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October 28, 2004
TV networks promise not to jump the gun
Remember the US election night of four years ago. The major networks called the election for Al Gore. A few hours later changed their minds and called it a Bush victory. By morning, the networks had decided it was too close to call - the right answer. Well this time around they are promising to do better. Being first, they say, will take a back seat to being right.
One of the problems in 2000, was when one network's "decision desk" called the election for Gore, the others followed suit - at that point nobody wanted to be last. To counter this, NBC and FOX will put their decision desks in isolation and prevent them from seeing the coverage of other networks. The ABC decision desk has adopted a rule that any race that is within 1% will be deemed "too close to call" even if all the votes have been counted (they are expecting legal challenges).
The other problem in 2000 was the network reliance on exit polling to help them predict the results. That debacle prompted the networks, which share exit poll numbers, to change their methodology. The new methodology which should have been tested on the fly during the 2002 mid-term elections was not available to network decision desks in time for them to use it. Networks were forced to fall back on vote-swing models (that in my view are more useful than exit polling). Don't expect them to ditch the exit polls this time though, every piece of information is going to be needed to predict a result.
Posted by maxthecat on October 28, 2004 at 12:00 PM
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Filed in: Politics / United States
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