The Election's Over—Except on Fox News

With one week to go until the election, political coverage on TV "should probably come with a spoiler alert," writes Alessandra Stanley. With every poll predicting a major win for Barack Obama, terms like "touchdown favorite" and "near-insurmountable" have become ubiquitous on the networks. You have to switch to Fox News, writes the New York Times television critic, for coverage that ignores the "flood of predictive data."

Yesterday a Fox News anchor dismissed Obama's lead, saying poll numbers "aren’t exactly what everybody seems to think they are." More often they simply ignore the polls, focusing instead on Obama's supposed "old lefty" leanings. Yet even on Fox dissent is creeping in: Geraldo Rivera, mocking those who harp on Bill Ayers, said, "I used to be friends with Yasir Arafat. Does that make me a terrorist?"