Online gamblers expect election results from Arizona will be the last announced once voting ends Tuesday — four years after Fox News infuriated its conservative viewers by being the first to award the swing state to Joe Biden.
A page on the Polymarket website offers bettors the chance to pick the “last state to be called” and Arizona was at the top of the list with a 32% chance just before 9 p.m. ET Tuesday.
The battlegrounds of Pennsylvania and Nevada were in second and third place.
More than $83,800 has been wagered on the exotic political side bet, which will be determined by Associated Press projections, according to the Polymarket page.
In 2020, Fox News beat the competition by calling Arizona for Biden at 11:20 p.m. on election night, Nov. 3, at a point when just 73% of the state’s votes had been tallied.
Court papers unsealed last year said Fox News executives received multiple complaints about the call, including emails that said, “Holy cow, our audience is mad at the network” and “They’re FURIOUS.”
The revelations were part of the defamation case that led Fox News to settle with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million over the network’s promotion of false conspiracy theories that Dominion machines changed votes cast for Trump into votes for Biden.
AP called Arizona for Biden at 2:51 a.m. on Nov. 4, 2020, and declared Biden the winner after calling Pennsylvania for him three days later, according to its timeline of events.
But three states — Alaska, Georgia and North Carolina — remained outstanding, with Georgia the last to be called more than two weeks later on Nov. 19, 2020, NPR reported at the time.
Last week, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger said record early voting and changes to the state’s election law meant that “by the end of the night, we should have the complete tabulation and report of every vote that was cast on Election Day,” according to the Savannah Morning News.
