NEW YORK – 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 first wave showed Kerry with a lead of three percentage points in Florida and four points in Ohio – both battleground states won by President Bush when the votes were actually counted, giving the president his margin of victory.
“Once one part of it is in question and is wrong, it kind of puts the whole thing in question,” said Marty Ryan, Fox News Channel’s executive producer for political coverage. “It was disappointing. … During the primary season, it worked very well for us, we were happy with it. But that was not good last night.”
Other network representatives said their confidence in the election pool remained unshaken.
The Florida and Ohio exit poll results, along with those in other states were Kerry was strong, was quickly disseminated on Web sites such as Slate, the Drudge Report, Wonkette.com, Atrios.blogspot.com and Command Post.
Some of these sites cautioned readers not to make too much of the information. Command Post delivered the news under the headline “Grain of Salt.” Drudge removed the numbers almost as quickly as they were posted. And Slate warned “these early exit poll numbers do not divine the name of the winner.”
“I didn’t have any real compunction about putting it up there,” said Alan Nelson, co-manager of Command Post. “I didn’t struggle with the decision because I knew it was going to become a global news item within about 30 seconds.
“Our approach is: We post, you decide,” Nelson said.
But the people who read these numbers – among them, thousands of ordinary Americans with an intense interest in the election – put too much faith in them and leaped to conclusions, said Bill Schneider, CNN’s polling expert.
“I think people believed them, and it’s particularly the case with Internet bloggers,” said Kathy Frankovic, CBS News’ polling director. “That’s unfortunate, because it sets up expectations that may or may not be met. I think it’s a good exercise, because it reminded people that early exit polls can be unreliable.”
Bloggers picked out different numbers to use for their purposes, said Joseph Lenski, who ran the poll with partner Warren Mitofsky for the election pool.
“Doing an early poll is like reporting the results of the game at halftime,” Lenski said.
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