Tuesday, November 04, 2008
No Early Exit Polls
Exit polls and other early indicators are under tight security, especially since the 2004 election showed the early exit polls favoring Kerry before a sudden shift later in the evening by George W. Bush erased all of that. In the end, exit polls were eventually "adjusted" to match the figures on election web sites. No big deal there. We're just talking about some run-of-the-mill organizations like CNN, MSNBC, FOX and ABC.
Obviously, our glorious captains of industry and mind-controlling media moguls don't want little details like actual vote counts muddying the waters about which candidate is actually chosen. The small matter of who did the choosing need not be shared with the actual electorate.
For those reasons, in addition to the avalanche of litigation and reporting on questionable and, to a large degree, criminal, activity that took place in 2004, and after the debacle of 2000, the shapers of the universe are at odds with the general public. It's an unhealthy relationship in which the public at first mistrusts the government, and then mistrusts the people supposed to expose the misdeeds of government, project and protect the populace, the media.
Worse than promoting a stalemate, bad public-media relations foments more than just plain anger, it proceeds to survival instinctiveness and gets nasty on both sides, but especially in the public sphere, if only because there are so many individuals whose actions cannot be predicted or aganst which much of a defense can be erected.
So, here we are with no fireworks. Well, maybe it for the best that there are no early exit polls today. There has been enough incidental and anecdotal reporting already, via early voting polling, and it all points to the same thing - a Democratic landslide with Obama winning as many as 340 electoral votes at the top of the ticket.
The networks aren't going to call a race, or a state, until they're darned sure of what's out there. Quite a few stories are circulating on the consition of no early exit poll releases, The Chicago Tribune has a good story.
Obviously, our glorious captains of industry and mind-controlling media moguls don't want little details like actual vote counts muddying the waters about which candidate is actually chosen. The small matter of who did the choosing need not be shared with the actual electorate.
For those reasons, in addition to the avalanche of litigation and reporting on questionable and, to a large degree, criminal, activity that took place in 2004, and after the debacle of 2000, the shapers of the universe are at odds with the general public. It's an unhealthy relationship in which the public at first mistrusts the government, and then mistrusts the people supposed to expose the misdeeds of government, project and protect the populace, the media.
Worse than promoting a stalemate, bad public-media relations foments more than just plain anger, it proceeds to survival instinctiveness and gets nasty on both sides, but especially in the public sphere, if only because there are so many individuals whose actions cannot be predicted or aganst which much of a defense can be erected.
So, here we are with no fireworks. Well, maybe it for the best that there are no early exit polls today. There has been enough incidental and anecdotal reporting already, via early voting polling, and it all points to the same thing - a Democratic landslide with Obama winning as many as 340 electoral votes at the top of the ticket.
The networks aren't going to call a race, or a state, until they're darned sure of what's out there. Quite a few stories are circulating on the consition of no early exit poll releases, The Chicago Tribune has a good story.
Labels: exit polls
