Bad move on Fox Part, they will lose their viewers.
The only reason for FOX to release exit poll data early is if they are TRYING TO INFLUENCE the voting and the outcome. That means that they are seeing something that goes against thier story line and they are trying to either rally or more likely DEPRESS the supporters of candidates that have not voted yet.
Fox reported some exit poll sampling a bit ago:
Evangelicals went 41% Huckabee and 27% McCain and 53% of voters identified themselves as Evangelicals, which gives Huckabee a great start.
However, Vets broke the other way 36% McCain vs 25% Huckabee and 25% identified themselves as Vets.
And, Independents broke 37% McCain vs 23% Huckabee with 20% identifying themselves as Independents.
If these groups were independent of one another (no double counting) it would imply a very, very close race with Huckabee slightly ahead.
However they also said that Huckabee got 32% of Conservatives vs 26% for McCain, with 2/3 of voters identifying themselves as Conservatives.
Remember these are samples, but if non-Conservatives broke 35/25 for McCain/Huckabee, this race would be a toss up, and if McCain does better than that, he would be ahead.
Ironically, the Conservatives appear to be choosing Huckabee, and again, liberals are trying to give us McCain as our nominee.
Thompson/Romney were back vying for 3rd place and I wasn’t paying much attention as they were in the low teens most of the time.
Incidentally, the InTrade market had Huckabee up a couple of hours ago, then swung toward McCain for a bit, and is now back in favor of Huckabee since the Fox exit sampling came out. I’m for Huckabee, but it looks like it could go either way from the numbers above.