Posted on 11/04/2008 10:52:14 AM PST by lewisglad
At least one broadcast network and one Web site said Monday that they could foresee signaling to viewers early Tuesday evening which candidate appeared to have won the presidency, despite the unreliability of some early exit polls in the last presidential election.
A senior vice president of CBS News, Paul Friedman, said the prospects for Barack Obama or John McCain meeting the minimum threshold of electoral votes could be clear as soon as 8 p.m. — before polls in even New York and Rhode Island close, let alone those in Texas and California. At such a moment, determined from a combination of polling data and samples of actual votes, the network could share its preliminary projection with viewers, Mr. Friedman said.
“We could know Virginia at 7,” he said. “We could know Indiana before 8. We could know Florida at 8. We could know Pennsylvania at 8. We could know the whole story of the election with those results. We can’t be in this position of hiding our heads in the sand when the story is obvious.”
Similarly, the editor of the Web site Slate, David Plotz, said in an e-mail message that “if Obama is winning heavily,” he could see calling the race “sometime between 8 and 9.”
“Our readers are not stupid, and we shouldn’t engage in a weird Kabuki drama that pretends McCain could win California and thus the presidency,” Mr. Plotz wrote. “We will call it when a sensible person — not a TV news anchor who has to engage in a silly pretense about West Coast voters — would call it.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Just like you did in 2000 and 2004?
They’ll call states for Obama.
It will be “too close to call” until the wee hours if McCain is leading.
Has CBS even called Ohio for Bush, yet?
Ever since I can remember networks have called races on the East Coast before polls in the other time zones have closed. I really do not see how their reporting returns from the East Coast states would have any negative impact on McCain.
“A senior vice-president at . . . “
See BS!
CBS has no regard for voters or for the voting process. CBS should be shunned and avoided.
Call and talk to everyone you know who may be a after work or evening voter too just ignore all news and exit polls.
Tell them to VOTE no matter what and tell them to pass this message on.
VOTE!!!!
CBS has no regard for voters or for the voting process. CBS should be shunned and avoided.
And just like in 2000 with Florida early in the evening when one network call it, the others will say ‘well CBS called it too’ and use it to declare the Dimrats the winner.
I guess a lot of the CBS viewers won’t get their vote out then. I wonder if MSNBC will do the same. How sad.
This is what they all said in 2004. The talking points of the first 7 minutes on all of the networks was the same, President Bush was a one term loser like his father, who also had lost because of a bad economy.
They had to toss that script (and ALL of them had that same talking point) when it became clear that Kerry was not getting a 315 EV blowout.
AW MAN! We have to target these stations and call their advertisers. We need to do it one at a time. The Gays did it with Dr. Laura and got her removed from a T.V. show. We can absolutely remove a news station by applying preasure to their advertisers. WE CAN DO IT!
“CBS should be shunned and avoided.”
Better yet, they should be SHUT DOWN. I knew this was going to happen. If they call a win for Hussein before some polls are closed, they do so in the hope of discouraging McCain voters from voting at all.
I’ve never really seen what the big deal about this is. Anybody that doesn’t vote because the networks called the election for the “wrong” guy is just excuse mongering, they weren’t going to vote anyway. It’s not like president is the only thing to vote for, all the congressmen are up, 1/3 of the senators, tons of state and local office, propositions, judges. Most states have multiple pages of ballot this year, some the ballots are approaching novel length, no reasonably intelligent person would skip all that just because CBS called the presidential election for the “wrong” person.
When you are looking at a 90 minute wait to vote after work and the leadership of the nation is already lost, some people will decide to just go home (Democrats will have a majority in Congress anyway).
Anybody who can’t spend 90 minutes in line to vote for all the propositions and state and local offices is just plain lazy and stupid and should have their voting privileges revoked.
People wonder why our government sucks, look no further than people watching TV hoping for an excuse to not vote. Wonder what these people would have thought in an environment like Iraq, forget wait times, they had to brave terrorist threats.
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