It’s too early for April Fool’s

NEW YORK -- There may be no better predictor that NBC News is about to declare an election’s winner than the face of political director Chuck Todd.

Twice in two weeks, Todd was brought onto MSNBC to explain why NBC News hadn’t declared a winner in a presidential primary when other news outlets had -- only to be interrupted by the network making its projection.

“I just think it’s amusing,” said Todd, who appeared sheepish when it happened with John McCain’s win in Florida.

Complicating things, Todd doesn’t really know his colleagues’ reasoning, although he can make an educated guess. NBC News keeps the people charged with calling a race sequestered so they aren’t influenced by others, including competing news organizations.

When anchor Keith Olbermann asked him to explain why the Associated Press had declared McCain the winner in South Carolina and NBC hadn’t, Todd started talking about missing results from three counties that might be expected to favor Mitt Romney.

An off-screen voice was heard, Olbermann stopped Todd in his tracks, and the call was made.

In Florida, he wasn’t really sure what made his network hesitant, other than no news organization wants the embarrassment of a wrong call in Florida -- the state where networks had to pull back early projections for George W. Bush in 2000.

“When you were looking at it, it was getting harder and harder to explain,” said Todd, who was credited by the TVNewser website last week with being the first on the air to report John Edwards’ withdrawal from the campaign.

No problem. Olbermann didn’t let him finish anyway.

Todd sees a clear role for himself in the future.

“Anytime our executive producer is getting frustrated that we haven’t called a race, he’ll say, ‘Hey, Chuck, can you go on?’ ”