Word: poll
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...part, we in the media were made to look stupid by the same mechanisms we use to make ourselves seem smarter than we are. By midafternoon on Election Day, journalists receive exit-poll data, diced into a zillion demographic categories on whom people voted for and why. Networks use those figures to call states seconds after the polls close (and hint not so subtly at outcomes earlier in the day); print journalists use it to plan election coverage; we all use it to lord our insiderdom over less-well-connected pals. The monopolistic source of the data is the Voter...
...Tuesday night, a piece of bad VNS data came up on the network swamis like a bite of tainted flounder. Exit-poll data showed Gore with a lead in Florida, and after most polls there closed at 7 p.m., early returns, in combination with mathematical "models" of Florida voting, bolstered the data. The networks, led by NBC, called the state for Gore, and pundits all but declared it was time to stick a fork in Bush; he was done. The call infuriated the Bush camp because voters in the conservative Florida panhandle, which is in the Central time zone, still...
...hour and a half later, though, VNS alerted the networks that some of its exit-poll and vote-count information was wrong, and the actual vote started showing a trend for Bush. (VNS declined to answer questions last week, but in a statement said the "small lead" its poll gave Gore was insufficient to call the race alone.) Around 10 p.m., the shamefaced networks declared Florida "too close to call...
...Election Day, VNS exit poll data began to filter in to the news organizations...
...given people here a sense that at a grassroots level, elections in the U.S. aren't that different from elections in India, particularly when it's a close fight - the victor is not always the guy who would have won in a fair contest." The suggestion that a new poll be held in Palm Beach County was also very familiar in India. "That happens all the time here," says Rahman. "If the Florida electoral commission needs some expertise, India could fly over some officials with plenty of experience in these matters...