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.
EXIT POLLS ARE NOT ELECTIONS.
It's just another excuse for 'pollaganda'. They tried it in 2004 and failed.
The difference this time is that the early exit polling numbers won't leak until after 5PM Eastern, and hopefully most people will be off work and heading to the polls. (if they didn't vote before their shift in the morning)
They have to protect themselves from....themselves.
It's astonishing that in the best nation and the most modern nation on earth, we have difficulties with our voting. Not to mention that percentage wise, more Iraqis voted in their first post-Saddam election than regularly vote in US elections. Is it that we as a nation are so fat and happy that we do not actually see the world around us and respond accordingly? It's shameful.
Voting since 1972, I've never seen an exit poller. Don't most places have laws against polling activity within a certain distance from polling places?
"And based on exit poll numbers, we here at CBS News can confidently report that AL GORE will win the US Senate seats in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Montana, Florida, Wyoming, Maine, Canada, Antarctica, and the Crab Nebula.
Now THAT is a prediction I'm willing to bet on.
Fox News last night already relegated outer space to Jon Carry.
You've got that right. Well, I'm on my way to vote.......will be back to play later!!!
pollaganda
That is a great new word! Seriously, we should work to use it frequently until it gets into Webster's.
Yep.
That and exit polls are by their very nature a bit off anyway.
Okay, I am glad I am not going to have to argue with people that are jumping off a cliff over polls rather then actual votes tabulated this year. Want to thank the operators of the site.
That said I'll be shocked if nothing leaks before polls close. Libs have tried to alter TWO elections both in 2000 and 2004. One by announcing Florida before the votes were in and declaring Gore won. Then in 2004 by declaring rediculous results that basically had Kerry on his way to a Reagan Landslide. I don't think they have it in them to be that honest.
Then you have to factor in just human nature. They'll have information, and they'll want to share it. Even if they aren't trying to sway an election, the news is still getting out. The only problem is that we won't know how accurate it is. A sign, perhaps, is the expressions on both Rep and Dem on TV. Except as we learned in 2004, someone can be on top of the moon on bad data.
From my perspective It's going to be a long night before we get ACCURATE feedback no matter what projections leak.
I think you are wrong about the welfare cheats voting early in the day. The welfare cheats in my area don't get up before noon, and seldom leave the house until evening when the local saloon opens.
Exit polls are no longer valid, not that they ever were.
Jim has already said that exit polls will not be allowed to be posted online tonight, so for us at FR it makes no difference.
Why do we even need exit polls? Let the actual votes be the exit poll. Screw the MSM.
Not to mention the bogus early call of Florida for algore in 2000 before the polls had even closed in the western (heavily republican) Florida panhandle. (By the most conservative estimates that cost W around 5000 votes in the Panhandle from people that got out of line or turned their cars around and went home, along with thousands of votes in the midwest where states like New Mexico might well have flipped to W if not for the bogus algore call of Florida.)
We have more anti-Americans in positions of power than any nation on earth
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