From Karl Rove in the WSJ…
Don’t Let the Polls Affect Your Vote
They were wrong in 2000 and 2004.…On Monday, there were seven nationwide polls, with the candidates as close as three points in the Investors Business Daily/TIPP poll and as far apart as 10 points in Gallup’s “expanded” model. On Tuesday, the Gallup “traditional” model poll had the candidates separated by two points and the Pew poll had them separated by 15. On Wednesday, Battleground, Rasmussen and Gallup “traditional” model polls had the candidates separated by three points while Diageo/Hotline and Gallup “expanded” model polls had the spread at seven points.
Polls can reveal underlying or emerging trends and help campaigns decide where to focus. The danger is that commentators use them to declare a race over before the votes are in. This can demoralize the underdog’s supporters, depressing turnout. I know that from experience.
On election night in 2000 Al Hunt — then a columnist for this newspaper and a commentator on CNN — was the first TV talking head to erroneously declare that Florida’s polls had closed, when those in the Panhandle were open for another hour. Shortly before 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Judy Woodruff said: “A big call to make. CNN announces that we call Florida in the Al Gore column.”
Mr. Hunt and Ms. Woodruff were not only wrong. What they did was harmful. We know, for example, that turnout in 2000 compared to 1996 improved more in states whose polls had closed by the time Ms. Woodruff all but declared the contest over. The data suggests that as many as 500,000 people in the Midwest and West didn’t bother to vote after the networks indicated Florida cinched the race for Mr. Gore.
I recall, too, the media’s screwup in 2004, when exit-polling data leaked in the afternoon. It showed President Bush losing Pennsylvania by 17 points, New Hampshire by 18, behind among white males in Florida, and projected South Carolina and Colorado too close to call. It looked like the GOP would be wiped out.
Bob Shrum famously became the first to congratulate Sen. John Kerry by addressing him as “President Kerry.” Commentators let the exit polls color their coverage for hours until their certainty was undone by actual vote tallies.
Polls have proliferated this year in part because it is much easier for journalists to devote the limited space in their papers or on TV to the horse-race aspect of the election rather than its substance. And I admit, I’ve aided and abetted this process.
…The last national poll that showed Mr. McCain ahead came out Sept. 25 and the 232 polls since then have all shown Mr. Obama leading. Only one time in the past 14 presidential elections has a candidate won the popular vote and the Electoral College after trailing in the Gallup Poll the week before the election: Ronald Reagan in 1980.
…Mr. Rove is a former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.