Posted on 11/07/2006 5:28:30 AM PST by meg88
Two-by-two, polling specialists from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News and the Associated Press will go into rooms in New York and Washington shortly before noon Tuesday.
Their cellphones and BlackBerrys will be confiscated; proctors will monitor the doors; for the next five hours, these experts will pore over exit-poll data from across the country.
If all goes well, only when they emerge from their cloisters will the legions of ravenous political bloggers have any chance of getting their hands on the earliest indication of which party will end up controlling Congress.
The extraordinary security is a result of mix-ups that prompted grumbling about the accuracy of exit polls after the 2004 presidential election: Bloggers posted data from early exit polls, incorrectly calling some states for Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry and indicating that he would unseat President Bush.
Exit polls will be available for all the key Senate races, giving an early picture of whether it could flip to the Democrats.
The data are collected through the National Election Pool, a consortium made up of the three traditional networks, CNN, Fox News and AP.
In previous years, numbers were made available to the news organizations in waves via secure Web sites. In 2004, the first wave of data went out around 2 p.m. and quickly leaked onto the Internet.
That's what brought about this year's sequestering of the news organization's representatives. The only communication they'll be allowed to make out of the so-called quarantine rooms before 5 p.m. will be to warn news organizations about potential problems in the data.
But at 5 p.m., waves of exit-poll data will begin flowing to newsrooms via limited-access Web sites. For the bloggers, the scramble will be on to get the data first, hoping for an email from a friendly source.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Yes, it does.
I like how they try to blame exit poll data influencing the election on bloggers. It was the DBM that used that data to try to get conservatives to stay home.
Why would voters be stupid enough to tell someone how they voted? It is none of their business. And if the voter was really, really wicked, what would prevent him from lying to the pollsters? It looks as if they would have learned their lesson in the '04 election, but they are coming back for another beating, it appears.
Early exit polls show Gov. Arnold way ahead! Oops! The polls haven't opened in Kalifornia!
Plus the exit polls last time oversmapled females 59-41.
lol.
Don't know if the facts of this story are nonsense, but the attempted results will be. The MSM will project early Dim wins in razor-thin races (and have to retract later), and will be slow to declare even blow-out Republican victories. The disinformation might continue to Wednesday afternoon in an effort to encourage support for legal challenges.
If the CIA can't plug leaks, I really doubt CNN/CBS/NBC/ETC can. LOL!!
I just came from the polling place and I was the only one there under 75. Early exit polls show votes by seniors, gov't workers and welfare cheats. What do they all have in common?
Especially if they quit taking polling data at noon.
What good is an exit poll? Just count the darn votes already and forget the early predictions.........
Even if these poll results were to leak out, would it matter? They were so dead wrong the last time, fortunately!
I have never seen how they could accurately poll people leaving the polling places anyway. Every time I vote most people prefer to just get in and out as quickly as possible. Few people want to stop for even a second to take campaign literature, much less stay for several minutes and talk to a pollster.
Why do you call me really, really wicked? It's no ones business, so if they ask, i give false answers.
I noticed at my polling place I was 1 of only 2 under the age of about 50. Of course it was 6am.
"The extraordinary security is a result of mix-ups that prompted grumbling about the accuracy of exit polls after the 2004 presidential election: Bloggers posted data from early exit polls, incorrectly calling some states for Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry and indicating that he would unseat President Bush."
"Mix-ups" my Aunt Fanny! I call BS. That exit polling was a totally orchestrated effort by the MSM to get conservatives to stay home. Yeesh.
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