Networks, AP Vow to Create Post-Election Polls That Suck

From the people that brought you 24 hour news when nobody was asking for it, comes a bold new plan revolutionize exit polling. Craptastic 2012 Exit Polling™ will be launched on November 6, 2012 by the same consortium that insisted that Mitt Romney's debate performance launched an unstoppable trajectory to an unstoppable electoral landslide that is not and never was happening.

How will they perform this massive undertaking of coordinated fail? With fewer resources and more guesswork than ever, of course.

The consortium formed by ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News Channel, NBC and the AP is cutting back this year on in-person exit polls while upping the amount of telephone polling. This is to take into account more people voting before Nov. 6 and households that have abandoned land lines in favor of cell phones.[...]

On a perfect Election Night, Americans who are tracking results won't notice all the work being done behind the scenes. The Associated Press reports actual vote counts nationwide and news organizations use those numbers, plus the exit polls, to do their own race calls. But things haven't always gone perfectly. The news organizations completely rebuilt their exit poll system after the 2000 embarrassment, when TV networks mistakenly called the race for George W. Bush when it wasn't decided until a month later (the AP mistakenly called Florida for Bush, retracted it but, unlike the networks, never called the overall race for Bush). In 2004, early exit poll results overestimated the strength of Democrat John Kerry.

To save money this year, the consortium is doing bare bones exit polling in 19 states. Enough voters will be questioned in those states to help predict the outcome of races, but not enough to draw narrative conclusions about the vote— what issues mattered most to women voting for Mitt Romney, for instance, or how many Catholics voted for Barack Obama.

The affected states are: Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming, along with the District of Columbia.

Who knows? Maybe they'll be able to overcome their past record of failure and manage to deliver reports with intelligence, accuracy and integrity.

"It's a story we want to be able to tell on Election Night and we want to be able to tell it accurately and rapidly," he said. "I really don't think it's much different than any other story we tell."

http://news.yahoo.com/...

Never mind.