead by seven points in Florida, where Mr. Trump was by then the projected winner.

Fox News was leaning heavily on this AP survey data even after it became clear it was wrong. One obvious place where that impacted Fox’s projections (besides Arizona) was North Carolina. On election night, Fox’s probability meter showed Biden with a 95% chance of winning North Carolina even while the NY Times needle was showing Trump was likely to win the state.

the NYTimes needle and the Fox needle are pointing in opposite directions in North Carolina pic.twitter.com/7sWoKOMHit

— Randy Renstrom (@RandyRenstrom) November 4, 2020

Ultimately, Biden won Arizona by a little over 10,000 votes which worked out to 0.3% of the total. As Cohn puts it, the state was essentially a coin toss and the claim that Biden had an insurmountable lead when Fox News made the call was clearly wrong. Put another way, if Fox had known the race was going to wind up being so close, they would not have called it when they did.