Do we know anything conclusive yet?
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Do we know anything conclusive yet?
| Tue, 11-04-2008 - 3:04pm |
Do we know anything conclusive about the election yet?
| Tue, 11-04-2008 - 3:04pm |
Do we know anything conclusive about the election yet?
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Lurker here.you do know that I now have to wipe my screen off (LOL) warning please, next time! Wine and a monitor don't mix!!!(LOL),
This is a NYT article about what some of the networks are saying about "early" calling on the race.
, November 4, 2008 - Page updated at 12:00 a.m.
Networks may signal a winner before you've left voting booth
By JACQUES STEINBERG
The New York Times
At least one broadcast network and one Web site said Monday that they could foresee signaling to viewers early tonight which candidate appeared likely to win the presidency, despite the unreliability of early exit polls in the 2004 presidential election.
A senior vice president of CBS News, Paul Friedman, said the prospects for Barack Obama or John McCain meeting the minimum threshold of electoral votes could be clear as soon as 5 p.m. Pacific time — before polls in even New York and Rhode Island close, let alone those in Texas and California. At such a moment — determined from a combination of polling data and samples of actual votes — the network could offer its preliminary projection, Friedman said.
"We could know Virginia at 7 (4 p.m. PST)," he said. "We could know Indiana before 8 (5 p.m. PST). We could know Florida at 8 (5 p.m. PST). We could know Pennsylvania at 8 (5 p.m. PST). We could know the whole story of the election with those results. We can't be in this position of hiding our heads in the sand when the story is obvious."
Similarly, the editor of Slate, David Plotz, said in an e-mail that "if Obama is winning heavily," he could see calling the race "sometime between 8 and 9 (5 and 6 p.m. PST)."
"Our readers are not stupid, and we shouldn't engage in a weird Kabuki drama that pretends McCain could win California and thus the presidency," Plotz wrote. "We will call it when a sensible person — not a TV news anchor who has to engage in a silly pretense about West Coast voters — would call it."
All the networks (and other news organizations with Web sites) were engaging in similar debates Monday about striking the following balance: not relying too much on early exit-poll data — which had suggested, at least early on Election Day in 2004, that John Kerry might be on track to defeat President Bush — while not being so cautious as to be beaten to the punch by a competitor who announces an emerging result first.
Asked how Katie Couric, who is leading the network's coverage, might present the network's projection to viewers, Friedman said he could imagine her saying, for example, "Given what we know about the results, or the projected results in various states, it's beginning to look like it will be very difficult for John McCain to put together enough votes to win this election."
The decision-desk director of ABC News, Dan Merkle, said, "I think at ABC we're going to be more cautious than that, in terms of telegraphing which way the election is going." Merkle said he was particularly concerned about how much stock to put in surveys of voters as they leave the polls, "which are sometimes fine, and which sometimes have had overstatements on Democratic candidates in particular."
"We may have some indications from that data," Merkle said. "That's different than going on the air to report that."
With some national polls suggesting that Obama was heading for a potential electoral landslide, news organizations were preparing for a race that could be far less close than those in 2004 or 2000.
The nearest precedent could be 1980, when the networks projected Ronald Reagan defeating President Carter shortly after the polls closed in the East. The secretaries of state from Washington, Oregon and other Western states later argued that, as a result of the networks' early call that year, voter turnout in California dropped by about 2 percent.
Other experts, though, have argued that any impact by the networks on turnout was far outweighed by Carter's concession speech shortly after the networks broadcast their results.
Whatever the networks decide, it seemed clear Monday that they would disregard a plea by Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., to hold off projecting a winner until polls in the last state had closed. Those would be Alaska's, which are to remain open until 9 p.m. PST.
"When a candidate gets 270 electoral votes, they're the next president," said Sheldon Gawiser, director of elections for NBC News. "If some states are still voting, it's an unfortunate circumstance, that's what it is. The founding fathers never expected us to count the votes fast."
In something of a compromise, CNN said it might tell its viewers that another news organization had called a particular state, but that it was holding off, and for what reason.
Yowza! I haven't even had lunch and the shift workers aren't even up yet. Give us west coast folks a chance! :)
Seriously, we really hated it back in the days when news services would be calling the election at our lunch time - not everyone can vote before work!
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