Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Cornell U. alumna speaks on campus about Election Day exit polls
By Alex Lebowitz
Cornell Daily Sun (Cornell U.)
11/14/2006

(U-WIRE) ITHACA, N.Y. — At around 1 p.m. on Nov. 2, 2004, millions of Americans were reading exit polls all over the Internet suggesting that Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts would be the next President of the United States. Popular political Web sites such as the Drudge Report, Huffington Post and others were receiving upward of 20 to 30 million hits.

The exit polls of course proved to be grossly incorrect, and pollsters such as Kathleen A. Frankovic, Cornell University alumna and director of surveys and producer for CBS News, worked to make sure the same mistakes were not repeated in last week's national election. Last night in a lecture titled "Expectations and Reality: The Meaning of the 2006 Election," Frankovic shared how the polling industry improved the exit poll system, why the pre-election polls ended up closer to reality in 2006 compared with 2004 and her interpretation of what the American electorate was saying when it went to the polls exactly one week ago.

Frankovic and her colleagues identified several problems with the way exit polls were conducted during the 2004 election. First, instead of sticking to the intended sampling rate of Democrats and Republicans, the conductors of the polls were focusing on gathering as many interviews as possible.

Miscalculations led to an inflated representation of Democrats in the polls.

Second, there were far more legal restrictions on access to voters in the 2004 election compared to the 2000 election. In Ohio, for example, the media was not allowed within 100 feet of voting areas, making it extremely difficult to differentiate the voters with other pedestrians.

Last, the explosive growth of blogs and political Web sites and a lack of discipline concerning the leak of the exit polls caused the general public to see results far earlier than anticipated.

Pollsters were able to fix these problems through better training of the people conducting the polls, injunctions against individuals such as Ken Blackwell, the Secretary of State in Ohio responsible for the 100-foot rule, and through a new endeavor called the "quarantine room." This room, located in the Time Warner building in Midtown Manhattan, played host to two members of each of the major American broadcast news networks (ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC). These 10 individuals were allowed to see the exit poll data starting at 1 p.m., but forfeited any cell phone, BlackBerry or Internet access until 5 p.m.

These factors made the exit polling system far more predictive and successful in the 2006 election compared to the 2004 election, Frankovic argued.

Frankovic then directed her lecture to the meaning of the data extracted from the exit polls conducted on Election Day. The most illuminating statistic as to how this election was more of a national referendum was that across the board, 60 percent of American voters claimed that national issues were more important whereas only 34 percent were more interested in local issues.

The polling data from the New Jersey Senate race illustrates just how nationalized the election became. Democratic incumbent Bob Menendez, the handpicked successor of Governor Jon Corzine, was attacked by challenger State Senator Thomas Kean over what seemed to be unethical behavior and corruption.

Kean's attacks were largely successful as fully 61 percent of New Jersey voters thought that Menendez was involved in corruption. But of this 61 percent of voters, nearly one out of every three still voted for Menendez, giving him victory by 8 percentage points. Frankovic pointed to the sentiments in New Jersey concerning President Bush and the War in Iraq as the overwhelming factor: Bush's approval rating was just 35 percent and 63 percent of voters opposed the direction of the Iraq War.

Frankovic also shared national exit polls which revealed some interesting opinions of the electorate. While 82 percent of voters expected reductions in the number of troops if the Democrats took control of Capitol Hill, voters saw little difference between the parties on terrorism and taxes. And finally, the 2008 presidential election is at this point still wide open and could prove to be especially interesting as it will be the first in nearly 80 years where the president and vice president will not be on either party's national ticket.

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