Question Details	Asked By	Asked On
Jumping the Gun	ETWolverine	11/03/04
It seems to me that there were several cases of "jumping the gun" in yesterday's election coverage. First there were the early exit polls at around 4:30pm EST. Matt Drudge and several blogers jumped the gun and posted the polls which showed Kerry leading in most of the swing states early on. This scared the bejezus out of a lot of Reps, and people began scrambling for a better review of the data. And they were wrong. This marks the THIRD election in a row that the early exit polls were dead wrong, and in which they may have influenced the election process. I think it's high time that exit poll results were BANNED from being publicly displayed until the polls close. They are inaccurate, and they have a negative effect on the elections themselves. That is an election law reform that I would back. The second case is a little more iffy. I'm not sure it really was a case of jumping the gun or not. I'd like your opinions. As a general rule, most of the networks were very careful not to project winners without VERY solid data to back up those projections. In a few cases, the closing data reached 99% before a winne was projected. There were those who commented that maybe the newsies were waiting a little too long to make projections, but the general concensus was better safe than sorry. I happen to agree... I don't mind waiting another hour to get the info, as long as it is correct. The sole possible exception was FOX who called Ohio for Bush. They were the only network to do so. The data on which they were basing their projection was solid... the numbers clearly showed Bush up by over 100,000 with something like 98% of the districts in. What they didn't consider was the challenge of the provisional ballots by the Kerry people. And even later, they were able to convincingly argue that with a 140,000 lead, Bush was statistically unbeatable. So the question is, did they jump the gun? Should they have held off on their projection as the other networks did? Elliot
Answered By		Answered On
elgin_republicans		11/03/04
Jumping the gun? First the exit polls were ALL wrong, which BTW is impossible, because they're done AFTER the votes have been cast. Makes you wonder why the MSM got that wrong? Trying to influence the vote perhaps - nah. Second, Kerry was leading in PA by less than the amount Bush was leading in OH, with a similar number of "provisional ballots" outstanding, but the MSM had no problem calling PA for Kerry. Yet, they weren't going to call OH for Bush until Kerry said it was OK. They suck. I hope everyone goes back to reading books.

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