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Celebration Time For Some, Heartaches For Others: TV Channels Geared Up To Tell Us Who’ll Win And Who Won’t

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On Tuesday as the clock ticks 11 in the morning, representative authorities from five Television networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox and the Associated Press will gather at a secret setting, popularly called the “quarantine room,” that will have no access with the world outside. None of them of will carry mobile phones or any other appliances – that’s how important it is to keep the matter hush-hush until the time is opportune to reveal it.

The National Election Pool will then sift through exit poll data that has been garnered by Edison Research.  This exit poll normally comes close to the final results and is by far the most authentic prediction of which way the results will go. However, the fellows inside will have to keep the information to themselves till 5 p.m. before they can send the data to their respective networks.

Analysts say that why exit polls come closest to the results is that it contains information based on all possibilities, size of the state, its demographics, their past voting history, issues that have affected them and eventually asking actual voters who they voted for.

However, news like whom the exit polls predict as winners and who have been defeated will have to wait till after the polls close. Till then they will have to make do with such tidbits as what the voter considered the most important issue this election, joblessness, economy or terror.

This year the election is expected to be a photo finish and the news media is presuming that the results will be declared late into the night, unlike 2008 when the Election Pool declared Obama the winner within minutes of the poll closing. Some analysts even fear that the result may not be forthcoming on election night.

AP is well prepared, with an unmatched experience garnered from counting votes and declaring winners in all presidential election since 1848. There will be 5000 enthusiastic and competent people on the job. In addition there will be thousands of reporters, across the length and breadth of the country providing latest statistical information to the networks.

Even though AP’s method is full-proof and the chances of a gaffe or a misinformation going out are scarce, past debacles make them tread with care. In 2000 it said Florida went to Al Gore and later said that it was Bush. Eventually the matter went to court for the apex court to decide.

Although the networks will be the first to know the results and the next morning everyone will want to know which network had the highest viewership, the representatives on the Election Pool said they were not competing against each other.

They said for us it is not important to outpace one another. It is more important that we get our facts correct. CNN Washington bureau Chief Sam Feist, who will keep an eye on calls made election night opined that he wouldn’t speak for the others, but for his channel numbers did not matter and that they were in no hurry to make predictions. “We’re happy to be last,” he said.

News executives say that the quarantine procedure will ensure that there are no leaks from the exit poll data. Viewers can then expect the first exist poll result around 7 p.m.

CNN’s Feist said, the time for opinions, allegations, charges are all over. This is the time when facts will take over. People just want to know one thing, who won and who lost.

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Celebration Time For Some, Heartaches For Others: TV Channels Geared Up To Tell Us Who’ll Win And Who Won’t by
Authored by: Harrison Barnes