Election Night at The Times, Through the Decades

The New York Times

Election night at The New York Times used to be filled with the fervor of clacking typewriters...

...but technological innovation has helped The Times bring results to readers faster than ever before.

Photos of the newsroom in decades past bring the action — and modernization — to life.

Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.

The presidential election is one of the most important nights of the year for the United States. The same can be said for The New York Times.

The first presidential election covered in The Times was in 1852, a year after the newspaper was established. The news was shared in a column of the eight-page newspaper — then called the New-York Daily Times — the day after the election: Early results indicated that Franklin Pierce, a Democrat, would likely defeat Winfield Scott of the Whig Party.

In the decades that followed, The Times became faster at conveying results to readers. On Election Day in 1928, for example, The Times’s Motograph, known as the “zipper” — an electric banner that wrapped around The Times’s building in Manhattan — lit up for the first time, announcing Herbert Hoover’s victory.

In 1996, nytimes.com was rolled out. In the decades since, The Times has used its website (and later, its app) to deliver breaking election news to readers, with increasing speed — and more and more data — with every election.

Nowadays, tools like the Needle, graphics and interactive maps help keep the website as up-to-date as possible, all night (and morning) long. Data reporters pore over numbers coming out of each state and district; reporters in battleground states stay in close contact with The Times’s command center in Manhattan.

As states count their votes tonight, reporters and data analysts for The Times will put all the news and real-time updates into context on The Times’s home page; in the early hours of the morning, print newspapers will arrive at homes and corner stores around the world.

News may move faster than ever before, but election night has always ushered in a swarm of activity in the newsroom. Below are seven images that show what election night has looked like at The Times over the years.

1960

A tense night ends in a Kennedy victory

In the 1960 presidential election, a decisive win was expected for the Democratic nominee, John F. Kennedy, then a senator from Massachusetts, who was up against Vice President Richard M. Nixon. But Times reporters were on edge for hours as the votes came in.

On Nov. 8, Election Day, the first edition of the newspaper hit the presses at 9:31 p.m. and announced that voter turnout across the nation was heavy. As editors waited for definitive results, the presses were shut down for about three hours. Then, at 12:36 a.m., the presses resumed, rolling out a late New York City edition with the headline “Kennedy Holds Wide Lead.”

By that time, other newspapers had declared Mr. Kennedy the victor, but The Times waited for the fragments of vote counts to come together for a more complete result.

At 1:45 a.m., the headline “Kennedy Elected” was locked in for a late print edition that went to press at 3:18 a.m., according to Times Talk, a now-defunct internal company magazine. Charter planes flew the updated edition to Albany, Elmira, Rochester, Syracuse and Utica, N.Y.; Washington, D.C.; Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, Pa.; and Boston and Providence. Trucks hauled the paper into New Jersey.

The night was far from over. Mr. Nixon’s vote count inched closer to Mr. Kennedy’s lead, prompting last-minute rewrites. A “7 a.m. Extra” edition of the newspaper included the headline “Kennedy Is Apparent Victor; Lead Cut in Two Key States.”

By daybreak, the newsroom was awash in discarded paper as journalists — shown here — waited for their signal to go home and catch some shut-eye. By 7:45 a.m., according to Times Talk, the newsroom had cleared out, “except for a battery of rewrite men handling the calls flooding in from a bewildered, awakening city.”

1964

Johnson defeats Goldwater

The incumbent Democratic president, Lyndon B. Johnson, who had been sworn in a year earlier following the assassination of Mr. Kennedy, defeated the Republican candidate, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, in the 1964 election in a landslide victory.

The Times utilized computers to gather vote returns and produce projections, but an easy win by Mr. Johnson in Washington did not mean a slow night in Manhattan.

Editors, including Theodore M. Bernstein, one of the assistant managing editors (second from the right in this photo), watched in the composing room as the front page of the newspaper was set by hand, declaring Mr. Johnson the victor.

The Times published about 1,069,000 newspapers between 9:30 p.m. the night of the election and sunrise the next morning, Nov. 4.

1968

Nixon takes office

Weeks of planning and lessons learned during the 1960 election allowed for an evening of coverage that was “smoother and more professional than on any previous election night,” according to Times Talk.

On Nov. 5, 1968, as the nation prepared itself for a presidency occupied by Mr. Nixon or Vice President Hubert Humphrey, editors resisted the temptation to rush to print with uncertain vote counts. Sandwich platters and urns of coffee were passed around the office at midnight. (According to Times Talk, 3,000 sandwiches and 3,500 cups of coffee were consumed over the course of the night.)

