VNS Exit Poll System Breaks Down

Voter News Service abandoned its state and national exit poll plans for Election Night, saying it could not guarantee the accuracy of the analysis which media organizations use to help explain why people voted as they did.

The decision did not affect VNS' separate operation for counting the actual vote. VNS also hoped to have limited information from the exit poll surveys to give its members guidance in projecting winners for individual races.

Still, it was a major setback for VNS — a consortium consisting of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox and The Associated Press. VNS had completely rebuilt its system in response to the 2000 election, when television networks twice used its information to make wrong calls in the decisive Florida vote for the presidential election.

A CBS News spokeswoman said the news organization knew the failure of the VNS system was a possibility, and prepared accordingly.

The spokeswoman said the quality and accuracy of election information presented to the public by CBS News would not be affected by the VNS failure. The task of projecting winners in various races will be slowed by the VNS failure, however.

VNS exit poll data was one of several tools used by CBS News to make projections, and the network still has those tools: the actual tabulated vote, the Associated Press, CBS News polling done over the weekend, and reporters in key states.

In the weeks heading up to Election Day, VNS was never able to work out the bugs in the portion of the exit poll used to glean detailed information on how people felt about issues and how certain groups voted.

VNS said the exit poll information was being collected but not being properly analyzed by the organization's new computer system.

Generally, consortium members expect the first wave of exit poll data by 2 p.m. EST, giving them the first idea of how the election is going. That hour came and went with little useful information.

Even before the announcement, MSNBC editor-in-chief Jerry Nachman informed viewers that none of the networks would be very dependent on the exit polling information they received from VNS. All would be careful about reporting trends, he said.

Also mindful of 2000, Nachman predicted little competition between networks to be first projecting tight races.

"I think we're going to see a race to be second," Nachman said.

The exit poll was of particular importance to the 19 newspapers, including The New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today, that had contracted with the consortium to receive that information to report on Election Day trends.

VNS has a separate vote-counting operation that was also to be put to the test on Tuesday night. VNS members also have access to another vote-counting system set up by The Associated Press as a backup.