Afraid to Call It

So I've been up all night waiting for the election results to break, and I've notice a curious holding pattern... Every single network shows President Bush leading, but stops short of calling him the winner of the election. What's more, they have different states that they've used for their Bush Electoral Vote totals.

At the moment, the one that has me scratching my sleep-deprived head is how CNN has called Nevada for Bush (but not Ohio), and MSNBC and FOX News have called Ohio, but not Nevada for Bush. Any of these networks calling the states already called by the others would come up with a total of at least 270 EV. Crazy? Wait, there's more. The latter two networks are showing 100% of the precincts reporting -- that's right, all of them -- and everyone agrees that Bush has a 3% lead in that state.

So it boils down to the networks more or less agreeing, at least tacitly, that President Bush has been reelected, but that no one should announce it.

UPDATE: Minutes after the announcement of Kerry's concession call to the White House, after an additional zero votes were counted or reported, FOX News and MSNBC called NV for Bush. This, they earnestly explained, allowed them to project President Bush as the winner of the election. This smacks of the journalistic equivalent of price-fixing -- information-fixing, if you will.

CNN, of course, waited until a short while after Kerry explained to the entire planet that there was no mathematical possibility of winning Ohio to themselves award the state to Bush.