Posted on 11/21/2004 4:13:08 AM PST by prairiebreeze
NEW YORK - The consortium of news organizations that runs the election exit polls has voted to delay distributing data for several hours on future election days. Exit poll data will not be distributed until after 4 p.m. ET to the organizations that have paid for it: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and The Associated Press, NBC’s elections director, Sheldon Gawiser, said Thursday. On Nov. 2, the companies conducting the polls, Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, distributed the first wave of exit poll data at 1 p.m., and the numbers were immediately leaked on the Internet and to the campaigns. Those initial numbers suggested that Sen. John Kerry had slight leads in Florida and Ohio, battleground states that were won by President Bush when the votes were actually counted.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
There was one older reporter on CNN, on election night (can't remember his name) and he was the one in charge of tabulating exit polls.
He said he had warned everyone when the exit polls showed Kerry ahead, that the purpose of exit polling was not to get estimates of actual votes cast or who was going to win.
It was for the purpose of later putting together demographics, from the entire day of exit polling, of trends in the electorate.
He said even though he had warned the CNN reporters to be cautious of any exit poll as an indicator of who would win, he said he saw reporter after reporter leaking the info to family, friends, and contacts.
I think the media consortium was forced to decide this because they know how much more it makes them look unreliable and partisan.
If it had actually worked for sKerry, we'd be seeing a different story I think.
Prairie
And now what will Zogby do? He is out of exit polls and sauce. Totally discredited!
There is no way the media whores will not tell the future liberal nominee what the exit polls say. Thanks to the speech 'god' McCain the media and liberals are one and the same.
Slight leads...
8% is not a slight lead.
The exit polls were rigged in an attempt to throw the election. Any statement that does not admit that is useless.
Exactly.
Just one little problem here. The exit polls released at 1 pm on election day showed Kerry with a 1 pt lead. The poll released at 3:50 pm showed him with a 3 pt lead.
So what exactly is accomplished by simply shelving the 1 o'clock release?
My preference would be that the consortium not even tally poll results until 7pm eastern, eliminating leaks. No results would be released until 9pm eastern.
They can say all they want about these poll results not affecting actual voting on the west coast....I don't believe them. There just isn't any good reason to release these numbers before 9 eastern.
It wasn't a blogger who called Imus early afternoon and told him Kerry was going to win. It was Tim Russert. Imus said he called everyone he knew and told them the good news. Everybody in the media got the word Kerry was ahead, and because the media was ecstatic with the news, they lost all professional common sense and reason.
The media's disappointment must be profound, and let me tell you, I delight in their misery. The whole thing reminds me of a Mel Brooks movie.
Actually, I think the next round of "campaign finance reform" laws will ban them completely.
I thought this was going to be the thread where Dan Rather "calls" Ohio, and declares who is the new President?
Exactly, exactly.
The best (and should be, the ONLY) exit poll are the actual election results. Who needs all this other speculative and biased garbage? (Besides the liberal "mainstream" media who attempt to suppress Republican voter turnout by falsely predicting Democrat wins.)
It seems like I remember one time when I was asked by someone possibly taking exit polls, I refused to answer. Exit polls should be abolished.
I agree:)
I think the polls should be open across the country for the same 24 hour period. They all open at the same time they all close at the same time. There would be more time for voters to get there, less lines, no judge deciding if the poll should stay open, and no reporting could be done about the east coast before the west coast closed.
Becky
I am in the minority here. I think releasing the results of the exit polls early in the afternoon actually helped us. Every talk radio show I heard in the afternoon was urging Republicans to GO VOTE NOW if they hadn't already. "You still have 10 minutes until the polls close - you can make it!"
If the exit polls always skew left, that's good for us. The thing that hurt us in 2000 was the calling by the MSM of Florida as a win for Gore before the polls closed, not the releasing of exit poll data.
They are like kids that can't wait til Christmas to open their presents.
I was called by several pollsters during the election. I would give them nothing. The polls don't work anymore because they can't possibly get random data.
The only reason they go on is the salaries of the polling companies need MSM suckers to buy the inaccurate polls.
I think having leftist media wasting their money is quite amusing.
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