After-post Update: Looks like reports that the research would be kept under wraps were wildly off-base. The report was not only issued to news outlets, but the whole thing is available to everyone online. In other words…never mind.
After yet another election cycle in which exit polls proved unreliable in many key states nationwide, there was widespread agreement that the entire process needs a close examination. The good news is that the polling outfits involved with collecting the data are about to deliver a report to the news outlets who pay them. The bad news is that, true to form, the results may be hidden from public view.
This week, the firms that produced exit polls of voters last November will tell the news organizations that paid them what, if anything, they think went wrong.
The surveys of voters as they left polling places led to widespread speculation on Election Day that Sen. John Kerry was sweeping President Bush out of office. But whether voters will ever know what happened remains unclear.
Edie Emery, a spokeswoman for the six-member media consortium that paid for the exit polls, says representatives from ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NBC and the Associated Press want to review the report before making any decisions about what to make public.
This is a problem. First the National Election Pool was wrong with its results, then it refused to discuss or divulge any information about its methodology. Now they’ve effectively audited themselves, but aren’t prepared to let the public review their report. If the consortium hopes to restore some credibility to this process, it’s doing everything backwards.
“It’s amazing to me that there’s even a possibility that the report won’t be released to the public,” says Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “There was a major national controversy involving the integrity of the news organizations and of the polling firms involved.”
Nearly everyone can agree that, in GOP parlance, “mistakes were made.” But unlike a secretive presidential administration that’s loath to admit mistakes, national news outlets are supposed to share information with the public, not hide it.