Pre-election advice on Exit Polls from Edison Media !!! [View All]

[k8conant]

http://www.edisonresearch.com/home/archives/2004/10/what_to_watch_f.html

• What to Watch for on Election Night
  
  October 28, 2004
  by Larry Rosin, President
  
  6) How do they know?
  
  While the networks are promising to be a bit more transparent on this point, most Election coverage viewers are still mystified when the networks say things like “With 2% of the precincts reporting, we are projecting that will win.”
  
  How do they do that?
  
  This is where Edison Media Research comes in. Working together with Mitofsky International, we are providing the networks with two streams of data, Exit Polls and the Quick Count.
  
  In most states, the outcome of the Presidential election will be “callable” from the information in our Exit Polls, and these are the “top of the hour” calls.
  
  In other states, the Exit Polls will imply that one candidate or the other is very likely to win, but there is not enough information to confidently make the call. Often, the second stream of information, the “Quick Count” can lend greater assurance. We will have people stationed at thousands of voting locations across the country. They will be calling in the results from those sample precincts as soon as the votes are counted. Our system will add this new information to the Exit Poll information, and often this is the push that makes the outcome clear.
  
  Finally, the Associated Press will be counting all the votes. This final stream of information will be added to our system to eventually (we hope) allow a winner to be called, or at least to show that a race will go to a recount or to further discussion.
  
  This article is being written on Wednesday, October 27, six days before the election. As of today, no one has any idea who will win. Election Night promises to make for extremely exciting television or radio.

I had never heard of the "Quick Count" before. Apparently those are actual results from certain precincts. I wonder which ones they use. They're adding that to the Exit Poll data.

:shrug: :kick: