Exit polls to be delayed in future elections

updated 4:13 p.m. ET Nov. 18, 2004

NEW YORK - The consortium of news organizations that runs the election exit polls has voted to delay distributing data for several hours on future election days.

Exit poll data will not be distributed until after 4 p.m. ET to the organizations that have paid for it: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and The Associated Press, NBC’s elections director, Sheldon Gawiser, said Thursday.

On Nov. 2, the companies conducting the polls, Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, distributed the first wave of exit poll data at 1 p.m., and the numbers were immediately leaked on the Internet and to the campaigns.

Those initial numbers suggested that Sen. John Kerry had slight leads in Florida and Ohio, battleground states that were won by President Bush when the votes were actually counted.

“There were an awful lot of people on the Internet talking about things they don’t understand,”’ said Gawiser, head of the news organizations’ steering committee. “First-wave exit poll data is not terribly accurate.”

Those first numbers reflect only interviews with people who have voted in the morning. By delaying release of numbers until between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m., pollsters will have talked to more people and, it is presumed, have a more accurate snapshot of the electorate, he said.

Leaks harder to stop
The news organizations would also like to prevent their employees from leaking the information but, given the nature of reporters who trade in information, realize that that is hard.

The organizations are also looking into general questions about the quality of Edison/Mitofsky’s work and whether the early indicators for Kerry revealed flaws in their polling process. That investigation is under way, Gawiser said.

It was the third straight major election in which problems cropped up with exit poll data. Edison/Mitofsky was hired for this election after a previous organization failed to deliver usable exit poll information on Election Day 2002 and provided information that resulted in the television networks’ blowing calls on the election in 2000.

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