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Preliminary exit poll results had leaked throughout the day and were posted on a number of Web sites, including the widely viewed Drudge Report site, which added to the confusion and fanned the media frenzy. To compound the problem further, a server at Edison/Mitofsky malfunctioned shortly before 11 p.m. The glitch prevented access to any exit poll results until technicians got a backup system operational at 1:33 a.m. yesterday. The crash occurred barely minutes before the consortium was to update its exit polling with the results of later interviewing that found Bush with a one-point lead. Instead, journalists were left...

The first thing we have to realize is that media liberals tried to throw the election for the party of the ass again. Of course, this newsletter's readers were alerted[1] back in issue 321 (Another Election Reporting SNAFU Coming Up). In a nutshell, the failed Voter News Service was replaced by two groups headed by former CBS News reporters with their election results funneled to Associated Press to tabulate and disseminate to media outlets. So, we had the very-left (Bush Administration haters) AP essentially programming most news outlets on election results. AP will never be confused with fair and balanced...

Instead of trying to find a conspiracy theory for why the exit polls where so wrong I think it would behoove us all to look at a simpler and, in my opinion, a more likely answer. People just didn't want to admit that they voted for Bush. After listening to Bush bashing for four years and in the interest of maintaining peace within their own circle of friends some, not all, simply would not admit to having voted for Bush. My mother, who believes that peaceful relations is better than sure hostilities, would not admit to anyone but me that...

HomeEdison in the NewsAbout UsContact UsClient Login Edison Media Research: View Election 2004 Exit Poll Results Services Radio and Music ResearchPolitical Research and Exit PollingMarket and Opinion Research View Election 2004 Exit Poll Results November 03, 2004 Article Index Edison on Music and Radio Edison on Politics Published ResearchSearch this site Would you like to receive future articles automatically? Just add your EMail address below. Edison respects your privacy and will not share your address under any circumstances. The major news organizations hired Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International to be their official provider of exit poll information for...

Bush-Cheney campaign officials said today that Bush advisor Karl Rove, working with chief of staff Andy Card and national security advisor Condi Rice out of the White House, took the lead Tuesday in refuting early media exit polls showing a big election night loss for President Bush. Officials said the trio, from the Old Family Dining Room, were glued to computers showing GOP exit polling data that conflicted with the early media polls that found Bush losing big in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida. Rove, working though the Republican information, found that the polls were flawed, especially in that they were...

An Election Day filled with unexpected twists ended with a familiar question: What went wrong with the network exit polls? In two previous national elections, the exit polls had behaved badly. Premature calls by the networks in Florida led to a congressional investigation in 2000. Two years later, a computer meltdown resulted in no release of data on Election Day.

News organizations promised Wednesday to look into why their Election Day exit polls showed an initial surge for John Kerry, but also blamed bloggers for spreading news that gave a misleading view of the presidential race. The exit poll data was delivered at several points Tuesday to ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and The Associated Press by the National Election Pool, a company formed in the wake of the networks' blown calls on election night 2000.... The Florida and Ohio exit poll results, along with those in other states where Kerry was strong, was quickly disseminated on websites...

It was America's worst-kept secret. The information even was powerful enough to move financial markets. And, as it turns out, it wasn't true. John Kerry was not beating President Bush in Ohio and Florida and on the cusp of becoming the new leader of the free world — despite what confidential exit-poll results widely distributed on the Internet on Tuesday seemed to indicate. In the 2000 election, scoop-hungry TV networks used exit polls to call the key state of Florida for eventual loser Al Gore. This year, it was the bloggers' turn to be led astray. A few influential Web...

Thanks to lessons learned four years ago when big media made some wrong calls, the average American watching television Tuesday night got a pretty accurate picture of how the election was going. But for about seven hours in the afternoon and early evening, several million "insiders" with access to exit-poll data -- blog readers, print journalists, TV executives, politicos and their e-mail buddies -- had a different impression. Aided by wishful thinking in some cases, many were convinced that John Kerry was benefitting from a powerful voter surge. The news largely wasn't reported on TV or in newspapers, but for...

