Yes, I lived out West and came home from work about 5pm (AZ-MST) to enjoy an evening of watching election night results on CNN (only game in town then).
It was still full daylight out. Within about 15-20 minutes of sitting down they announced Reagan had won just based on what happened back East. It was very shocking.
On the Friday night before the election, in Johnny Carson’s monologue, he had a piece in it about how “close the election is and nobody knows what’s going to happen, not the TV news people, press, etc”
Trumpalanche in the weather report
The press have a financial interest in telling people it’s going to be close. Much less people will watch if told it will be a definite Trump landslide.