Networks Reach Exit Poll Agreement

Byline: Richard Morin and Claudia Deane

Also in This Column: * Psychologist Richard Petty, columnist Arianna Huffington to Speak at AAPOR * Race for the Democratic Nomination * Poll Vault: Silly Democracy

The major television networks and the Associated Press have agreed in principle to hire two veteran pollsters to conduct exit polls in next year's general election and early presidential primaries, network sources said today.

The media partners have reached a preliminary agreement with pollsters Warren Mitofsky of Mitofsky International and Joe Lenski of Edison Media Research to conduct the exit polling.

Final details of a formal letter of agreement between the principals are being negotiated. The letter could be signed as early as today, sources with direct knowledge of the negotiations said.

The contract requires the Mitofsky-Lenski partnership to provide exit poll data and projections of winners to a pool composed of ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, Fox and the Associated Press, which formed the old Voter News Service exit poll consortium. The pool members will spend about $10 million through 2004, with an option to renew for 2006 and 2008.

The pollsters will handle the logistics of conducting the exit polls, while the media members will make all editorial decisions, network sources said. The proposed agreement would require the pollsters to conduct exit polls through at least the early March primaries and in the general election in November.

The new exit poll service comes two weeks after the media partners in the old VNS agreed to shut down the exit poll service after two consecutive election disasters. In 2000, the networks projected that Al Gore would win Florida, only to later take back that prediction. Last year, VNS was unable to provide any exit poll results after its system failed on election night.

Guess Who's Coming to AAPOR?

This just in: Noted psychologist Richard E. Petty and columnist Arianna Huffington, who gleefully describes herself as polling's "worst enemy," will deliver featured addresses at the American Association for Public Opinion Research annual conference this May in Nashville.

Petty is the Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at Ohio State University. He's an internationally recognized scholar who "studies attitude formation and change . . . from a very different perspective than AAPOR folks traditionally take, " said Jon Krosnick, the AAPOR conference chair and a colleague of Petty's at Ohio State.

The other plenary speech will be delivered by Huffington, the articulate and acid-penned writer who is expected to reprise her "biting criticism of surveys and their impact on public policy making," Krosnick said.

The selection of Petty as a showcased speaker likely will raise no eyebrows among AAPOR members, which include media pollsters, commercial survey researchers and academics.

Huffington is a different matter. In recent planning meetings, some organization leaders sharply questioned why AAPOR would want to provide a platform for the nationally syndicated columnist, who is viewed by her critics as a relentless self-promoter with only a limited understanding of polling.

Well maybe, Krosnick said. But she's also a high profile critic whose views are widely shared and not easily ignored.

"Her concerns about the value of surveys and their impact on contemporary politics are not unique-there are clearly others who worry about the reliability of survey data and their potentially disruptive impact on public policy-making," Krosnick said. "I felt it would be valuable for AAPOR members to hear firsthand the views of an articulate critic."

Pollsters may be excused if they go squinty-eyed at the mention of Huffington's name. The Divine Miss H organized the Partnership for a Poll-Free America in 1998 with funnyman Harry Shearer of Spinal Tap and Simpsons fame (he's the voice of Mr. Burns, among others).

Huffington also suggested in a column last year that electrodes be attached to "pollster's sensitive areas on election night" to send "a charge through them any time a poll-based prediction proves erroneous. It would give a whole new meaning to the term 'political buzz.'"

Krosnick also has invited a dozen experts in public opinion to address specific topics, including University of Michigan professor Michael Traugott on the accuracy of recent pre-election polls and David Moore of the Gallup Organization on the history of response rates in the Gallup Poll.

The twin themes of this year's conference are the willingness of people to participate in public opinion polls and trust in institutions, Krosnick said.

"The theme of trust emerged in my thinking because of some many recent events that raised questions about public trust in institutions-the FBI's actions prior to 9/11, Enron and its stock-holders and auditors, the concerns expressed in some quarters about the reliability and trustworthiness of survey data," Krosnick said.

He noted that the news about response rates is not all bad-which itself will come as news to many AAPOR members. "I wanted to provide opportunities for people to share the details of their response rate experiences with one another, so we all know what really is possible to achieve with well-done data collection efforts, what it takes to achieve that, and whether it's worthwhile in terms of data quality to devote that effort."

Race for the Democratic Nomination

It's all Joe Lieberman with 18 months to go until the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll asked self-identified Democrats to choose among the early entrants in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. The results:

* 27% Joseph Lieberman* 14 Richard Gephardt* 11 John Edwards* 10 John Kerry* 7 Al Sharpton* 3 Howard Dean* 28 Undecided/None of these

Lieberman also leads in virtually every major demographic group. One notable exception: African Americans, where he's tied with Al Sharpton.

Candidates are getting a bit of a hometown advantage in these early days of the campaign. Longtime Missouri Congressman Gephardt does more than twice as well in the Midwest as in the South (10 percent) and West (10 percent). North Carolina Senator Edwards triples his strength in the South (17 percent) compared to 5 percent in the East and West. Edwards claims 10 percent of the hypothetical vote in the Midwest..

Poll Vault: Silly Democracy

Even before election campaigns were really silly or ridiculous, many Americans thought they were -- at least sometimes, according to this 1960 survey:

Question: Do you ever find elections campaigns silly or ridiculous?* 7% Often* 51 Sometimes* 37 Never* 5 Other/Don't know

Source: Survey conducted by the Center of International Studies, Princeton University with 970 adults nationwide in March 1960. Data provided by The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut.

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