How CNN, Fox News and MSNBC Covered the Midterm Elections

A review of how CNN, Fox News and MSNBC covered the election results on Tuesday night provides a glimpse at how the three 24-hour cable networks came up with slightly different themes and narratives as the votes came in. Here’s our hour-by-hour, compare-and-contrast guide.

8 PM ET

On MSNBC, the veteran Democratic political consultant James Carville said he wasn’t expecting much of a blue wave. Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, also sounded less than sanguine about her party’s chances. “I have no flippin’ idea what’s going to happen tonight,” Ms. McCaskill said during an interview with the anchor Rachel Maddow.

(She ended up losing big.)

Over at Fox News, the focus was on the Florida governor’s race between Ron DeSantis, a Republican backed by President Trump, and Mayor Andrew Gillum of Tallahassee, a Democrat. The pundit Laura Ingraham, on panel duty for the night, said that if Mr. DeSantis “squeaks out a victory here, I gotta say it’s all Donald Trump who won this for him.”

The Senate contest in Texas was a big topic on CNN. Working the interactive map known as the Magic Wall, John King wondered aloud whether Beto O’Rourke, the Democrat challenging Senator Ted Cruz, the Republican incumbent, was “pulling off the Texas miracle.”

Mr. King also hit on a theme that would harden into conventional wisdom by night’s end: “The suburbs in America are revolting against President Trump.”

9 PM ET

Fox News broke away from the media pack at 9:33 p.m. with a bold prognostication from the anchor Bret Baier: “We are now ready to make one of the biggest calls of the night. The Fox News ‘decision desk’ can now project the Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives for the first time in eight years.”

Led by its polling chief, Arnon Mishkin, Fox News was using a different set of voter data than its rivals — and it paid off. Chris Wallace said that after taking control of the House, Democrats could open investigations of Mr. Trump. “It is a very, very big deal,” he said. “This will be a different Washington.”

While Fox News was considering the downside of a flipped House for the president, the mood at the liberal-leaning MSNBC was wary, if not glum. Chris Matthews tried to buck up the mood, predicting that “Democrats could end up picking up what I would call a wave” by 2 a.m. Toward the end of the hour — at 9:57 p.m. — NBC News gave Democrats a 90 percent chance of taking control of the House.

Also lagging behind Fox News, CNN offered a panel discussion led by Anderson Cooper on the lack of Democratic momentum. “This is heartbreaking,” said the liberal panelist Van Jones.

10 PM ET

With few races to call at the top of the hour, MSNBC resembled the local New York news channel NY1 during a lengthy discussion of transportation infrastructure in the New York tristate area. The proceedings came back to life with the projection that Mr. Cruz had beaten Mr. O’Rourke, a rising Democratic star, and a definitive call that the Democrats would take the House.

Fox News had already moved on, informing viewers that Republicans would expand their majority in the Senate.

“The bottom line is that the conservative judicial train will keep running,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. Toward the end of an interview conducted remotely, Mr. Graham went on to warn House Democrats against trying to impeach Mr. Trump: “It will blow up in their face,” he said.

On CNN, the graphics were glitzy and the fanfare music blared with each call, but the network’s projections remained cautious, with the anchors deciding against making the call for a Democratic House until….

11 PM ET

Wolf Blitzer, CNN’s host, finally projected that the Democrats would take the House as the 11 o’clock hour began. He called the development “a very significant defeat for Mr. Trump.”

In a rare cutaway to a scene outside the studio, the correspondent Manu Raju, reporting from Democratic headquarters in Washington, said that party members were already planning to look into the president’s tax returns and his relationships with foreign governments.

MSNBC opened the hour with Mr. Gillum’s concession speech before Ms. Maddow and her team filled the time with educated guesses about how a House under Democratic control might change the country. At Fox News, Mr. Baier and his fellow anchor Martha MacCallum interviewed Florida’s governor-elect, Mr. DeSantis, to discuss his narrow victory.

Back in CNN’s studio, Mr. Jones said that his “heart has been restored” with the “end of one-party rule in the United States, thank God.”

Another panelist, the former Senator Rick Santorum, a Republican, said Mr. Trump would relish the chance to make a Democratic House into a target, calling it “a huge advantage.”