The Los Angeles Times has a good article on the above-and-beyond efforts of the television channels, both cable and broadcast, to pump up their technology to match the hype of this race.
Anticipating massive viewer interest, the broadcast and cable television networks are pulling out all the stops for Tuesday’s election, seeking to outdo one another with technological wizardry and scores of political analysts.
Ugh. “Scores of political analysts.“ Just give me a handful who actually know what they’re talking about! And keep your partisans—I’ve had enough of them already!
NOTE TO SELF: Keep remote handy tonight. Make mental note of location of mute button.
This is some of what we were talking about earlier today. The Times even explores what the stations are doing to guard those reliable-enough-for-us-to-use-them-but-not-enough-for-us-to-allow-them-to-leak-out exit polls:
But behind the elaborate preparations and gung-ho attitude, the television networks are heading into the night with a sense of cautious restraint—especially when it comes to exit polls—all too aware of the implications of a botched call.
“We don’t want ever a repeat of what happened in 2000,“ said Phil Alongi, executive producer of NBC’s special events, referring to the networks’ haste in awarding Florida to Al Gore, then giving the state to George W. Bush before realizing it was too close to call.
“We learned so many lessons across the board,“ he said. “One of the first: Get it right.“
Hmm. We’ll see.
Note what he said: ONE of the first. Not THE first.
Remember the good old days when journalists actually wanted above all else to get the story right?
To do so, the networks now follow strict rules that govern projections, examining not only exit poll data but actual vote tabulation and turnout information. NBC—which keeps its decision desk isolated from the calls made by competing networks—will only call a winner once its statisticians conclude that the chance of an error is less than 1 in 200. And no calls will be made until all the polls have closed in a state.
Extreme measures are taken to ensure that early data from the exit poll does not leak out, as it did in 2004, when the first wave of surveys showing John Kerry in the lead rocketed through cyberspace.
Read on for more on the extreme measures/sequestration procedures—including the confiscation of Blackberries—that will be implemented to guard those exit polls.
I also love this quote:
“Exit poll information in the hands of trained professionals is perfectly fine,“ said Sam Feist, CNN’s political director. “Exit poll information in the hand of the general public, who may not understand what it means or stands for, can be dangerous.“
People, according to CNN’s political director: Too stupid to understand exit polls, but plenty capable of picking the next president of the United States!!!!
One final note: It’s interesting, don’t you think, that this article appeared not in the news section, but in the ENTERTAINMENT section of the Times?
CNN is on my last nerve today. I’m so tired of their drama and overhype and breathless recitation of the same phrases over and over and over again that I’ve been watching it on mute most of the morning.
But they are making up for annoying me on TV with an incredible web site.
I just found a tool that will allow me to track returns on 35 races, nationwide, from federal office to governor to state initiatives, all at once.
But if you are like this person, do yourself—and your country—a favor: Don’t. Instead, get into your closet, close the door and don’t come out ... at least, not until this election is over.
Let me tell you something: This woman is an idiot of the highest order. She says she wants to vote, but she will leave her choice to chance.
Why bother? It’s not like it matters to her anyway.
People who treat their civic responsibilities with this kind of disdain should be fined.
Here’s the clip:
If you’re interested in hearing her try to explain the inexplicable, click here.
Remember Kathy Bates as Bobby Boucher’s mother in “The Waterboy?“
She was a caricature of an overprotective mother in Cajun country, and she thought pretty much everything—except the family horse, Steve—was “THE DEBIL!!“
Of course, with all the cable news channels and all the broadcast networks and all the C-SPAN channels rushing to get their handsomely paid anchors to report the election results FIRST!, they’ll all be relying on exit polls to tell you what’s going on in the polls long before they close.
And why not? After all, they’ve been making all sorts of assumptions about the electoral map based on polls, other polls and polls of polls for the past three months. CNN has already assured us that Barack Obama will win enough electoral votes to become president. And we all know that the polls are never wrong. So why are we even going through the motions of having this election? It’s SO inconvenient and time consuming!
Because polls don’t matter. Votes do.
