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Posted on 10/07/2003 11:58:14 PM PDT by AgThorn
They're baa-a-a-c-k. The exit polls, that is.
After embarrassing misfires in predicting election results in 2000 and 2002, the and five major television networks disbanded the Voter News Service consortium that had administered exit polls in both of those votes.
But they didn't abandon the idea of exit polls themselves, and they returned to the field with a new polling service for yesterday's California gubernatorial recall election.
"There is nothing unreliable about exit polls," says Warren Mitofsky, a consultant who helped usher in surveys of voters leaving polling places more than three decades ago at CBS News. Mr. Mitofsky's firm collaborated with New Jersey-based Edison Media Research on yesterday's California exit poll.
Exit polls are designed to survey voters leaving the polling places to obtain a statistically valid sample of the electorate. Analysts at news organizations use them in tandem with actual returns from bellwether precincts to project probable winners. In Florida's excruciatingly close 2000 presidential election, exit polls contributed to shifting TV news verdicts on election night in which first Al Gore, then George W. Bush, and then neither one was projected to win.
Voter News Service subsequently retooled its exit-polling machinery, but the technology broke down on Election Day 2002. Now Mr. Mitofsky and Edison are developing a system for the 2004 presidential contest.
News organizations are resuming their use of exit polls for two reasons. They provide the only comprehensive, contemporaneous means of gathering information on who showed up to vote and why. And their overall track record of informing Election Night news accounts remains strong despite recent high-profile glitches.
The 2000 Florida misfire largely resulted from the exceptionally close vote count. Last November's election-night meltdown, participants say, was principally a computer system failure. The Ohio-based research firm that Voter News Service contracted with in 2002, Battelle Memorial Institute, isn't part of the California exit poll.
Yesterday's poll was designed to sample opinion from more than 2,400 voters in 60 precincts -- far smaller and easier than the national sample of some 25,000 voters used for presidential exit polls.
All five major TV networks -- CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN and Fox -- are joining the AP in financing the California exit poll. Other news organizations, including The Wall Street Journal, have purchased its results for use in their reporting.
Election-news veterans argue that they have always been cautious in using exit polls to project outcomes -- which is why the occasional flubs have drawn so much attention. But they acknowledge that recent experience has caused them to be doubly cautious while scrutinizing their methods of analysis to reflect the latest information.
"We've learned a lot" since 2000, says Kathy Frankovic, director of surveys for CBS News.
It should be clear to all conservatives by now that the left intends to demonize us. They don't just disagree with us, they hate us. And worse, they want to get other people to hate us.
Places like Free Republic drive the left batty.
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He's right -- if the polls are administered and reported honestly. That's a huge "if" with liberals.
Dumping that reddish section off into the Pacific would be the biggest improvement in American culture in a century...
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