I don't buy the argument that the polls were tilted Democrate intentionally for the purpose of supressing Republican turnout in the later time zones. If that were the case, why didn't the MSM finish the job and call FL, VA, and the Carolinas for Kerry right away after closing as the exit polls indicated? Even if they had to reverse their calls later, they would have been covered by blaming the false calls on the bad poll results. And there would have been several nets who would have made the same early calls, as they all supposedly were looking at the same poll data. After a CBS called VA, then the others would have been under more pressure to agree and keep up. They could have influenced another POTUS election and blamed the bad info. Do you really think Dan Rather has any shame left to display by now? No way.
Their bias was probably involved, but only that it lead them to imcompetantly conduct the polls, (and possibly find a little of what they hoped and wanted to find). I don't think it was an intentional scam operation.
They may have screwed up the method of selecting the voters that they interviewed. They may have selected too many at the wrong time of day (Do more Dems vote early and more Reps vote late? Maybe yes if Rove's GOTV phone bank reminds a lot of voters to head out the door with a 5 P.M. phone call). They may have collected too many samples in urban areas and overlooked the higher R turnout in the rural locations.
Their biggest error was going ahead and using the data without checking it or re-weighting it so that it was representative (Male/Female, Young/Old, Ethnic/religious background, etc.) of the voting population as a whole.
They screwed up big time, but at least they had the sense to hold off on calling those expected Bush states for Kerry.
And I hope we voters have finally learned to never EVER let some rumored reports of our candidate being up or down affect our decision to actually get out and cast our vote.
You may not agree with Morris on this, but I do! He probably knows every dirty trick in the book after working for Clinton.
Had an email around 4:00 from a source telling me to ignore exit polls because they were wrong. I was on my way to get ready for a Watch Party so I didn't get the email. BC'04 knew then the exit polls were wrong and tried to warn the media but it didn't work.
One exit poll being off I can understand but 10 -- No Way! This was just one more attack by the media to depress vote and give the election to Kerry.
A few operatives planted the polls. Then they watched what happened. They knew Drudge would leak it. He's far more concerned about being first than being correct. Once Drudge got it, everyone had it. It was part of the "big secret that wasn't supposed to be leaked", so everyone who got it immediately thought of themselves a a "media insider."
"Vanity is my favorite sin"
Because they got burned so bad last election by calling Florida early that there was no way in hell they would call any state before getting some "real" numbers to validate the exit poll numbers.