Bret Baier: ‘There was something that we and the polls were not tracking’

Fox News anchor Bret Baier woke up on Election Day sure that the vote would be tighter than expected — a twist Baier attributes to the “anger about Washington.”

“I knew that there was something that we and the polls were not tracking,” Baier said.

{mosads}Baier, who felt at the time based off exit poll numbers that the race would be called before midnight, didn’t think Trump would win. He wasn’t alone — he said even members of the Trump campaign believed victory wasn’t possible.

“I don’t think they had any inkling that they were going to win,” Baier said. “In fact, we had some people come up to our reporters, our correspondents covering the campaign, saying, ‘Hey, here’s my Gmail … stay in touch.’ ”

The “Special Report” host said the reality of a Trump victory settled in when Fox veteran Chris Wallace declared “we should get our heads around the possibility of a President Donald J. Trump.”

“The path for Hillary Clinton kept on getting more narrow,” Baier said.

“And finally, at the end of the night, when we made the call on Pennsylvania, I said, ‘We can now project that Pennsylvania will go to the Trump campaign and that means that Donald J. Trump will be the 45th president of the United States.’ ”