Thread by @torstenkathke

This is a dumb question, no doubt triggered by Fox's petty and partisan decision not to use that term.

Let's humor it for a minute. Why is it dumb?

Dictionary.com calls 'president-elect' "[a]n Americanism dating back to 1815–25".

https://twitter.com/JimZarroli/status/1324728869082046465

Google's Ngram Viewer bears this out.

Losers in presidential elections started formally conceding around the turn of the 20th century. William Jennings Bryan's telegram to McKinley in 1896 started that trend.

npr.org/2020/11/02/929…

Since 'president-elect' was in use well before that, it wasn't tied to the act of conceding an election.

The term, as the above graph shows, began being used more commonly around the time concessions became en vogue. But it predates the tradition of concessions.

Let's, just for the sake of argument, say that you cannot officially call someone president-elect before all counting has stopped, or been certified, or until the electoral college has voted, because they haven't actually been elected until then.

But this, too, makes no sense.

Because the media calls the president-elect president-elect. Which is why newsrooms are purportedly having that discussion.

You can call either candidate what you want in the family group chat, that's all up to you.

'President-elect' isn't an official title in regards to the US presidency (it is in other contexts, but that's of no interest to us here).

It's a shorthand used by the media to convey the information that this is the person elected to the presidency but not yet seated.

And if the media gets to "call" an election, it only makes sense that once that's done, this is the term you use, concession or no.

In essence:

https://twitter.com/AntheaButler/status/1324755307806052354