Thread:Comments:Australian Broadcasting Corporation plans to call California for Obama before polls close/How is this news?/reply (4)

Some countries prohibit publication of polling predictions from a certain time before an election onwards, others don't. Even when there is no prohibition, as in the UK, the TV channels will not "call" the result until the moment the polls shut. So far, so good. But I'm not aware of any country (country A) that tries to prohibit pundits in country B publishing polling predictions about country A, nor any country B that that prohibits pre-emptive psephological prognostications about country A. That much I hope is glaringly obvious.

So "Australian TV channel predicts part of US election" is not really news, even if it wouldn't be allowed to do so for an Australian election. Does it make a difference that it did so while the poll was in progress? No, because it chose California, and perhaps only Michelle Obama was more likely to vote for Obama than California was. Now if a US channel had called a swing state early, or called something and got it wrong, or if an Australian channel had called a swing state early, that's interesting. This isn't. It's not remotely comparable Bush v Gore, or "Dewey wins", since there was utterly no risk of a mistake here. BBC news programmes have been saying for weeks which were the key battleground states and which were the ones in the candidates' respective pockets. California was never a battleground. The ABC isn't going to win any awards for this brave prediction. Has any other news outlet covered the story?