Of Course Bloggers Posted The Exit Polls

by John Hawkins | November 3, 2004 7:06 pm

There’s a lot of carping[1] from the mainstream media about bloggers posting the exit polls, but I’m not sorry I did it.

Heck, I posted exit polls in 2002[2], I posted them last night[3], and if I can get my hands on them, I’ll be posting them in 2006.

There are two reasons for that.

First and foremost, people want to see the exit polls and unlike the MSM, bloggers are in the business of giving people what they want. Personally, I don’t think I should be saying,

“Sure I can be trusted with this information, but the ‘peons’ out there? They can’t handle it!”

IMaybe that’s the wrong approach to have, maybe not.

But we live in a world where MSM organizations actually run our military’s leaked BATTLE PLANS and classified documents when they can get their hands on them. They also take online polls from their websites that have obviously been stuffed and they’ll present them to the public as if they actually mean something. That’s exactly what they did during the debates and you have to wonder how many people thought something just like this after reading those polls that had been “freeped” by the Dems,

“Oh, 80% of the people in that online poll think John Kerry won the debate. Well, I thought Bush actually barely won it, but I must have been wrong. I guess Kerry did win…”

Given all of that, I don’t think the media should be whining about bloggers posting exit polls although it would be nice if they spent a little more time trying to figure out exactly why the exit polling data was so far off.

Secondly, these polls were on Drudge, left-wing blogs were discussing them, I even heard a local radio host talking about them as I went home….so these numbers were out there. If conservative bloggers & websites hadn’t stepped up and stemmed the panic and defeatism that was caused by these faulty numbers coming out, it could have cost Bush the election.

Remember that the original numbers showed Bush losing EVERY battleground state and many of them by huge margins. If people looked at those numbers and the long lines all at polling places all across the country that we had yesterday and then put 2 and 2 together, it would have been very easy for them to conclude that the huge turnout was for Kerry and that the race was as good as over.

But because conservative bloggers & websites were able to say “Hey, there’s no way these numbers can be right” & “Oh, we hear that the Bush campaign says they’re actually winning in states these polls show them being slaughtered in,” people didn’t lose heart and they still showed up to vote.

So as far as I’m concerned, posting the exit poll data was the right move and I have no problem with bloggers on the left or right who did so.