Journalists want to be first to tell the public who won, but the 2020 election night news frenzy may be very different from past years' coverage.
Sen. Kamala Harris speaks via video link during the second day of confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett on Oct. 13, 2020 in Washington, D.C.
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Though critics claim Amy Coney Barrett's nomination jeopardizes the high court's legitimacy, research shows there are ways the judiciary can bolster its standing and weather controversial decisions.
Presidential pollsters in the US have had some embarrassing failures. Here's a catalog of those miscalls, from the scholar who literally wrote the book on them.
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows speaks to reporters about President Trump’s positive coronavirus test outside the White House on Oct. 2, 2020.
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President Trump was direct in announcing he had COVID-19. But presidents in the past have been very good at deceiving the public about the state of their health. Which direction will Trump go now?
A crowd greets Sen. John F. Kennedy at Logan Airport in Boston on July 17, 1960, after he became the Democratic nominee for president.
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Though air travel has boosted presidential campaigns for decades, the 2020 pandemic has underlined the importance of aircraft as the quickest and safest way to campaign.
President Nixon at a White House news conference in March 1973.
AP Photo/Charles Tasnadi, File
President Woodrow Wilson told Black leaders, 'Segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.' He was one in a long line of racist American presidents.
Delegates after Donald Trump accepted the GOP presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio on Thursday, July 21, 2016.
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Political conventions used to pick presidential nominees in private. Now the public picks the nominee and then the party has a big party at the convention, writes a scholar of US elections.
President Donald Trump at the Tulsa campaign rally, where he said he had slowed down COVID-19 testing to keep the numbers low.
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The absence of trust in a nation's leader and government jeopardizes an effective response to a health crisis. It also creates a political crisis, a loss of faith in democracy.
Franklin Roosevelt and other administration officials visit a Civilian Conservation Corps Camp during the New Deal.
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Similarities between the 1930s and today are hard to ignore, but Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal teaches us that several developments have to coincide to generate a lasting social safety net.
Franklin D Roosevelt signs bill that will lead to Gold Reserve Act 1934.
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s personal battle with polio, and his steady hand while overseeing a national eradication campaign, highlights decisive leadership against a virus that terrified America.
The Capital One Arena, home of the Washington Capitals, sits empty.
AP Photo/Nick Wass
This isn't the first time sports have been put on hold. But in the past, the reprieve was brief, and sports went on to act as a way to bring Americans together. This time's different.
You can’t threaten or humiliate a virus.
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The 'tough guy' is a cultural archetype that political leaders have long adopted. But during crises, Americans tend to look for a different kind of hero.
An emergency polio ward in Boston in 1955 equipped with iron lungs. These pressurized respirators acted as breathing muscles for polio victims, often children, who were paralyzed.
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Polio was nearly eradicated with the Salk vaccine in 1955. At the time, little was known about this mysterious disease that paralyzed and sometimes killed young children.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt broadcasting his first fireside chat, March 12, 1933.
National Archives
On March 12, 1933, President Roosevelt addressed the nation from the Oval Office during a time of great crisis. That 'fireside chat' proved broadcasting's power as nothing before or since.
The lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James and 13 colleagues was the last roadblock to the merger.
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The T-Mobile-Sprint merger is the latest example of weakened enforcement of antitrust laws, which reduces competition and exacerbates already-record levels of inequality.
Senator Huey Long at the Capitol in 1935.
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The very first scientific horse race poll, which took place 85 years ago, was shrouded in secrecy and may have changed history – even though it was faulty.
Andrew Yang wants to give Americans $1,000 a month.
AP Photo/Nati Harnik
Francis Townsend had a similar if less ambitious idea in the 1930s that never got through Congress but ended up making Social Security a lot more generous.
Global Scholar at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC and Hopkins P Breazeale Professor, Manship School of Mass Communications, Louisiana State University