The media isn't bias. Calling Florida for Gore 6 hours before the election was over was not their fault.
Notice how they include FOX in their retraction statement when this is not true. FOX maintained too close to call all evening and then was the FIRST network to call for Bush.
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Errors Plagued Election Night Polling Service
VNS Report Also Faults Networks in Fla. Blunder
The polling organization responsible for the biggest blunder in television history on election night was plagued by a series of errors that distorted the Florida vote all night long, a confidential report concludes.
The internal investigation by Voter News Service also makes clear that its techniques were inherently risky for the networks that rely on its data.
The group had no reliable way of estimating the number of Florida's absentee ballots in the presidential race, which were almost double what it had expected. What's more, the news service dramatically underestimated the number of Florida votes still uncounted at 2 a.m.
"Budget limitations" have "placed heavy burdens on all VNS staff and [have] made the task of covering elections far more difficult than necessary," says the report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. VNS was created in 1990 as a cost-cutting measure by the major television networks and the Associated Press.
While CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN and Fox decided to project Vice President Gore and, six hours later, George W. Bush the Florida winner -- and had to retract both calls in humiliating fashion -- those decisions were based heavily on bad VNS data.
This was more than just a media embarrassment. The calling of Florida for Gore gave many viewers the impression, especially after the vice president won Michigan and Pennsylvania, that he was on his way to the White House, a situation Republicans say may have discouraged some Bush voters from turning out. The later projection that Bush had won Florida fostered a national mind-set that he had been elected president, which Gore supporters say made their recount battle that much harder.
VNS spokeswoman Lee C. Shapiro said she could not comment on the inquiry.
At 7:50 p.m. on Nov. 7, when the network calls for Gore began, VNS was wildly underestimating the size of Florida's absentee vote. The group thought absentee ballots would make up 7.2 percent of the overall vote, instead of the actual figure of 12 percent.
VNS also projected that absentees would vote 22.4 percent more for Bush than Election Day voters, when the actual figure was 23.7 percent. That mistake alone accounted for 1.3 percentage points of the 7.3 percent lead that Gore was projected to hold at that moment.
VNS was operating in the dark because the organization did no telephone polling in Florida to try to estimate the size and shape of the absentee vote, largely because of "the very considerable costs" involved. The group did such surveys in California, Oregon and Washington because of the traditionally heavy absentee balloting in those states.
"The absentee vote has been growing over the years, and we have had to deal with it in a patchwork method," the report says.
Another 2.8 percentage points of Gore's projected lead was inflated by problems with the exit polls, specifically the sampling of voters in the group's 45 selected precincts. The report says this degree of error is "within the normal range" for exit polls.
The remaining 3.2 percentage points of the Gore lead were due to flaws in the exit poll "model" itself. One of VNS's key techniques is to compare its exit-poll findings to the results of past elections.
VNS says it used Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's 1998 victory as the best predictor of how his brother would fare this year, but that Robert J. Dole's 1996 bid -- more voters turn out in a presidential year -- would have produced a better estimate. There also "may be errors in the past vote file for the 1998 gubernatorial race," the report says.
Finally, VNS uses raw vote totals to help correct any exit-poll errors. At 7:50, the exit poll in Tampa was off by 16 percentage points, inflating Gore's estimated lead. But Tampa and Miami, which had the biggest overstatement of Gore's lead in the exit polls, had not reported any votes at 7:50, leaving VNS unable to modify its errors.
If any one of these four mishaps had not occurred, the report says, VNS might not have called Florida for Gore. While some "bad luck" was involved, says the report by editorial director Murray Edelman, the networks also bear responsibility for making projections without consulting VNS.
"It would appear that calls are being made at the minimum acceptable tolerances for risk, with very little allowance for error," he writes. "If we are to continue in this manner, our decision procedures must be redesigned."
The network projections that Bush had won Florida, and with it the presidency, began at 2:16 a.m. They also were based on bad VNS numbers (although neither the news service nor the AP declared Bush the winner).
At 2:10, with 97 percent of the state's precincts reporting, VNS estimated that there were 179,713 votes outstanding. In fact, more than 359,000 votes came in after 2:10. In Palm Beach County alone, VNS projected there were 41,000 votes outstanding, but 129,000 votes came in.
This was compounded by local problems with reporting the vote. At 2:08, Gore's total in Volusia County mysteriously dropped by more than 10,000 votes, while nearly 10,000 votes were added to Bush's total. This mistake boosted Bush's lead by 20,348 votes, giving him a 51,433-vote lead over Gore -- or so VNS believed.
Brevard County later increased Gore's total by 4,000, with none for Bush, in what appeared to be a correction of an earlier mistake. Given the tightness of the contest, Edelman writes, "I was very concerned to see the race called by the networks."
Among other problems, VNS's quality-control system was so inadequate that it failed to reject an early report that 95 percent of Duval County had voted for Gore.
And thanks to exit-poll samples that are smaller than the networks used before VNS was created, "there is some evidence that we overstated the size of the black vote and underestimated the size of the Cuban vote in Florida, and both of these errors could have contributed to the overstatement of the vote for Gore."
Network executives and anchors have repeatedly apologized for their election night mistakes and launched internal inquiries. ABC says it will insulate its decision desk from competitive pressures and describe all future projections as estimates. Fox says it will probably drop VNS and start a new polling consortium.
washingtonpost.com |