Though the newspaper of Nov. 6 did not declare a winner, 1,260,000 issues were produced, the highest daily distribution number at the time. Here, editors make final decisions on the front page, which reported that the race was exceptionally tight.

And tight it was: Mr. Nixon was elected president “by the barest of margins — only four one-hundreths of a percentage point in the popular vote,” The Times reported on Nov. 7.

1972

Nixon is re-elected and wins in a landslide

At 3:33 a.m. on Nov. 8, the day after the election, 85 columns of election news went to the presses in what Times Talk called the least suspenseful election night in memory. President Nixon had been immensely popular among Americans and was credited with having improved relations with both China and the Soviet Union. A long campaign that pitted him against Senator George McGovern of South Dakota ended in a quick decision, with the incumbent securing 520 Electoral College votes to Mr. McGovern’s 17.

The 1972 election marked a first: A year earlier, the voting age had been lowered to 18, making it the first presidential election in which Americans under 21 could vote. Still, voter turnout was exceptionally low, with a projected 54 percent of Americans having voted. “If accurate, that would be the lowest proportion since 51.4 per cent in 1948,” The Times reported at the time. “The percentage had been over 60 per cent in every election since then.”

Assistant Metropolitan editors reviewed articles before they were sent to the copy desk. Soon after, the articles were prepared to print in the next day’s newspaper.

1980

Reagan unseats Carter

The night of Nov. 4 began with a more subdued atmosphere than previous election nights; one editor speculated it was because of the ubiquity of computers. In previous elections, “typewriters were clacking, and copy people were busy running mountains of paper to various desks,” according to Times Talk. “But this election night, we are electronic.”

By 10 p.m., the incumbent Jimmy Carter had conceded the presidential race, and Ronald Reagan, the former governor of California, gave his victory speech just after 11 p.m. “Earlier this evening, I spoke on the phone with President Carter,” Mr. Reagan said from Los Angeles. “The president pledged the utmost in cooperation in the transition that will take place in these coming months. I offered him my own cooperation.”

That night, Dean Gladfelter, an editor for the National desk, fulfilled his election ritual of wearing an eye-chart tie. For “when I think the country needs to see clearly,” he was quoted as saying in Times Talk.

2016

A surprise Trump victory that still reverberates through the nation

On Election Day in 2016, Times reporters provided coverage of the race between Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump in a live blog. That day, The Times published an election forecast — based on state and national polls — that gave Ms. Clinton an 85 percent chance at defeating Mr. Trump. As results trickled in, though, it became clear there would be a surprise outcome.

At 2:29 a.m., The Associated Press called the race for Mr. Trump. (For most races, The Times relies on calls made by The A.P.)

About an hour later, Mr. Trump took the stage in Midtown Manhattan to celebrate his win. “I’ll bet this is a moment he never anticipated,” the political reporter Adam Nagourney wrote.

Mr. Trump’s victory marked an end to the Clinton political dynasty. The Times had prepared a 16-page section to mark the first time a woman would be elected president. A banner headline had even been chosen for the front page, “Madam President.”

In the end, “Trump Triumphs” ran across the pages as they came off the presses on Nov. 9. “The surprise outcome, defying late polls that showed Hillary Clinton with a modest but persistent edge, threatened convulsions throughout the country and the world,” The Times reported. Here, Tom Bodkin, then the chief creative officer of The Times, looks at an early edition of the Nov. 9 newspaper.

2020

A Trump loss echoed through an emptier newsroom

In November 2020, the world was only just beginning to offer glimpses of normality during the Covid-19 pandemic, and The Times’s newsroom was no different.

Journalists had to apply for entry to the Manhattan office on election night, and those approved had to wear face masks and adhere to social distancing policies. Editors and journalists were asked to avoid unnecessary in-person meetings, and to stay at their desks whenever possible.

“Nov. 3, 2020, lacked the bustle of a typical election night in the newsroom — not only because there were fewer people here, but also on account of the restrictions we were living under,” Peter Khoury, a breaking news editor who was in the office that night, said in an email. “It seemed almost fitting that no victor was declared that evening.”

The election would finally be called days later, on Nov. 7, when Joe Biden was declared the winner and Donald J. Trump was unseated.

“Mr. Biden’s victory amounted to a repudiation of Mr. Trump by millions of voters exhausted with his divisive conduct and chaotic administration,” The Times wrote at the time, “and was delivered by an unlikely alliance of women, people of color, old and young voters and a sliver of disaffected Republicans.”