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We benefitted from this attempt. Even the reasonable pundits say the first exit polls should be ignored, that they are extremely unreliable. IMO, it motivated our base.

I agree with you. Most people seem to assume that hearing of an early exit poll with Kerry on top would discourage Bush voters in the west, and therefore that was the motive for the fake. But I'm not so sure; isn't it just as plausible to think that Bush voters who heard of those polls thought "damn, now I KNOW I better get to the polling place"?

I guess it all depends on whether exit polls are believed to be the last word, or just an initial fuzzy estimate. I took them to be the latter. I guess there might be some who think of them as the former, but perhaps they're more likely to be Democrats... because you have to be kind of stupid to place so much stock in an a.m. exit poll ;-) In other words, if this *was* a (D) trick, I'm not sure it didn't backfire on them....