The Media Never Called 2016 Election for Hillary Clinton
The Claim
News media previously called the 2016 U.S. presidential election for Hillary Clinton.
Emerging story
After multiple news media sites projected Joe Bided as the winner of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, rumors began circulating on social media that the media also called the 2016 U.S. presidential election for Hillary Clinton.
Users across social media continued to spread this claim.
Misbar’s Analysis
The Misbar team has determined the claim is false. While the media has made mistakes regarding the outcomes of presidential elections – famously in 1948 when the Chicago Daily Tribune called the presidential election for Gov. Thomas Dewey of New York, and again in 2000, when multiple news sites called the presidential election for democratic candidate Al Gore – the mistake was never made for the 2016 Clinton vs Trump election.
Instead, multiple polls showed that Hillary Clinton maintained a sizable lead against Donald Trump leading up to the election. However, the night of the election, after multiple states reported, the Associated Press called the election for Donald Trump, and after, Hillary Clinton called Trump to concede.
The media never made a claim that Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 election, only leading up to the polls was she the presumed winner. As such, we rate the claim as false.
