
Starting with the 1968 elections, a young Michael Montgomery spent election nights with his parents in the WJR studios in the Fisher Building. His dad, Al Montgomery, had a side business calling election results through a statistical model they all worked on. For decades, they projected winners at the state-level, like Governor Bill Milliken over Sander Levin in 1972, and the national one, like President Jimmy Carter over President Gerald Ford in 1976.
Montgomery, now a 蹤獲扦-Dearborn Health and Human Services lecturer, and his parents made their predictions in the same studio that Hermits Cave a Detroit radio show with eerie sound effects and spooky storytellers that became nationally syndicated in the 1940s was once broadcast. As a kid around age 10, I thought it was marvelous. There was a little door that was used to make the radio shows squealing sounds right in that studio, Montgomery says.
Almost 60 years since that 1968 election night, there is a different type of spooky on the horizon. And it has nothing to do with Halloween. With election day less than a week away, its the distrust in the election process. A recent by the polling firm Gallup found 19% of participants had no trust in the legitimacy of the election result. In 2004, this figure was 6%.
Its been a few decades since Montgomery has been involved in calling a political race and he says hes seen divisions widen significantly in that time due to party differences with issues like civil rights, womens rights and health care access. The electorate became even more divided four years ago, say both Montgomery and Communication Professor Tim Kiska, whos called elections for media outlets for 40 years.
Sixty years ago, we made these predictive models because news outlets wanted to be the first to give people an update on who won. It was exciting to be in that studio for WJR and be able to report breaking news that was so important that it interrupted a ball game. We didnt know it, but we were helping an expectation that winners and losers would be known on election night or in the early hours of the morning, says Montgomery, whose parents transitioned out of the polling business in the 1980s. In too-close-to-call elections, it would be better to wait until all ballots were counted, which could take a couple days. However, this expectation of a quick turnaround has been set. If the news is delayed beyond expectation, there is now a likelihood that wild conspiracy theories will take off. So its imperative to be fast and accurate.