‘Today’ Looks Back on 40 Years of Election Day Coverage

The Today show took a look back at 40 years of Election Day coverage, beginning with Tom Brokaw, and his silky smooth voice, alongside Jane Pauley in 1976. Pauley went on to explain the electoral map, with what would now be considered terrible graphics, and oddly enough, blue states were for Republican President Gerald Ford, and red states were for Democratic Gov. Jimmy Carter. She also felt the need to explain how it would look if viewers were watching on a black-and-white TV.

They introduced what at the time, in 1980, was a state-of-the-art automatic voting machine, then barely touched on the rest of the decade that President Reagan basically owned. The anchor in 1988 did, however, refer to the election as one of the most bitter presidential campaigns in memory, something that may seem laughable today. In 1992, the election was a bit crowded with the addition of Ross Perot as a legitimate contender for the presidency, which was arguably the last time a third-party candidate was that involved in the race. After Perot’s 1992 run, Democrats and Republicans got together and passed legislation making it nearly impossible for a third-party candidate to take part in the debates.

Matt Lauer was shown in 1996 for his first election at Today and has been a part of every one since, including the 2000 election, which was truly contentious. Katie Couric was co-host at the time.

Couric opened the show saying: “Could we end up with one man winning the popular vote and the other man winning the Electoral College? Could we end up with a tie in the Electoral College race? Could we end up back here tomorrow morning and still not know the winner?”

In 2008 we made history by electing the first African-American president, Barrack Obama. When he ran for and won reelection against Mitt Romney in 2012, it was the most expensive campaign in U.S. history.

John Oliver calls himself out for being wrong about Trump, Cubs:

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