Momentum is focus of television coverage

The Mos -- in the lingo of ABC's political memo, The Note -- stands for those with "momentum" and refers to Senators John F. Kerry and John Edwards, who had surged in recent Iowa polls. Looking for a punchy story line, pundits turned last night's contest into a battle between the two candidates with momentum and former Iowa leaders Howard Dean and Richard Gephardt, who had faltered in late tracking polls.

At around 8 p.m., a half-hour after the caucuses began, CNN and the Fox News Channel cited entrance poll numbers that pointed to a victory for Kerry, who until recently seemed to be foundering. "The Democratic race for president is literally being turned upside down," declared CNN's Judy Woodruff. On MSNBC, Newsweek's Howard Fineman ventured that "regardless of what happens tonight, John Edwards and John Kerry have come back from the dead."

Last night's coverage of the first crucial test of the 2004 presidential election featured some new bells and whistles. MSNBC stuck a "caucus countdown" clock in a lower corner of the screen while CNN's "caucus cam" took viewers inside a boisterous caucus room in Adair, Iowa. The most significant new wrinkle was the networks' decision to scrap the troubled Voter News Service (VNS) -- which counted the votes and conducted the exit polls that drove election night TV projections -- in favor of a system called the National Election Pool (NEP).

One thing that didn't change was television's frantic desire to take the suspense out of a long night by sorting out the winners and losers as quickly as possible. Last night, the tone was set even before the release of the 8 o'clock poll numbers. On MSNBC, pollster Frank Luntz interviewed late-deciding Democratic voters who had flocked to Edwards and Kerry. When asked why they weren't supporting Dean, one woman responded that "he just came out angry," while another ventured that "he doesn't have the patience to work things through." At about 7:40 p.m. Fox News executive producer Marty Ryan got the word from his political team that Iowans were embracing Kerry and Edwards. "It's been going this way for the last several days," Ryan told the Globe. "It looks like a Kerry/Edwards race now."

For televison outlets, the caucuses represented a crucial test after two consecutive election snafus. On that infamous night in 2000, the networks first called Florida for Al Gore, then deemed it too close to call, then awarded it to George Bush, and finally called it a tossup. In the 2002 midterm elections, a computer problem knocked out the exit poll analysis, signficantly slowing the pace of predicting winners. Following those two failures, the networks scrapped the VNS and opted for a system in which the Associated Press counts the votes and two firms, Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, conduct the voter polling.

According to ABC News decision desk director Dan Merkle, Iowa caucusgoers were polled at sample precincts last night and he cautioned that "entrance polls [measure] people's initial preferences, but that's before they start the caucusing."

Still, that caveat didn't keep the entrance poll results from pouring in quickly after the caucusing began. At 8 o'clock, the Fox News Channel used those polls to put Kerry first and Edwards second while CNN's Wolf Blitzer declared that Kerry had "surged dramatically" and "apparently has a lead." An hour later, the harder evidence started rolling in and the language became noticeably less equivocal. On MSNBC, when USA Today columnist Walter Shapiro announced that caucusers in an upscale Des Moines precinct had gone heavily for Kerry and Edwards and showed surprisingly little support for Dean, host Chris Matthews had one question.

"How did Howard Dean lose the latte crowd?"