The nation got an impossibly early peek at the outcome of the hotly-contested Florida governor's race on MSNBC – after the network mistakenly posted a graphic of the results before the polls even opened.

The network posted a graphic showing the two candidates, Democrat Andrew Gillum and Republican Ron DeSantis, who are facing off in one of the nation's marquis contests, during its Monday night broadcast.

Deadline Hollywood, which posted a screen grab of the graphic, showed it had Gillum grabbing a narrow victory. It had precise vote totals with a 49.4 to 48.8 and a gap of fewer than 46,000 votes

'MISFIRE': MSNBC accidentally posted a graphic showing results in the Florida governor's race before votes were counted. The network immediately corrected the error on air, attributing it to 'inadvertently populated' fields and test numbers

An embarrassed host Chris Hayes filled in viewers on the mishap, saying the network had 'inadvertently populated some test numbers' and put the result on the broadcast.

He offered the explanation in the form of a 'quick clarification' to viewers.

'Just want to say, earlier this hour, we showed a graphic of the Florida gubernatorial race.'

Hayes said it 'may have caught your eye because our system had inadvertently populated some test numbers. Obviously, we do not yet have any vote totals here, the night before the election,' he noted.

'Obviously, we do not yet have any vote totals here, the night before the election,' said host Chris Hayes

The tallies were posted the night before Election Day

Andrew Gillum and Ron DeSantis are engaged in one of the nation's top governor's races

'That was a misfire. Don’t worry. I was pretty confused when I saw it up there,' he added.

The results the network posted could well be what happens once the elections are over and actual votes are counted, based on opinion polls – which are difficult to evaluate in an election where turnout is a major question mark.

Gillum leads in a series of recent polls, bringing his average lead up to 4.4 per cent in the RealClearPolitics average. That spread is wider than the one posted in the inadvertent graphic that aired early.