Tuesday's election was marked by some of the most outrageous spinning seen in recent years. "The level of disinformation out there early on was remarkable," says a Republican political consultant in Washington. "Both sides were doing it, but I have to say the Democrats and their operatives did a remarkable job of shaking things up." Across D.C., consultants were emailing notices to their clients, both political and business, attempting to spin an election day that was barely hours old. Take political consultant Michael Frisby's email to clients around 11 a.m. Tuesday: Latest news development is the unprecedented decision by the...

Those faulty exit polls were sabotage By now it is well-known and a part of the 2004 election lore how the exit polls by the major television networks were wrong. Likely this faux pas will assume its place among wartime stories alongside the mistaken calls on Florida’s vote for one side and then for the other in the 2000 election. But the inaccuracies of the media’s polling deserve more scrutiny and investigation. Exit polls are almost never wrong. They eliminate the two major potential fallacies in survey research by correctly separating actual voters from those who pretend they will cast...

I am seriously troubled with some of the leading indicators of the reason so many voted for Bush. I am troubled about how the people’s feelings are being spun in the media and by the Democrats. Believing that most voters who stated moral values and wrong direction guided their voting was because of the gay marriage amendments is a seriously flawed argument. The real reasons Americans feel that the country is going in the wrong direction is because of our eroding moral values. The reasons are much more nuanced than just wanting to defend traditional marriage. They are also more...

Why is the media, including conservative outlets, still using data from the Exit Polls? If the vote count was so far off in these polls, can't one come to the conclusion that the rest of the data is incorrect? Such as the percentages for the most important issues, what ethnic group voted for whom, ect..

The expectations had gotten so out of control that, on Tuesday afternoon, we reporters gathered in the ballroom of the Fairmont Copley Plaza had already moved on to the second-, third-, and fourth-day stories. The exit polls seemed to show such a clear sweep of the battleground states for John Kerry that the news of his victory already seemed stale. What would the more solidly Republican Senate mean for Kerry's ambitious health care plan? Who would he appoint to replace ailing Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist? Most important, how could Kerry co-opt John McCain, a Republican frontrunner for the 2008...

White, Christian Evangelicals are the Rodney Dangerfield of American politics: They don't get no respect. After being responsible for spearheading the re-election of their candidate, instead of receiving congratulations, Christian Evangelicals got to hear NBC stars denigrate their intelligence, turn their support for President Bush into a negative, and even seek to nullify President Bush's electoral victory. At noontime the day after, NBC "election anchor" and Hardball host Chris Mathews, who during the campaign had not sought to hide his hardcore Democrat partisanship, said of Evangelicals, "they're believing, not analytical," a statement that would have applied perfectly to your typical...

An Election Day filled with unexpected twists ended with a familiar question: What went wrong with the network exit polls? In two previous national elections, the exit polls had behaved badly. Premature calls by the networks in Florida led to a congressional investigation in 2000. Two years later, a computer meltdown resulted in no release of data on Election Day.

Millions of people were captivated on Election Day by the unfolding story of John Kerry's victory in the exit polls - except that, once again, the polls were all wrong. Republicans panicked, Democrats gloated and the stock market tumbled after numbers meant solely for the eyes of news editors were leaked to Internet blogs and other Web sites. The raw data showed Kerry beating President Bush by three percentage points (he lost by three), winning Ohio by two (he lost by two) and winning Florida by two (he lost by five). "It was a total failure and an embarrassment," Republican...

Mitofsky International is a survey research company founded by Warren J. Mitofsky in 1993. Its primary business is conducting exit polls for major elections around the world. It does this work exclusively for news organizations. Mitofsky has directed exit polls and quick counts since 1967 for almost 3,000 electoral contests in United States, Mexico, Russia and the Philippines. .... From 1967 to 1990, Mitofsky was executive director of the CBS News election and survey unit, and was an executive producer of its election night broadcasts. He conducted the first exit polls for CBS in 1967, and developed the projection and...

I would like to present to you my thoughts about the Exit Polls debacle on Election Day using shear plain old common sense. The bottom line of the facts is that the Exit Polls do not match up with the raw vote data. This is impossible (according to Dick Morris who says that in all his years, he's never seen exit polls to be wrong. Exit Polls historically have a margin of error of about 1%. The exit polls show Kerry winning PA by 9%... he won by less than 1%. This is one example... there are many, many more.)...