Red faces again as TV networks jump the election gun

Basing their facts on the same presidential election results, US TV networks diverged today in projecting a winner in the key state of Ohio.

There were also concerns among networks that early exit polls they commissioned had indicated Senator John Kerry would do better than he appeared to be faring as actual vote counts came in.

Fox News Channel was the first to declare President George Bush had won Ohio at 5.51am Irish time. Coupled with a projection of Alaska for Bush as soon as polls closed there at 6am Irish time, Fox said Bush had clinched at least a tie for the presidency with 269 electoral votes.

NBC joined Fox in calling Ohio and Alaska for Bush at 6am Irish time.

“This race is all but over,” NBC anchor Tom Brokaw said.

More than 80 minutes later, ABC, CBS, CNN and The Associated Press – four other news organisations that had received the same vote count and exit poll information as NBC and Fox – had kept Ohio in the undecided camp.

“Given the small difference and given the provisional ballot issue, we’re just not comfortable at CNN making this call,” CNN’s Judy Woodruff said. “We are being very cautious here.”

The 2000 election night fiasco – when all of the networks twice prematurely declared a winner in Florida and awarded the presidency to George Bush weeks before it was settled – was clearly on their minds.

“If we hadn’t gone through what we had gone through in 2000, we probably would have called Ohio for Bush,” CNN’s Jeff Greenfield said.

Both Brokaw and Fox News Channel’s Brit Hume read a statement from the Kerry campaign saying Kerry still could win in Ohio.

“I guess they can be forgiven for hoping,” Hume said. ”But it looks a little bleak.”

ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox and the AP disbanded their previous exit poll and vote-counting consortium, Voter News Service, after the 2000 fiasco and another failure in 2002. Two veteran polling outfits – Mitofsky International and Edison Media Research – collaborated on exit polls this year.

The networks also relied on the AP as their sole source for vote tabulations.

Although no major problems in the new systems were reported, the early exit polls caused concern.

When the 2004 results are completely known, the networks will look at whether this year’s exit polls overestimated Democratic vote counts, said Bill Wheatley, NBC News vice president. But he noted that the networks relied on real vote counts to make their calls in contested states.

“I think it would be premature to say that we had any substantial problems,” Wheatley said.

Before polls had closed, the exit poll information that had once been available only to a privileged few was racing around the Internet. Television reporters tried, with varying degrees of success, not to reflect that information so as not to influence voters.

Those early numbers looked so positive for Kerry that Fox News Channel analyst Jim Pinkerton, at 8.30pm, said, “I think it looks good for angry Democrats.”

And on evening news programmes, some correspondents subtly telegraphed the polls. NBC’s David Gregory said Bush ”appeared subdued,” while ABC’s Terry Moran noted the president had expressed a “rare sense of doubt.”

Later on Fox, analysts talked openly about how some actual results contradicted exit polls numbers.

“Either the exit polls are completely wrong,” Fox analyst Susan Estrich said, “or George Bush loses.”

Although networks called states where there was little doubt quickly and consistently, there was little of the hyper-competitiveness often visible on election nights. Rivals waited nearly 30 minutes, for instance, to join CBS in putting Virginia and North Carolina in Bush’s column.

ABC’s Peter Jennings even cautioned Moran as he stood outside the White House reporting on what the president was telling reporters inside.

“You’re speculating, aren’t you?” Jennings asked. Moran admitted he was, but that it was informed speculation.

In response to what happened in 2000, NBC quarantined its experts making calls on winners and losers in a room without TV sets so they couldn’t see their rivals, while Fox had four executives on its decision desk and promised not to call a state unless all four agreed.

CBS said it wouldn’t declare a winner or loser in any state, cautiously saying it would only “estimate” a winner.