A Journalist's Mission in Columbia-- May/June 2000

May/June 2000 | Contents

Exit Polls, Academy Awards, and Presidential Elections...
By Lawrence K. Grossman

Why does the press have to be such a spoilsport? In March, The Wall Street Journal made lots of people mad. It broke the news of the Oscar winners before the sealed envelopes were opened on Academy Awards night by polling members of the Motion Picture Academy to ask them how they voted. And during the presidential primary season, Slate, National Review Online, ABCNews.com, and Web gossip-monger Matt Drudge all released or referred to early exit poll data while voters were still casting their ballots. Voter News Service, the exit polling cartel formed in 1993 by the major national news organizations, threatened to sue the online malefactors who broke its exit poll embargo.

Exit polls and voter surveys are useful because they produce valuable insights into what citizens think, why they vote the way they do, and which kinds of people vote for which candidates. But given today's instant information landscape, they also can reveal who won or lost long before the voting is over, which is what causes all the controversy.

The exit polling brouhaha first came to a head in 1980 with Ronald Reagan's landslide victory over Jimmy Carter. Reagan scored such a sweep that the networks were able to declare him the winner and Carter even conceded the election hours before the polls closed in the West. Using exit interview data again in 1984, the networks declared Reagan the winner over Walter Mondale, also hours before the polls closed in the West.

People accuse television's early vote projections of causing voters to melt away and pass up the chance to cast their ballots for important local races and state referenda and initiatives. Whether that actually happens or not remains an open question. But after the 1984 election, at the insistence of western legislators, the House and Senate passed a joint resolution urging broadcasters to "voluntarily refrain from characterizing or projecting results of an election . . ." based on data from exit interviews "before all polls for the office have closed." Taken literally, that meant asking broadcasters to sit on the news about presidential and other election results until every poll closed in every state, including Alaska and Hawaii. If Congress had its way, thousands of insiders in the press and political campaigns who have access to exit poll results would know who won the elections in each state, while only the public would be kept in the dark, obviously neither a desirable nor a realistic prospect in the electronic age.

In 1985 the presidents of ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News (I was head of NBC News at the time) were called to testify before the House Subcommittee on Elections, which was exploring the idea of mandating simultaneous poll closing across the nation as the way to solve the early-call problem. If all the polls were to close simultaneously and we broadcasters would agree not to release our exit poll data before poll closing time, then the issue of projecting a winner while people were still voting would be solved. The three of us did promise that we would not "project or characterize" election results in any state until after its polls closed. Reluctant as I was to make any promises to Congress about how NBC News would cover elections, I thought it would be no big deal to agree to wait until the polls close in a state before reporting its election results. That, in fact, already was NBC News policy. What would be the harm of not rushing to air the moment we could make an election projection, if it meant helping the voting process, diffusing criticism about our interfering with voters, and getting uniform poll closing? Since that time, it's generally been considered taboo to release exit poll results while people are still voting.

Our promise to Congress was a mistake that continues to haunt television's election coverage to this day. As H.L. Mencken said, "For every complex problem there is a solution, simple, neat -- and wrong." Taboo or no taboo, the commitment we made has never actually been kept. And in the Internet age, it never will be kept. On any given election day, anyone who listens to what reporters, analysts, anchors, and campaign staffs say on the air can figure out well before the polls close who's ahead, who's behind, and how close the race is. The only way not to get an early peek at the voting trends and results is not to turn on any television, radio, or computer.

What the reporters, analysts, anchors, etc. say on the air and on the Internet is influenced by what the exit polls tell them is happening -- heavy turnout or low turnout; lots of Republicans voting compared to Democrats, or vice versa; a trend toward crossover voting, or not; independents indicating they're all going one way, or the other. Reporters, whose job is to deliver information, are no good at keeping secrets. The news presidents' pledge not to report early exit poll data has resulted in a disingenuous and hypocritical journalistic practice that only muddles election coverage. And the Internet has made the situation even worse.

In the end, common sense prevailed about the terrible idea of uniform poll closing, which would force some states to shut their polls earlier than others. It never even came to a vote. There's only one way to make sure that every voter everywhere, from Maine to Hawaii, has equal access to the polls: follow China's example and declare the entire country a single time zone. No one is about to do that.

Is it really worth making such a big fuss over the fact that voters in California, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and Hawaii can learn the outcome of an election before they get into the voting booth? AP managing editor Jonathan Wolman told the Los Angeles Times recently that withholding exit poll information "gives people an honest vote without somebody having characterized that their vote has already been nullified." He's wrong about giving people an "honest vote." On the contrary, we'd be deceiving people if we encourage them to cast their ballot by hiding the fact that the election had already been decided. Why should anyone's vote for president be based on the false belief that their vote will count, if, in truth, one candidate has already received enough electoral college votes to win the presidency, as happened in 1980 and 1984? And if a few citizens decide not to vote for candidates for other offices and other ballot measures simply because their vote would no longer make a difference in electing a president, at least their decision is based on fact not fiction, on knowledge not ignorance. Voters, by definition, are grown-ups. They should be treated as grown-ups and not have information purposely withheld from them just because someone thinks it's in their best interest to do so.

As for releasing the names of Oscar winners before the Academy Awards show begins, now that's a real crime -- spoiling the suspense for millions of movie fans. Surely, there ought to be a law . . .

Lawrence K. Grossman, a former president of NBC News and PBS, is a regular columnist for cjr.