The 2012 presidential election is still more than two weeks away, but on Friday a CBS News affiliate in Arizona called the race for President Barack Obama.

For 17 seconds, Phoenix, Arizona CBS News affiliate KPHO ran a lower third graphic that showed that Obama had won the Nov. 6 election over Gov. Mitt Romney with 99% of the precincts reporting. The lower third graphic appeared around 3:30 p.m. on Oct. 19, during an episode of “The People’s Court.”

The CBS News graphic showed Obama winning the election with 43 percent of the vote nationwide to Romney’s 40 percent -– or 40,237,966 votes to 38,116,216. It is unclear who garnered the other 17 percent in the fictional election results.

KPHO’s general manager did not return The Daily Caller’s request for comment by time of publication.



Read more: CBS News affiliate calls 2012 presidential race for Barack Obama weeks ahead of election | The Daily Caller

The fix was in when they announced the debate moderators two months ago.

“Candy Crowley … is an old friend of mine. I used to work at CNN. But I actually think she helped Gov. Romney,” Van Susteren said on the “This Week” roundtable. “The most important issue for Gov. Romney’s campaign is to put the spotlight on Libya and how the president’s administration has been very clumsy, at best – not giving us the information, meaning the American people, what happened.”

“So what happened is because Candy Crowley was clumsy in how she handled it – the entire discussion, and even right now, is about Libya, where we probably would have reserved it for the debate tomorrow night,” Van Susteren added, referring to Monday night’s final debate on foreign policy. “But Candy, in an unusual, bizarre way, put the total spotlight – it’s all the media talked about.”
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