Maybe it was a mistake like calling the 2000 election in Florida while the panhandle still had an hour to vote (keeping thousands of Republicans from voting).
Boy, do I remember that night. Channel 13, in Tampa, called the state for Gore at 5:30 in the evening, a full hour and a half before the polls closed in most of the state. That kind of reporting, in fact, kept voters in the Panhandle from turning out. My mother, who lives out west, was extremely upset about the early pronouncement by the media, that Gore had won. Thank God for us Florida voters, save the idiots in the southern counties who didn't know how to vote.