When the networks finally announced an Obama victory around 11 p.m. last night after polls closed on the West Coast, Americans had already been on a rollercoaster ride through the airwaves.
Wary of repeating the skewed predictions prominently featured during the past two presidential election cycles, networks aimed to balance responsible forecasts with the public's desire for every last detail. Tufts political science experts are split on how effectively they accomplished that mission.
"I think they've been very conservative. I think people realized around 4:30 that it was going to be a tsunami," Democratic strategist and Tufts Lecturer Michael Goldman told the Daily last night.
While restraint might be a worthwhile default, Goldman said that news sources could not mislead the public by predicting a tighter race than the evidence supported.
"I think it's always a fine line," he said. "But you can't lie."
This year, ABC, NBC, Fox, CNN and The Associated Press decided to keep a lid on exit-poll results until 5 p.m., as opposed to 1 p.m. in 2004. Throughout the night, networks called states at different paces, but they generally lagged behind Internet sources in the boldness of their predictions.
Time.com, for example, let its readers know at 9:47 p.m. that Sen. Barack Obama had brought home the election. The video blog Rocketboom made the same call hours earlier, at 6:37 p.m.
In 2000, the networks gave Florida to Al Gore before realizing that their exit polling had not yielded the correct result. Meanwhile, in 2004, broadcast-news sources tended to exaggerate Sen. John Kerry's chances. Heading into last night, most promised more restraint in making predictions.
Swing-state results put networks' patience to the test, but the major sources held off until after 8 p.m. to make their predictions. CBS and Fox gave Pennsylvania to Obama at 8:30 p.m., followed shortly be CNN.
Political Science Lecturer Bart Edgerton said he got the sense that Fox and CBS were the most aggressive of the channels.
"It is kind of interesting to see that [they] have seemed to be on the forefront of calling stuff. It does seem that NBC tends to be a little more conservative, and the AP lags quite a bit behind."
He said he prefers the more deliberative approach, noting that quick forecasts can depend too heavily on exit polls of questionable accuracy.
"I think it is bad. The reason that the AP doesn't make calls is not that they're looking at different numbers, but what the AP is looking at probably a little more closely is county-by-county numbers as they roll in," he said.
Goldman, an affiliate in Tufts' political science department, emphasized the balancing act. Apart from questions surrounding the legitimacy of predictions, news sources generally want to wait until polls close in order to not influence voters' decisions.
"You don't want to discourage people from going out, and again, I think it's always a fine line," he said.
