Media Polls

ELECTION POLLS HAVE been reported by the news media since the 1824 election, when partisan weekly newspapers reported poll results. They have now become a mainstay of American election journalism. Media organizations sometimes sponsor polls, while other times [Page 405]they report results of surveys conducted and sponsored by others. In those cases, news media must be cautious in reporting and interpreting results, and should evaluate such polls based on disclosure of poll results outlined by the American Association of Public Opinion Research. For example, polls reported in the mass media should disclose who sponsored the poll and who conducted it, question-wording, sample size, and dates of data collection. In some cases, the mass media have reported on a poll that may have had questionable origins that becomes considered fact by the public and other news media. Media poll reports also have erred when reporting specifics about public opinion polls, such as the margin of error—the three or five percentage points that poll results may be off from accurate results.

Horse race polls are one type of poll common in mass media reports. These polls are conducted and reported early in an election cycle, when candidates are still vying for the Republican or Democratic nominations for president. These polls are reported regularly by the media to indicate who is leading and who is trailing in an election, with the reporting highly similar to calling an actual horse race. Those who are leading in such polls may garner greater media attention, as well as campaign contributions, as they appear to be the most serious contenders in the race.

Exit polls are another type of poll common in media reports, but only on Election Day. Exit polls are conducted outside polling places throughout voting districts, sampling a number of voters leaving the polls to ask questions on their vote choices and reasons for their decisions. Exit polls are not conducted by the news media organizations themselves; at the presidential level, exit polls were gathered and reported by a media-operated consortium from the 1960s until 1993; from 1993 through 2000 Voter News Service provided exit poll services, and in the 2004 election the National Election Pool consortium replaced Voter News Service.

Media polls can also refer to polls where television networks, local television stations, radio stations, newspapers, and other media outlets ask viewers, listeners, or their readers to respond to poll questions. These polls are not representative or scientific in any way, and are used more to promote viewership, listenership, or readership for the purpose of generating additional advertising revenues. Legitimate pollsters frown upon these media polls. The 2000 presidential election was the most recent election with troubling poll results and reporting. Not only did the election result in the rare instance of a candidate, Al Gore, winning the popular vote, but not the Electoral College vote, but the media reporting of exit poll results on Election Day 2000 contributed to the confusion in that election.

Based on exit poll results, network news jumped to report the outcome of the 2000 presidential election when it was simply too early to call the results reliably. At approximately 8:00 P.M. on November 7, 2000, the major news networks as well as Voter News Service, the organization that conducted the exit polls for the national media, projected Al Gore to win the state of Florida and therefore enough Electoral College votes to win the presidential election. By 10:30 that night, all news outlets had retracted their initial call for Gore's victory; by 2:30 A.M., many news organizations then called Bush's win in Florida, but that was again retracted by 4:00 A.M. that morning. It took five additional weeks and the involvement of the U.S. Supreme Court before the country officially knew its next president would be George W. Bush.

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