Early missteps, late-night caution -- but the right call
Exit polling data sent pundits in wrong direction
The 2004 election did not match the chaos of the 2000 presidential contest. But it provided another rocky ride for the media that began with early expectations of a win for John F. Kerry, turned into the overnight cliffhanger that frustrated President Bush's campaign, and finally ended with Kerry's concession yesterday.
When the networks' election night projections stopped with Bush just short of a second term, campaign aides tried to persuade reporters the president had already passed the 270 electoral-vote level. Senior adviser Karl Rove and White House communications director Dan Bartlett, according to one published report, tried to jawbone the networks into declaring the election over.
But with no television outlet showing a graphic with Bush as the victor, the Republican National Committee produced one of its own -- projected on the big screen at the Reagan Building -- that had Ohio and Nevada as ''red states."
Within the news industry, the post-mortems began in earnest with the focus on exit polls and their widespread dissemination through a network of online pundits and bloggers.
''There was clearly some serious systematic problem with the [exit poll] sample selection and or the weighting and the administration of the survey," said John Gorman, who headed the Fox News decision desk.
CNN senior political analyst William Schneider said the biggest problem was ''the overreaction to the exit polls. You have bloggers, you have the Internet [driving] the quick conclusion that it looked good for Kerry. Put not your faith in early exit polls. It will always be betrayed."
Blogger Mickey Kaus wrote that the flawed voter surveys sent ''the entire news media . . . off on a completely misguided goose chase [or goose hunt!] for seven hours."
A number of websites -- from Wonkette's blog to the National Review online to Slate -- published exit polls as they leaked out Tuesday, breaking a taboo against disclosing the results when people are still voting. The numbers, which were updated throughout the day, showed Kerry holding leads in a number of battleground states including Florida and Ohio.
Yesterday, the online disseminators of the exit polls -- who came under fire for creating a false Kerry boomlet -- defended their actions. Though acknowledging that ''the exit polls don't seem to be highly accurate," Slate editor Jacob Weisberg said ''what we're doing is letting people who are not in the media in on the game." Ana Marie Cox, editor of Wonkette, took a more philosophical view, saying, ''we had to kill the exit polls in order to save them. I hope I played some small role in debunking the role of exit polls."
Armed with those exit poll numbers, network commentators and reporters hinted at a Kerry victory before the polls closed Tuesday. CNN ''Crossfire" hosts Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson all but called the Democrat the winner midafternoon. Panelists on the Fox News Channel practically wrote Bush off in the early evening. Reports by ABC and NBC correspondents stressed confidence among the Kerry people and a sense of anxiety in the Bush camp.
The tone changed once the prime-time election returns began Tuesday night. The networks -- which had implemented a series of safeguards to protect against a repeat of the 2000 Florida fiasco -- stressed caution in projecting winners. ''I think we're all pretty much in a race not to be first," CNN's vice president of news and production, David Bohrman, told the Globe.
Even when the outcome came down to Florida and Ohio, discretion dominated. Despite Bush maintaining a solid lead late into the Florida vote count, the state was not called until close to midnight. And the drama in Ohio dragged on even longer. At 12:41 a.m., the Fox News Channel became the first outlet to call the state for Bush, and anchorman Brit Hume declared that the president was ''within just a few votes of certain reelection." NBC projected Ohio for Bush about 20 minutes later. That triggered a statement from Kerry's campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, saying, ''There are more than 250,000 remaining votes to be counted. We believe when they are, John Kerry will win Ohio."
Although the networks brought Bush to the brink of victory, they stopped short of giving it to him. The Fox News Channel and NBC put his tally at 269 electoral votes, while CNN, CBS, and ABC had the president at 254 electoral votes, sending the nation to bed for the second consecutive general election without a declared winner. To some, it may have seemed like an abundance of caution.
''They overreacted because of the freak four years ago," said Andrew Tyndall, an analyst who monitors network news. ''Nothing bad would have happened if they called things quicker."
CBS's vice president of public affairs, Linda Mason, said, ''We didn't feel all the pieces were in place to call Ohio. It was mainly the provisional vote and the challenges." Although she said the network was ''cautiously aggressive" in its election night projections, she acknowledged that the memory of 2000 is ''absolutely huge. That's a nightmare that will take a few more election cycles to get through."
''The memory of 2000 is, by necessity, ingrained in people because we made a mistake," said Bill Wheatley, vice president of NBC News. Asked to characterize his network's performance, he said, ''We feel good that we were cautious, and we got it right."
Rick Klein of the Globe staff contributed to this report. 