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.