As Nov. 3 nears, every seat in the House of Representatives, 36 governor races, and 35 Senate seats are up for grabs this election cycle, and the team at NewsNation is gearing up for all of them this midterm.
“I think what we’ll learn on election night is, at the end of the day, a lot of this comes down to human beings voting for other human beings, and the candidates matter,” NewsNation anchor Connell McShane said. “So if certain candidates are able to win in places you wouldn’t expect their party to win, that kind of changes the whole night.”
Starting at 7 p.m., NewsNation is bringing in its top anchors — Chris Cuomo, Elizabeth Vargas, Leland Vittert, Katie Pavlich, and Chris Stirewalt — to co-host its election coverage, and McShane is happy to join as the team’s “NFL RedZone play-by-play analyst.”
The Elections to Watch With NewsNation and Decision Desk HQ
“We have four toss-up states on our Senate map. [So the question is] do they all go in one direction? We’ll start to get a sense early on in the night, maybe not go the way it’s expected,” he affirmed.
Three states the NewsNation team is watching closely include Texas, Michigan, and Maine. “The way that Texas and Michigan line up is interesting because each party has an issue. For example, the Democrat running for governor [in Michigan] has better numbers than Abdul Al-Sayed does.”
McShane went on to add, “Same thing in Texas, where the statewide candidate for Senate, Ken Paxton, his numbers are behind other Republicans. So if Michigan doesn’t go to the Democrats, then you have a completely different night on your hands.”
Another key race that could be called early in the night is Maine Sen. Susan Collins’ sixth run for her seat. “Collins is a five-term Republican senator in Maine, and she has a habit of pulling these races out in the end. Six years ago, she was trailing in many of the pre-election polls, and she won. So even though she’s down a couple of points in a lot of the polls, she may very well win.”
Why Candidates Matter on Election Night
No matter the election year, McShane believes what elections come down to is very simple: “Human beings voting for other human beings, and the candidates matter. So if certain candidates are able to win in places you wouldn’t expect their party to win, that kind of changes the whole night.”
He went on to say, “Sometimes it’s not as simple as put on a jersey and vote for a red team or vote for a blue team. Sometimes it’s taking a look as a voter and saying, ‘Am I comfortable with this human being representing me in the Senate or in the House?’ And if that’s not the case, someone underperforms or overperforms, it can change the whole night.”
Taking NFL RedZone to New Political Heights
If election coverage is NFL RedZone, McShane is doing the play-by-play and Stirewalt is doing the color commentary. It’s a dynamic duo McShane is happy to be a part of. “[Stirewalt] has actually forgotten more about any of these political races than I’ve ever known,” the daytime anchor joked. “So I’ll be telling you what this data is, and Chris will be telling you why it happened as it’s happening. And then we have this extra component, Decision Desk HQ.”
For several elections, NewsNation has partnered with Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ) to call elections faster and, more importantly, correctly. “It’s invaluable because I trust it implicitly,” McShane said of the team. “I have never had a doubt if someone at DDHQ tells me that something is happening, and then they’re very quick to explain why they see it and how they see it. If they say it’s happening because of experience, I immediately trust that that’s what’s happening, because I don’t think they would tell me, or they would put it in their system, if they didn’t know it to be true.”
This trust translates to incredible graphics right to your TV or streaming device. “What we’ll focus on this year is really getting behind the scenes and being transparent in how we get the data, make decisions based on the data, and telling the audience at home, in real time, what we’re learning.” He added that because NewsNation “has good data, it allows us to [tell stories] better.”
From the Sports Booth to the Election Desk
Telling stories is just one of the many reasons McShane jumped into the industry more than two decades ago, and election night allows him to encompass all the things he loves in one big, beautiful story. “I love sports, wanted to describe sports action on the radio and then on TV. But my first job was at Bloomberg, and it kind of transitioned me into this world I hadn’t paid as much attention to, the world of news, eventually financial news and then political news, and I love doing it.”
His passion for sports easily translates to politics, because politics is the ultimate sport. “I had a boss one time who said that the good thing about people with a sports background is they’ll never run out of things to say,” McShane said.
“So on an election night, the election is the [sport]: who’s winning and why? How did we get to this point, or who said what about whom before we got to this point?” Most importantly, he said, the focus is “How’s that going to affect the broader landscape, and in real time?”
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