And as for those highly regarded, highly touted exit polls we are going to be hearing about ALL DAY LONG?
Well, John McCain’s campaign pollster wants the media to know something:
EXIT POLLS ARE THE DEBIL!!
McCain’s internal pollster, Bill McInturff, released a memo saying that the campaign “would discourage a rush to judgment based on the exit polls” when reporting results tonight.
They are unreliable, McInturff says, for five reasons:
1. Historically, exit polls have tended to overstate the Democratic vote.
2. The exit polls are likely to overstate the Obama vote because Obama voters are more likely to participate in the exit poll.
3. The exit polls have tended to skew most Democratic in years where there is high turnout and high vote interest like in 1992 and 2004.
4. It is not just the national exit poll that skews Democratic, but each of the state exit polls also suffers from the same Democratic leanings.
5. The results of the exit polls are also influenced by the demographics of the voters who conduct the exit polls.
McInturff missed a sixth reason: Of the expected record of 130 million to 140 million votes, early and absentee voters will comprise about 30 percent of the total.
Guess what’s not included in exit polls?
If you guessed early and absentee votes, congratulations! You’ve won this handsome dinette set from ...
Oh, wait; that’s right. No corporate sponsors here. It appears that you’ve won little more than personal satisfaction. But that beats a cheesy dinette set any day.
So, McInturff offers a novel idea:
“...do not overreact to the early exit poll data. Rather than looking at the exit polls, we should wait until we start seeing actual election results from key precincts and counties to gauge who won the election.“
WHAT???
Don’t rely on potentially unreliable estimates, but wait for ACTUAL RESULTS to declare who won the election?
That’s so last century!
After all, the networks have to be FIRST! FIRST! FIRST! I tell you!
As for being right, well ... they’ll take their chances.
OK, folks, if you need any help getting psyched up for voting today, listen here to your new fellow American, Craig Ferguson.
Ferguson is a native of Scotland, but he naturalized in January of this year and will cast his first vote for president in California today. He covers politics and current affairs frequently on his late-night talk show on CBS, “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.“
His perspective on American politics fascinates me. Here is a man who loves this country and wanted to become a part of it so much that he paid a price to earn the privilege that most of the rest of us simply take for granted every day.
As a comedian, Ferguson has had his fair share of laughs about the election and our candidates. But he gets downright poetic when he talks about the right to vote.
Watch this clip from his Sept. 10 show (transcript of operative portion follows):
If you don’t have time for the full clip, here’s the two-minute version: Ferguson was detailing his disdain for voter registration drives like MTV’s “Rock the Vote,“ and his comments about Americans’ civic responsibility to the ballot took off from there.
Are we so lost we have to be sold our own democratic right? … We have to sexy up the vote for young people? … Here’s what I would say: If you don’t vote, you’re a moron.
I know what you’ll say: ‘Not voting is a vote.’ No, it isn’t. Not voting is just being stupid.
Voting is not sexy. It is not hip. It is not fashionable; it’s not a movie, it’s not a video game, all the kids ain’t doin’ it; frankly, voting’s a pain in the a—. But here’s a word – look it up: It’s your DUTY to vote. The foundation in this democracy is based on free people making free choices. So, young people, if you can’t take your hand out of your bag of Cheetos long enough to fill out a form, then you can’t complain when we end up with President Sanjaya.
Listen, I’m an American. This country is at war, right now. Americans in foreign lands wearing uniforms representing this country are losing their lives. Americans here in this country are losing their homes. We have two patriotic candidates, right; they both love this country. They have different ideas about what to do with it. Learn about them. Read about them. Question them. Listen to them. Then, on Election Day, exercise your sacred right as an American, and listen to yourself.
“Listen to yourself.“
If a newly naturalized citizen who has been an American for less than a year can get it like this, what’s wrong with the rest of us?
I have sometimes heard it said that real Americans aren’t born—they’re made, through hard work and sacrifice and grit and love of country, an unyielding determination to succeed and a simple refusal to fail. So citizenship, then, isn’t about geography. It’s about integrity.
