If you don’t speak “Bachelorette,” please bear with us. A Detroit TV station mistakenly revealed the winner in the country’s most important contest in decades. Would Clare Crawley, after directing a “strip dodgeball” contest be a winner in the court of public opinion? Would Yosef Aborady gain the admiration of “Bachelorette” fans everywhere?

But no, the big news did not involve ABC’s “Bachelorette” contestants; it involved the 2020 election, with incumbent President Donald Trump as the winner. Yep, truly fake/mistake news from WXYZ, which went live with graphics designed as a test for the real night next Tuesday.

Spoiler alert: We don’t know whether Clare will stay on the show and we don’t have any Michigan voting results, since they have not yet been counted.

A graphic aired during the showing of “The Bachelorette” showed mock results for several races, revealing that Trump won by 50% over Joe Biden, at 44%. While social media comments included references to voter suppression, there did not appear to be any malicious intent.

Mike Murri, WXYZ-TV vice president and general manager, apologized Wednesday morning. “WXYZ inadvertently aired an election result graphic this evening as part of our testing of the systems we will use during election night coverage,” he said via email to the Detroit Free Press. “The results displayed were randomly generated by that system. We apologize for any confusion. We have taken steps to ensure this will not happen again.”

In a statement to Fox, the station said: “The results displayed–the presidential race, the senate race and a number of congressional races to name a few, were part of a test and NOT actual results. In Michigan, no ballots are counted before election day.”

So, here in the real world, Trump did not (yet?) receive his rose.

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